Nissim Black has a minhag before he performs: The Orthodox rapper recites a blessing on stage.
The custom is a way to make amends for his past as a gang member and gangsta rapper in Seattle who “used to do the opposite of making blessings,” he said at the College of San Mateo Theatre on Sunday. After he recited the “shehakol” bracha over a water bottle and took a sip, the crowd shouted “Amen!”
“Thank you so much,” he responded. “You just helped me fix so much of my past.”
With that, the Israeli American musician launched into “The Hava Song,” his interpolation of “Hava Nagila.”
“Ain’t come to hurt nobody, we just came here to party / Like it’s 5999, they gon’ see us in our prime,” he rapped while wearing a white suit, black fedora and black and red Jordan sneakers. “I’m gonna scream it out loud, I’m Black, Jewish and I’m proud.”
For two hours, Black offered many more blessings — both musical and spoken — during an all-ages concert and Q&A with local teens sponsored by Chabad North Peninsula. It was his first Bay Area appearance; two concerts in 2020 and 2022 were canceled due to the pandemic.
This time around, there were questions about whether the local Jewish community should even hold a hip-hop concert in the midst of the ongoing Israel-Hamas war and hostage crisis.
“We wondered, did it make sense to go ahead with a concert, a celebration, after what had happened and what was still going on,” Chabad Rabbi Yossi Marcus said before Black took the stage. “Then we were reminded of the teaching that when soldiers go out to war, they don’t go out with a sad, slow song. They go out with a tune that’s empowering, with a tune that’s happy.”
As members of the 280-strong audience waved flashing light sticks, Black bounded around the stage while singing “Fly Away.” He also performed “Mothaland Bounce,” a song about his personal transformation (“I used to run with BGD [Black Gangster Disciples gang] / I dropped the B and put a O after the G”), and “Eight Flames,” a surprising choice for a concert in April given that it’s about Hanukkah.
“I had a little bit of a fight with my manager about this song,” he admitted. “I love Hanukkah, what can I say? My name’s Nissim.” (Nissim means “miracles” in Hebrew.)
Several children sang along to “Hashem Melech 2.0,” his collaboration with Israeli singer Gad Elbaz and his biggest hit to date. (The music video has 8.7 million views.) After the show, Black was mobbed backstage by selfie and autograph seekers. He was happy to oblige.
In a Zoom interview a few days before the show, Black, 37, spoke from his home in Beit Shemesh, west of Jerusalem, about the challenges of performing in the wake of the Oct. 7 massacre.
“I wasn’t feeling very musical about anything,” he said. “My whole mood, who I am and what I’m supposed to be doing, just switched for me.”
He lost income from previously scheduled gigs that had to be postponed because he couldn’t travel. Then he started getting calls to entertain Israel Defense Forces troops on their bases. “They said, ‘You need to go get them pumped up,’” he said. “So I started doing that, and that’s what made me feel a little bit better, knowing that I was doing it as a service.”
He said was disappointed that more of his peers in the music industry didn’t reach out to him after the war started.
“After Oct. 7, it was more than just the fact of watching the world crumble; it was more so seeing how many friends didn’t reach out to you,” he said. Asked about the rapper Macklemore, his erstwhile friend from Seattle who spoke at a pro-Palestinian rally on Nov. 4, Black said he reached out to him online but hasn’t heard back. “I definitely would consider him to be somebody who made himself an enemy to the Jews,” he said.
Black, who converted to Judaism in 2013 after practicing Christianity and Messianic Judaism, is currently working on a new album. “Glory” is scheduled for release this summer. “It’s definitely more singing-based” than previous albums, he said. “There’s some parts of it that feel more gospel.”
On Sunday during the Q&A portion of the show, Black was asked to give the crowd “a blessing from the Holy Land.”
“That everybody should be able to have all that your heart desires,” he said in part. “And that every single one of us should be waking up to good news every single day.”
For the second time that evening, the crowd responded with an enthusiastic “Amen!”