Nick Sylvester

Sylvester was born and raised in Montgomeryville, Pennsylvania, outside of Philadelphia.^[3] In high school, he played trumpet professionally in wedding and jazz bands.^[4][5]

Sylvester attended Harvard University, where he was a writer for The Harvard Lampoon concurrently with Colin Jost, Simon Rich, and Zach Kanin.^[6] In 2002, Sylvester raced Albert Hammond Jr. and Julian Casablancas of The Strokes in a go-kart race hosted by the Lampoon in the streets of Cambridge.^[7][4]

Sylvester wrote about pop, rap, dance, indie and experimental music for the music publication Pitchfork from 2002 to 2006 and served as an editor from 2004 to 2006.^[8]

In 2006, while he was a writer and senior associate editor at The Village Voice, he was suspended for his essay “Do You Wanna Kiss Me?”, a piece about Neil Strauss's The Game, after the essay was revealed to contain fabrications about a secret society of pickup artists.^[9] Later that year, he was hired as a writer by The Colbert Report, and continued to write articles for n+1, The Wire, and New York Magazine.^[10]

From 2008 to 2012, Sylvester produced, co-wrote, and played drums in the Brooklyn punk rock music group Mr. Dream. In 2009, Sylvester lived with James Murphy in Los Angeles during the recording of the music that would become LCD Soundsystem's This Is Happening.^[11] His time in Los Angeles with Murphy was when Sylvester extensively learned how to record, mix, and produce.^[12] Sylvester also wrote an essay for the release of Shut Up and Play the Hits, and he also performed in the men's chorus for the then-final LCD Soundsystem shows in 2011.^[13]

In 2014, he produced La Isla Bonita by Deerhoof, as well as the Northtown and Ratchet by Shamir.^[14] In 2016, Sylvester moved to Los Angeles to further pursue his career as a songwriter and record producer.^[15] He has co-written, produced, recorded, mixed, and remixed for a variety of artists, including Channel Tres, Yaeji, Shopping, Honey Dijon, Denzel Curry, Tyler, The Creator, JPEGMafia, and The Dare.

In 2017, he co-founded Godmode Music, an artist development company that blended traditional record label and management, based originally on his vanity label for Mr. Dream.^[16] Sylvester co-wrote and produced the recordings of the artists signed to the company. At Godmode, he also co-developed the music workflow app Bounce.^[17] He exited the company in 2022 and started a new label, called smartdumb, in 2023.^[6]

In 2022, it was announced that Sylvester had scored the 30 for 30 documentary “American Son” about tennis player Michael Chang, directed by Jay Caspian Kang.^[18]

Sylvester married ESPN analyst Mina Kimes in 2015, and lives in Los Angeles with their dog Lenny.^[6] Their first child, a boy, was born in fall 2023.