Words by David Renshaw
Tell us why you love the artist and have a chance to win a free poster! Shout-Outs are only available on mobile devices.
Nate Sib may still live with one of his parents, but there are signs that he’s not your typical member of the stuck-at-home generation. He’s speaking to NME from Los Angeles in a house he shares with his mum and sister (“There’s no need to go and spend a million dollars a month somewhere in LA,” he says. Fair) with a black Lorde hoodie pulled up tight over his long wavy hair.
It’s not just merch he bought with money he saved on rent – he picked it up at her Ultrasound tour stop at New York’s Barclays Center in December. That same night he joined support act, and his childhood friend, 2hollis on stage and was hanging out backstage after the show when he met the headliner herself. “I told her how I was blown away by how she made ‘Pure Heroine’ when she was 16 or something,” he says of his fanboy moment. “I was just like, ‘That’s incredible.’”
Were Sib to meet Lorde again, they could well bond over a shared ability to craft pop debuts filled with clarity beyond their years. ‘Reborn’, out this month, is both Sib’s introduction to the wider world and a revealing portrait of an artist his fanbase only ever half knew. The album is essentially Sib’s artistic origin story, charting a route from addiction to redemption through religious enlightenment and the discovery of a musical purpose that saved him. Understandably, it is something the 22-year-old is hugely proud of making even if he isn’t quite sure how to talk about it all just yet.
“The album is called ‘Reborn’ for a reason,” Sib says, pulling down his hood and making eye contact. “It is about me literally dying for five minutes from an overdose when I was 17.” Sib doesn’t look back on his overdose as a rock bottom as much as he does an awakening. “I overdosed on fentanyl, and I literally felt like I’d had a weight lifted off of me,” he says with the air of someone who narrowly avoided a bullet or speeding car. “I was like, ‘OK, I’m done.’ It’s an accident that changed my life forever and will keep me sober forever.”
Sib recalls the night he OD’d. He had been staying in a sober living house, an outpatient facility where patients were free to come and go at their own leisure, after a period of substance abuse issues. This was in Los Angeles, “not a smart place for me to be,” Sib says. “It was about three in the morning, and I just remember waking up with firefighters all around me. They told me that they had to Narcan me three times. All I remember is crying, feeling sick, feeling so defeated. It almost felt like a demon was on me for years and then it wasn’t. It really felt like God saved me in that moment.”
It was a wake-up call Sib was lucky to receive. Fentanyl and similar synthetic opioids were the primary source of the 70,000 recorded fatal overdoses in the United States last year. The sequencing of ‘Reborn’ mirrors Sib’s life, moving from euphoric highs into darkness before culminating in peace and clarity. Sib always knew he had to tell this story with his music – and that he had to wait to grow as a songwriter before he was able to do it justice. “I’ve been needing to go there since that happened,” he says. “It just took time for me to get a little older and be ready. The only way to get there was putting myself out there.”
“I don’t want to just be a pop star. I want to be someone who builds a world where everyone feels welcome”
On his two previous EPs, 2024’s ‘For You’ and last year’s ‘For Us,’ Sib established himself as the glossy pop star of the internet underworld, a Bieber-like figure for kids raised on SoundCloud rap and speaker-rattling EDM. 2hollis is not just his BFF, but also his spiritual forebear: an artist that can unite Discord servers and arena-sized crowds with a cavalcade of strong hooks and blown-out basslines. “Distorted fun” is how Sib neatly terms it.
On ‘Reborn’ he stays in that sonic world while also finding new textures to stitch his backstory into. Lead single ‘Face Card’ is a pure loverboy anthem (“I’ll cuff you winter, spring, or summer”), Sib gliding over sleek production that feels more like a dreamy Hollywood depiction of a rave than the grittier reality. That song, alongside the previously released ‘Let You Go’, form part of the album’s first act, a medley of chaos and intoxication. As the record progresses, the energy switches and Sib’s voice comes to the forefront. Stripped-back songs such as ‘Too’ and the stunning ‘It Ain’t Easy’ mark Sib’s time spent healing and gaining a newfound purpose in life. He looks back at a misspent youth while expressing gratitude to God, something he found while attending AA meetings on his sobriety journey.
