Brooklyn-based firebrand Nory speaks with Atwood Magazine about identity, defiance, and the uncompromising creative philosophy behind his debut album ‘F**K THAT THIS THE RHYTHM,’ a fearless and volatile soundtrack to the tension of modern life – built to confront, provoke, and shake listeners out of complacency.

Stream: ‘FK THAT THIS THE RHYTHM’ – Nory**

Tension has a sound.

It’s the distortion creeping into the mix, an electric guitar pushing against a gritty beat, the moment when restraint finally gives way to release. It’s feedback screaming through the speakers, pressure building beneath the surface, adrenaline flooding a crowded room – things that make your hair stand on end even as something inside pulls you closer. It’s the voice you can’t deny – a middle finger in sonic form, loud enough to shake the walls and impossible to ignore.

That tension runs through everything Nory Aronfeld does.

It lives in his music – brash, volatile, and constantly shifting – and it lives in the life behind it. Raised between two spiritual worlds – with a Jewish American father and a Muslim Saudi Arabian mother – the Miami-born, Brooklyn-based artist has known duality all his life, navigating identities that many people insist on framing as opposites. Yet for him, they were never separate.

“I grew up in a house that celebrated and practiced two religions, Judaism and Islam,” he tells Atwood Magazine. “For me as a kid, I never saw these two worlds as different. They both felt interchangeable and equally crucial to my spiritual experience.”

That sense of personal, political, and spiritual friction fuels F**K THAT THIS THE RHYTHM, Nory’s explosive debut album – a fearless arrival from an artist determined to carve out a space that belongs entirely to him. Built from instinct rather than instruction, the music rejects genre boundaries, traditional training, and the polished expectations of the industry in favor of something far more immediate and intense.

Independently released in September 2025, the thirteen-track record introduces Nory as a singular presence uninterested in playing by anyone else’s rules.

Written and recorded in Brooklyn alongside producer Nir Horowitz and a band of jazz-trained collaborators, F**K THAT THIS THE RHYTHM surges with charged emotion and the chilling immediacy of live performance – pure, visceral energy spilling out in songs that feel as restless and electric as the city that shaped them. Hip-hop, jazz, and rock collide in spectacular fashion throughout a collection filled with rage and reflection, brought to life by a performer who seems most alive when standing directly inside the chaos.

Nory’s music hits like a collision between Rage Against the Machine’s protest fire and Run the Jewels’ razor-sharp swagger, filtered through the urgent experimentation of New York City’s underground scene.

“The album’s a declaration,” Nory says. “It’s not a collection of songs, it’s a statement. It’s a middle finger to music as we know it, embracing recklessness and raw truth.”

“It’s not a collection of songs, it’s a statement. It’s a middle finger to music as we know it, embracing recklessness and raw truth.” Nory © Lucy Billington

Actively releasing music since 2020, Nory has been building toward this moment for years. The multi-hyphenate musician, producer, rapper, dancer, and actor moves fluidly across disciplines, reflecting an artist who approaches creativity as something expansive rather than confined to a single medium. Whether producing records, performing onstage, or collaborating with other musicians, he has steadily built a reputation as an undeniable presence whose output continues to evolve with every project and partnership.

Beyond his own releases, Nory is also a natural connector within the Brooklyn music scene. He hosts a weekly gathering in Bushwick called JAVAJAM – a community-driven event that regularly draws more than a hundred musicians, creatives, and fans from around the world, all drawn by the same spirit of collaboration and experimentation that defines his music.

That spirit of collaboration extends far beyond JAVAJAM. Nory has shared stages and creative moments with artists across genres, from supporting Oddisee at Music Hall of Williamsburg to trading viral freestyle sessions with Robert Glasper, Thundercat, and Harry Mack. Those encounters have only sharpened his artistic voice, reinforcing a philosophy rooted in openness, improvisation, and fearless exchange – the same ethos that pulses through the songs on F**K THAT THIS THE RHYTHM.

Across the record, Nory channels the frustrations, contradictions, and questions shaping the present moment. Anger over political corruption and social division runs alongside a deeper search for meaning – whether through faith, identity, or the role music can play in helping people make sense of a fractured world.

