Cliff Notez Makes Boston Music Without a Box

If you've spent any time around Boston's music scene, you've probably run into Cliff Notez's work, whether on a stage, on a screen or through the community they've helped build. If you haven't yet, today's a good day to fix that.

<h3>A Boston multi-hyphenate</h3>

Cliff Notez is a Boston-based musician, filmmaker and organizer whose music moves across hip hop, jazz, folk, soul and R&B, as ArtsEmerson describes it. The artist's bio at the American Repertory Theater calls their art 'a continuous exploration of the black mind,' rooted in hip hop and tackling 'the political and the personal,' exploring 'the intimate consequences of a society where black bodies are easily ignored, forgotten, or disregarded.'

Berklee College of Music, where Cliff is on the faculty, calls them a Boston native. Tufts University's Experimental College, where they have taught, lists them as an assistant professor at Berklee with a master's in digital media from Northeastern University.

<h3>The awards</h3>

The accolades stack up. Cliff was named New Artist of the Year at the 2018 Boston Music Awards, according to the A.R.T., and has since collected 11 BMA nominations, including Artist of the Year and Live Artist of the Year. Tufts' Experimental College says they also won the BMA for Song of the Year in 2020.

In 2019, Cliff became the first musician named Musician of the Year in Boston Magazine's Best of Boston, and in 2020 the magazine put them on its list of the 100 most influential Bostonians, according to the A.R.T. and Berklee. Tufts adds that Boston Common Magazine listed them among its 50 Most Influential Bostonians.

ArtsEmerson notes that their work has been featured by The New York Times, NPR, The Boston Globe and Boston Magazine, that they've played festivals including Boston Calling, and that they've shared stages with Ja Rule and Gym Class Heroes.

<h3>The films</h3>

Music is only half of it. Cliff's films have been official selections at more than 20 film festivals around the world and have won five awards, including the 2017 grand prize at the March on Washington Festival, where they were honored alongside Ta-Nehisi Coates, the A.R.T. and Berklee report.

In a Tufts Experimental College spotlight, Cliff explained how it all connects. 'Every song I write, I'm simultaneously seeing the visuals for it, creating the game that it could be, and it works the same with the films I make, or the games I design,' they said. 'With my art, with my music, I'm now taking a few steps back and approaching it from a world building perspective.'

<h3>HipStory</h3>

Cliff co-founded HipStory, a digital media production company built to amplify Boston's creative community through interdisciplinary storytelling, according to ArtsEmerson. Saxophonist and Berklee professor Tim Hall, a principal collaborator with Cliff, is also a HipStory co-founder.

<h3>The catalog</h3>

Cliff's second full-length album, Why the Wild Things Are, came out Sept. 11, 2019, according to Berklee and Passim. In 2020 came Social Absence, an EP with Dephrase.

In February 2023, Cliff returned with 'Could Be Normal,' their first release since that EP. Vanyaland described the song as snaking through Cliff's headspace with 'lyrics that are highly personal, yet strikingly universal at times,' and returning to the theme of duality from Why the Wild Things Are. 'Why they always tell me "get ahold of myself?" / I've been pretty busy loving both of myselves,' Cliff sings. On Instagram, Cliff called it 'first and foremost, a love song,' adding, 'I'm excited to make music about love,' Vanyaland reported.

Earlier this year, Cliff joined ArtsEmerson's 'One Voice, Many Frequencies' conversation on solo performance at Emerson's Semel Theater, alongside Amanda Shea, Tim Hall and Ahamefule J. Oluo. ArtsEmerson described the group as 'a creative core of Boston's music and performance scene.'

<h3>The latest: 'Beast'</h3>

Cliff's most recent single we could find is 'Beast,' released in early May 2024. It's a left turn from their spoken word and MC roots. Boston blog If It's Too Loud wrote that the track pulls from 'jazz, folk, indie rock, trip hop, Adult Contemporary,' with 'some light remnants of hip hop,' calling it 'something that is truly without a genre.' The blog said it is 'both high art and able to appeal to mainstream audiences' and 'the type of song that reveals more to you the more you listen.'

That's good advice. Put it on more than once.

<h3>Why it matters</h3>

Cliff Notez has built a career at home, teaching at Berklee, building HipStory and showing up on stages from Boston Calling to Passim. That's what a scene needs: artists who make the work and also build the places where the next artists can make theirs.

<h3>Run it</h3>

Stream 'Beast,' go back through Why the Wild Things Are, and keep an eye out for Cliff Notez's next move. Boston's lucky to have them.

Listen on <a href="https://open.spotify.com/artist/4GveUHtntqBeQFo9m8ZZrq">Spotify</a> or find HipStory on <a href="https://hipstory.bandcamp.com/">Bandcamp</a>.