Abhi the Nomad bounces around onstage like a second grader with ADHD and raps like a wigged-out Donald Glover. Recently signed to Tommy Boy Music, the 24-year-old son of an Indian diplomat, who moved to Austin last summer from France, played to a packed crowd at the Tap Room early Friday night in his SXSW debut.
Seeing only a handful of actual fans present – scattered amongst a festival crowd that had mostly stumbled in from the street – the MC born Abhi Sridharan Vaidehi asked everyone to get up-close and personal to the small stage. Opening with “Dogs,” the most rap-heavy track from his Tommy Boy bow, Marbled, he featured his college friend and fellow artist Harrison Sands, who crooned falsetto hooks. Despite the lack of recognition in the audience, Abhi’s puppy-like zeal proved infectious enough that people were mouthing the words to his catchy choruses after a couple bars.
Warming up quickly, Abhi vibrated with energy as he performed, at one point whipping off his heavy-framed glasses because they kept sliding down his sweat-covered face. Hard to keep a smile off your mug when drummer Poopie Sanchez busts out jazzy drum riffs even more ridiculous than his exaggerated facial expressions. The frontman spent his last two songs singing through a bullhorn he passed back and forth with Sands.
Closer “God’s Plan” welcomed another college buddy of the rhyme slayer, Local Foster, who resembled an aqua-haired hipster Eminem.
Abhi the Nomad grew up a third-culture kid being shuffled from one continent to another, but his set betrayed zero world-weariness. Preaching electro-pop to the audience through a bullhorn on “Sex n’ Drugs,” he appeared refreshingly bright-eyed. And when he shouted out thank-you’s at the end, he sounded genuinely grateful.
This article appears in March 16 • 2018.