“I feel pretty tense a lot,” Nory admits. “I’ve always felt different and unable to ‘fit in’ in pretty much every setting I’ve been in. So it makes sense that I don’t find it easy to remain calm and still – then again, who does? Our world is so full of tension; if you’re the slightest bit observant of anything going on in the world you’d probably be unable to feel steady peace at all as well.”

That restless energy surges through the album’s opening stretch, where Nory wastes no time establishing the volatile world he’s built. “DON’T SIT RIGHT” crashes in with jagged guitar lines, pounding rhythms, and verses delivered with the urgency of someone trying to outrun his own thoughts. “We fight and pray for justice and democracy / Then crucify our sins it’s all hypocrisy / I channel all of the rage that everybody around the world’s been feeling,” he raps, before cutting straight to the song’s fiery refrain: “It don’t sit right / Don’t let them control you.” The effect is immediate and disarming – a live wire sparking in real time. As Nory explains, the track grew out of his frustration with “the weaponization of mass media, and how much it was being used to promote division and polarity” – and that charged unease sets the tone for everything that follows.

If “DON’T SIT RIGHT” opens the door by naming the sickness, “SNIP SNIP” twists the knife. One of the album’s most visceral songs, it turns cultural overload into something intimate, abrasive, and physically felt. “Sometimes I wonder whether people really listen / Manipulating minds, with the stories they be twisting,” Nory begins, before arriving at the song’s cutting mission statement: “I snip snip all the bullshit.” Later, he delivers one of the album’s most revealing lines – “I’m moving to the left because I’m never right / I can’t stay in the middle, I’m too afraid to die” – a devastating articulation of life outside neat categories, and of the fear, exhaustion, and refusal that come with it. Nory calls this song “a release of tension and stress” that poured out of him all at once. “Something about the words ‘snip snip’ made me so uncomfortable and cringe so hard that I knew it was right for the song,” he adds. That instinctive discomfort is exactly what gives the track its power.

Elsewhere, the more soulful “BREAD” broadens the album’s scope, turning its gaze toward ambition, envy, and the hollow mythology of success. Here, Nory sounds less accusatory than brutally clear-eyed, peeling back the fantasy of money, fame, and validation with lines like “I see them swanging round chains / Private planes / Millions in the bank / That don’t mean they’ve won the game” and “I wont place all my pride in things that other people have built / That’s why I don’t rely on accolades to help me feel fulfilled.” For all its bite, “BREAD” also reveals one of the album’s deepest convictions: That expression matters more than status, and that artistic freedom means little if it comes at the cost of self-belief.

Even in its most playful moments, F**K THAT THIS THE RHYTHM never loses that sense of danger. Nory cites “BITCH” as a personal highlight, calling it “brazen and careless, it’s hot and sexy, funky and funny” and adding, “This level of freedom is always my goal as a songwriter.” Beside the album’s sharper political edges, that freedom matters: It shows an artist unwilling to be pinned to a single register, just as “MADNESS” pushes outward with swagger, provocation, and a mission statement of its own: “What happened to that real shit / Lyrics with clarity / Beats with some character / And raps with sincerity.” Together, these songs reveal the full range of Nory’s intent – not just to provoke, but to break open the space around him and fill it on his own terms.

And then there’s “SHOT,” the record’s closing blow and, by Nory’s own account, its most essential statement. “It’s my favorite song on the album,” he says. “It’s not a song I come back to often, but it strikes me as the most important and innovative song on the whole album.” That weight is baked into the track’s very premise, culminating in the especially stark line, “I’ll take a stand against whoever’s on top, even if it means that one day I might get shot.” Nory knew early on that “SHOT” belonged at either the beginning or the end of the record; where it lands now, it leaves his audience not with closure, but with a challenge. As he puts it, the song “leaves any listener in a state of shock and frustration” and “epitomizes my stance with this album – more than just music or politics, but feel.” It’s a fitting final word for a record that refuses numbness at every turn.

That refusal to dilute feeling may be the album’s most defining quality. In a cultural moment that often rewards neutrality, detachment, or algorithm-friendly restraint, F**K THAT THIS THE RHYTHM moves in the opposite direction – louder, messier, and far more human. Its songs pulse with anger, humor, confusion, conviction, and contradiction all at once, mirroring the emotional overload of the world they were born into.