Sib, who says he wants to release an EP solely of piano-based songs in the near future, couldn’t have made this album alone. Besides regular collaborators Jonah Abraham and Billy Walsh, he worked with Ryan Tedder, the OneRepublic frontman and established go-to songwriter for pop stars looking to inject emotional heft into pristine pop packages. Tedder – who has written for Adele, Lady Gaga and Beyoncé alongside BTS and Katseye – and Sib, crown prince of the underground, don’t seem like the most natural pairing, NME suggests. Sib is quick to disagree. “He was already a fan of mine and got what I needed immediately. You play him a song, and he hears the hook so quickly and builds on it. It was like the whole universe was just coming out of him.”
Sib’s improvement as a songwriter can be heard most strongly on the Tedder co-write and latest single ‘All I Needed’, a devotional ballad built around muted percussion and a piercing vocal. On it Sib raises his prayer hands and thanks God for pulling him through a situation that could so easily have gone the other way. “Before I hit the ground you caught me”, he sings as if bathed in white light. “But damn I almost died I OD’d / I’m just tryna be what you saw in me”.
Sib isn’t naive and says he was “definitely” conscious of writing about God without veering into the clichés of straightforwardly devotional music. He also appreciates that fans who came to his music through the edgy production and air of transgression may not be on board for this pivot. He is keen to flip the narrative, though, and argues that writing about his spiritual beliefs shouldn’t be taboo. “People are very scared to talk about God,” he says. “Far more than the devil or upside-down crosses or whatever. It’s always like, ‘Be careful talking about God.’ Why is it not weird to talk about the other side? I think God is beautiful and shouldn’t be something people are scared to talk about, if they want to.”
Sib is also a huge advocate for sobriety and, while he is happy for people to get fucked up at his shows, he wants to show that restraint can be cool, too. “You can be sober and find the high in the music,” he says. Does he have a message for those who might be sober- curious? “Just know that it’s positive,” he says, “and that it’s also edgy and fun.”
Speaking to NME a year ago, Sib was in a bullish mood about his music ambitions. “I want to be the next big male pop star,” he said then. “Like how it was for JB [Justin Bieber], Michael Jackson, Prince, David Bowie.” Fast forward 15 months and his outlook is a little more grown and less focused on himself. “I don’t want to just be a pop star,” he says. “I want to be someone who builds a world where everyone feels welcome.” What would that world look like? “Everyone would idolise themselves and feel good enough.”
“I’m not hiding behind the curtains anymore. This is me”
As an artist, Sib’s goal has switched to impact rather than status. Who is he leaning on as he embarks on this mission? He mentions his mum and girlfriend as pillars of support, as well as his sister Chessa, a photographer who helped him establish his visual identity and shot him for The Cover. (“She knows my story because she lived through it.”) There is his dad, too, a pop-punk frontman and music industry figure whose label SideOneDummy helped establish bands including Title Fight and The Gaslight Anthem.
We wrap up by talking about 2hollis, Sib’s friend since elementary school and someone who urged him to pursue music when they lived together as teenagers. He appears on ‘Reborn’ with a production credit on the standout ‘Problem’. It’s easy to be best friends with someone when you live together, but has that changed now they are both living incredibly busy and demanding lives? “If anything, it’s brought us closer,” he says. “We’re both on a journey and are there for each other.” How about Boylife, the collective Sib and 2hollis formed alongside rommulas, Jonah Abraham and conceal? Sib is keen to stress that they are “just a group of friends” but that they are keen to tour together if their schedules allow it.
Finally, we ask, with such an honest and revealing album under his belt, is Sib finally ready to share more of himself in how he is presented – perhaps even showing his whole face in photos? He says he still believes in the power of mystery and works hard to avoid overexposure but, yes, he’s finally comfortable putting himself out there a little more. “I’m not hiding behind the curtains anymore. This is me.”
Nate Sib’s ‘Reborn’ is out August 21 via Republic Records / Island EMI.
Listen to Nate Sib’s exclusive playlist to accompany The Cover below on Spotify or on Apple Music here.
Words: David Renshaw
Photography: Chessa Subbiondo
Styling: Valeria Semushina
Grooming: Ericka Verrett
Label: Republic Records