New-Age-nerd-rapper phenom

Ahead of his very recent musical ascension, Armani White says he destroyed himself, deleting from public view all his music on the Internet. Then he rebuilt, working with a new team of people in hopes of rebranding himself. But not long after, he destroyed himself again and rebuilt. Destroy. Rebuild. Destroy.

Despite it all - or maybe because of it - the New-Age black nerd rapper from West Philadelphia is quickly making a name for himself with his rapid-fire lyrical flow. Armani screams complexity and contradiction. The anti-rap rapper can deliver raw street lyrics, yet immerse himself in Greek and Egyptian literature, adding an unexpectedly philosophical edge to his music.

"Coming from a destroyed background," the 20-year-old up-and-coming rapper says, gripping an almost-empty Panera Bread strawberry-banana smoothie, "you don't know exactly what you're going to get into, or what I'm about to talk about."

But, like many a tortured-ultracreative-artist type, Armani settled into comfortable destruction, an understandable position for someone who has lost so much so many times so quickly.

In seventh grade, he lost his aunt, with whom he often stayed, as his own home was affected by domestic violence. And in that same fire at her Southwest Philly home, he also lost some of his closest cousins. Armani revisits the tragedy with a pang of quiet sadness.

"I can say that was home for me, based off the saying 'home is where the heart is,' because that's where I really felt home at."

Vulnerability, Armani says, is not really something that concerns him lyrically. "You can't really bring down something that's already brought down. You can't throw an ax at a building that's not there."

Juxtapose that tragic event with Armani's life now, and it's clear that emerging from his cycle of destroy and rebuild is a sense of direction and purpose.

After releasing his first music video a few months ago for a 1-minute, 12-second song called "Stick Up," Armani was featured on the popular music blog Pigeons and Planes; released a song with Timbaland protégé and UK producer TroyBoi; and picked up a new manager, who also works with the highly successful Ear Drummers camp, including "Move That Dope" producer Mike WiLL Made-It.

Armani is an artist who defies labels. In the video for "Stick Up," which he wrote in 15 minutes, he hops out of the front door of a rowhouse, spitting with fast-talking, high energy, ". . . if I ain't in your top 5, then what the f- is your argument?"

That song got him a growing fan base that went beyond his already-strong social-media following.

At the other end of the spectrum is Armani's quirky, happy track tentatively called "Weak Ass Summer," his attempt to find joy in a season in which his uncle was murdered.

"I had to find some sort of positivity and make something from that," Armani says of the soon-to-be-released song.

His most recent song, "Do You," which has garnered nearly 700,000 Soundcloud plays, is a collaboration with TroyBoi, whom Armani approached to remix his song. Hot New Hip Hop and plenty of other music sites took notice.

"He stood out to me because I'm a fan of rappers with interesting flows and memorable vocal tones," TroyBoi says. "He has both.

"I knew that whatever he did on my track, he would make it his own, and indeed he did."

Armani credits one of his teachers at Smyrna High School in Delaware with expanding his thinking.

After his mom moved to Smyrna, Armani jumped around from Upper Darby High School to Philadelphia Electrical and Tech Charter School - even to California for a brief stint - before he settled at and graduated from Smyrna High. But his time at the school was not without conflict.

He was fighting other students - a lot. A teacher, recognizing that Armani was obviously bright but misguided, found an unconventional way to move him away from self-destruction: introducing him to Greek philosophy.

"Stuff like that was what really changed my perspective," Armani says of his contentious years. "For a while, I was just trying to embody this street character that I had no interest in being. Just being in touch with a different sphere of people broadened my personality."

In true cool-nerd fashion, Armani has allowed his interest in Greek, and later Egyptian, philosophy to heavily influence his art. On "Do You," he raps about Icarus, the mythical Greek character whose wings melted when he flew too close to the sun. Right now, the basis of his entire musical thought process is the Egyptian philosophy of the "weighing-of-souls" ceremony, in which one's soul is placed on a scale and weighed based on name, personality, vital spark, shadow, and heart.

Each of his coming albums will fall into one of those five categories.

His next anticipated project, Indian Giver, is the "personality" aspect of his repertoire.

For now, Armani is living sky high, literally (his new manager put him up in a room on the 35th floor of a Manhattan hotel), and he's thinking ambitiously about music and business.

And in true contradictory fashion, he says that he wants to be a legend and, at the same time, that what he wants people to know about him is simple.

"At the end of the day," he says, "Armani White is just a voice."

StartText

Armani White

8 p.m. Thursday at Voltage Lounge, 421 N. Seventh St.

Admission: Free; R.S.V.P. at www.onefreeride.splashthat.com.

EndText