Someone once asked, “I wonder what kind of music the kids who experienced hurricane Katrina will be like?” and it made me think, if there was anyone in the late ’70s who ever wondered what the music of a post-Vietnam war orphan would be like – I am the only musician I know that can answer to that. If anyone ever wondered. – Michael Nhat

Michael Nhat’s life has been a whirlwind. He came to America hidden in a box on an airplane. The plane crashed and everyone except the children in cargo died, including his mother. He was sent back to an orphanage in Vietnam. Upon returning to the States, he learned the rap game with a rough crowd, but was able to distance himself from that once finding his home in Los Angeles. He volunteers at the Smell and is one of the most prolific and unassuming musicians ready to rise above ground.

Much like his music, Michael Nhat’s story is anything but conventional, yet he delivers it with the nonchalance of a milkman.

Nhat’s played almost every living room venue in Los Angeles. He’s the token rapper at the punk show. In his preppy clothes, he’s not so much the fish out of water as the guy you can expect the unexpected from. Although he raps, he sees himself as an experimental sound artist rather than a hip-hop dude. On his first full length album, Michael Nhat, we can begin to unravel the emotion, humor, the love lesson, the life quandaries, the enigma that rattles behind his thick glasses. Swimming To Cambodia, his follow up album on Annie Hall Records, will be released on August 31, and features a different vibe, more collaborations, and another window into this guy’s rattling mind.

…A diminutive twentysomething, dressed crisply in a black pullover and white button-down, sitting in a chair with his head slightly bowed. Newcomers probably don’t know what to expect, but Nhat fans can bank on a saucy, effervescent performance…Anywhere Michael Nhat plays is a party… (L.A. Record)

While a few of the songs on Michael Nhat are sample based, Nhat created most of the beats on a keyboard, and the various interludes were captured by himself and friends on a mini-recorder or extrapolated from voicemails. His collaborator in duo 1000 Apes In A Room, vowel wizard Kthei??? appears on two hidden tracks, “When Dracula Met The Wolfman,” and “Tongue Part 1″ – the only song not produced by Nhat himself. “Tongue Part 1″ features the handiwork of Japanese producer Timmo. Travisaurus appears on “Dirt” and Cardio Pulmonary collaborated on “Ponds and Lakes.” With sword-like finesse, Michael Nhat cuts depth with humor and abstract rhythm. The wide-open frontier introduces a new voice to experimental music.

Asked what he hopes people get out of his songs, Nhat says, without flinching, “I hope they get laid.”