For Nory, that honesty is more important than consensus or approval. “For me, what matters most is not whether someone likes it,” he says, “but more when they leave the album understanding they’ve never heard anything else like it. From the arrangements, the mix of the live band in the electronic production, the freedom of my vocals, the profound messaging and clever wordplay – all of these things are objective truths.”

That mindset is precisely what makes an artist like Nory so compelling and necessary right now. At a time when global politics feel increasingly fractured, when social media rewards division and spectacle over nuance, and when cultural discourse often reduces people to labels, his music insists on something more complicated. It refuses easy answers, and it also refuses silence. And most importantly, it rejects the idea that art should feel safe.

Instead, F**K THAT THIS THE RHYTHM embraces tension as both subject and sound – transforming frustration, uncertainty, and spiritual conflict into music that cuts straight through the noise. In doing so, Nory doesn’t just introduce himself; he throws down a challenge. Feel something. Question something. Push back.

Because if this debut proves anything, it’s that Nory isn’t interested in fitting neatly into the world as it exists. He’s here to make it louder.

Below, Nory speaks with Atwood Magazine about identity, recklessness, collaboration, and the creation of F**K THAT THIS THE RHYTHM. Dive into our candid interview, and hear how one artist is turning the tension of our time into something loud enough to be felt in the gut.

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:: stream/purchase *FK THAT THIS THE RHYTHM*** here ::

:: connect with Nory here ::

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Stream: ‘FK THAT THIS THE RHYTHM’ – Nory**

A CONVERSATION WITH NORY

Atwood Magazine: Nory, for those who are just discovering you today through this writeup, what do you want them to know about you and your music?

Nory: What’s up people. I’m nory. I live and breathe music 24/7. If you live or ever visit NYC, you’ve probably seen me wherever music is happening. I’m not just some artist online, I am always playing, performing, or exploring music in the real world ! That energy feeds into my soul and my craft, and my latest projects are reflecting that tenfold.

You create this unapologetic, uncompromising blend of hip-hop, rock, jazz, and so much more. How do you define yourself, and more importantly, what do you love most about your music?

Nory: I was never taught music. Nor did I ever learn an instrument or theory. Everything I have built is self taught. That ignorance allowed me to be more free about the confines of a genre we artists hate to admit conceal us. So my music doesn’t move based on ideas of what is right or wrong, but purely out of what moves me. That freedom and respect for my own instincts is what I’m most proud of in my life and art.

I’m a strong believer that our environment impacts the art we make – and Brooklyn has so much inspiration in its bones. How has living in New York City impacted the music you make?

Nory: IN EVERY SINGLE WAY! Moving to New York three years ago has fundamentally changed my life forever. This is because of the community I’ve both found and created in the city. No where else in the world can you actually hit the stage every day of the week. This gave me the chance to practice performing, playing and creating music every single night with strangers for 10s of thousands of hours. I also host my own jam session called JAVAJAM, which meets weekly in Bushwick and attracts hundreds of musicians from around the world. That taught me leadership, poise, humility, and a mentality that the show must always go on – in every aspect of my life. NYC will chew you up if you’re not ready to be yourself.

You’ve also talked openly about your own multicultural identity as having a direct impact on your artistry. Can you share a little more about that, and where you hear these themes arise in your music, songwriting, and production?

Nory: Absolutely. Like anyone else, my upbringing impacts everything I do and the way I see the world. I grew up in a house that celebrated and practiced two religions, Judaism and Islam. For me as a kid, I never saw these two worlds as different. They both felt interchangeable and equally crucial to my spiritual experience. It was only through growing up that I realized the world didn’t see it that way – that Jews and Muslims are often painted as opposites. Anybody who has actually befriended real people from both cultures would know that the similarities far outweigh the differences. I think that message has been the most powerful takeaway from my unique and privileged experience growing up with two different world views.

In a lot of what I've read about you and your music, I see this one word continue to pop up: Tension. What does tension mean to you, and why do you think that word seems to be inextricably linked to your art?

Nory: I guess it’s ‘cause I feel pretty tense a lot. As per the previous question, that upbringing has also resulted in a lot of tension in my personal life – never feeling comfortable in either world. I’ve always felt different and unable to “fit in” in pretty much every setting I’ve been in. So it makes sense that I don’t find it easy to remain calm and still – then again, who does? Our world is so full of tension; if you’re the slightest bit observant of anything going on in the world, you’d probably be unable to feel steady peace at all as well.

You released your debut album F**K THAT THIS THE RHYTHM this past fall. Four months on, what does this record mean to you – and can you share a little about the story behind this album and these songs?

Nory: I’ve never worked harder on a single project than FTTTR. I spent every day tweaking, thinking and retracking everything. Alongside my producer for the album, Nir Horowitz AKA soundsbycatt, I meticulously crafted every single section of every song. This album wouldn’t have been possible without my amazing band, who I locked into a studio with me in August of ‘24 to start writing the songs and recording at Mission Sound Studios in Brooklyn. 4 months since the release and I feel like I’m ready for the next one. I’ve already started recording my next project and I’m super excited about it – it feels genuine and fun in a way I haven’t felt recording music before.

Why the title “F**K THAT THIS THE RHYTHM”?

Nory: The album’s a declaration. It’s not a collection of songs, it’s a statement. It’s a middle finger to music as we know it, embracing recklessness and raw truth. This title came to me in a freestyle while writing and recording – it stuck and I kept repeating it. So it soon became the beacon.

“fight and pray for justice and democracy. crucify our sins, it's all hypocrisy,” you sing at your album's start – and what a way to kick things off. “DONT SIT RIGHT” also sees you warning people, “don't let ‘em control you.” Why open the record this way, and how does this song set the tone for all that's to come?

Nory: Part of the ethos behind FTTTR was addressing a lot of the shit going on in society that i felt much of music wasn’t addressing. Trump just took office and our country was more divided than ever. I felt especially upset at the weaponization of mass media, and how much it was being used to promote division and polarity. “DONT SIT RIGHT” came naturally and almost entirely ready to go during a jam in the writing process with my band. It felt like the start of a new era for me, and I had to start the album off with this dense and intense atmosphere.

You just released the music video for “SNIP SNIP,” another achingly intense song that captures this moment of polarization in the culture. What does it mean for you to “snip snip all the bullsh**,” and how did you go about bringing this song to life in the video?

Nory: “SNIP SNIP” is another song that came out of me in a few hours max. It was a release of tension and stress I was feeling and I created all of it in my bedroom at 3 AM out of nowhere. Something about the words “snip snip” made me so uncomfortable and cringe so hard that I knew it was right for the song. Words and ideas that can create visceral reactions by me are usually what I’ll go for. The team at Project Freefall, and specifically the music video director Lyss Hollenbeck hit me wanting to shoot a video and it was during the writing of FTTTR. So I had sent them an unmixed version of “SNIP SNIP” and they loved it – Lyss had a clear vision from the jump and planned the entire video. The crew was super cool and we knocked the whole thing out in a few days.

You close the record with an especially powerful declaration: “I'll take a stand against whoever's on top, even if it means that one day I might get shot.” It's not a clean ending; if anything, it's one of your rawest moments. Why did you decide to end on this especially turbulent note?

Nory: “SHOT” is my favorite song on the album. It’s not a song I come back to often, but it strikes me as the most important and innovative song on the whole album. I knew either ending or starting the album with “SHOT” was essential. The message of “SHOT” also came in a jam with the band – which is Aviv “Skippy” Bart on Drums, Nir Horowitz on Bass and Jordan Kerr on Guitar – and it felt really special early on. SHOT leaves any listener in a state of shock and frustration. It also epitomizes my stance with this album – more than just music or politics, but FEEL, something we’re being so deprived of everyday as tech advances.

Do you have any definitive favorites or personal highlights off this record? Likewise, do you have any favorite lyrics in these songs that continue to resonate with you?

Nory: My favorite besides “SHOT” is “BITCH.” “BITCH” is brazen and careless, it’s hot and sexy, funky and funny. This level of freedom is always my goal as a songwriter. Also the lyrics on “MADNESS” are timeless.

How do you feel F**K THAT THIS THE RHYTHM introduces you and captures your artistry? What do you hope listeners take away from this album, and what have you taken away from creating it and now putting it out?

Nory: For me, what matters most is not whether someone likes it, but more when they leave the album understanding they’ve never heard anything else like it. From the arrangements, the mix of the live band in the electronic production, the freedom of my vocals, the profound messaging and clever wordplay, all of these things are objective truths. I’m not interested in who likes it or doesn’t. I create my art because no one else can create art like I do: no one else could create that album but me.

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