Born and raised in PG County, MD, Malcolm Hinton, known as NOMAD MAL, has become a rising underground artist in the DC, Maryland, and Virginia area. Having performed at multiple open mic events around the city, Malcolm has propelled himself into conversations with multiple labels in the local area. 

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Malcolm did not have a normal upbringing as he faced multiple challenges in his childhood and in his adult life. One of his more difficult challenges was adjusting to the absence of his birth mother along with his father being blind. Due to these circumstances, Malcolm was put up for adoption the same day he was born. He credits his grandmother, Doressa, and his aunt, Nina, for giving him a home and helping him become the person he is today. 

His grandmother was very strict with him which lead him to excel in academics at a really early age. Malcolm skipped the 3rd grade while attending a private school in Miramar, Florida. His academic success continued throughout middle school and soon he would get accepted into one of the most prestigious schools in the state of Maryland, Bishop McNamara.

Malcolm also was coerced into taking up the violin during this period which he acknowledges as a building block for his musical career. “Learning the violin, kind of sucked for me at the time but sonically, it helped me understand high and low frequencies.” He also added, “My teacher, Danny, told me that I had an ear for music but I didn’t have a true understanding of what he meant at the time.”

By the time high school came about, Malcolm began writing to hip hop beats which he credits his school classmate Zo, known as Lightshow, for expanding his hip hop knowledge. 

It wasn’t until he attended college (Winston Salem State University) that Malcolm had realized how much of his early childhood was impacting him. His grades were failing as he sank into a deep depression after experiencing death, heart break, and near death experiences. 

At an early age, Malcolm was sexually abused while staying with an adult baby sitter at the age of 8. He states, “Growing up, it was tough to open up about things like this because living in the dmv back then, you’d get laughed at. Being touched by a woman was cool but being touched by a man meant you were gay, which I wasn’t because nothing about that experience was pleasurable.” Ironically enough, he was able to get back on track thanks to a peer, who he keeps anonymous, for helping Malcolm refocus and graduate with a degree. 

The friends he made at Winston Salem Stare helped him in connecting with his trauma thanks in part to connecting with peers who had similar experiences. It also helped him to continue his hobby in making music, which was his escape from life at times.

“Before smart phones were a thing, I used to buy composition books and call it my rap book. I’d write like up to 20 songs in it and then just throw it away”, he added. He credits his friend , also named Malcolm, for introducing him to a basement studio owned by an OG named Kirk. Kirk housed a few artists in Winston-Salem at the time and allowed them to use the studio to record. One of those artists happened to be DJ Luke Nasty.

Before moving back to MD in 2017, Malcolm spent most of his free time recording in the studio when it was empty, practicing rhyme schemes and getting an understanding of how to project his voice. He also recorded songs with Jae Dixon who worked with the likes of Tia Corrine, the “Freaky T”.

In one of their sessions, Jae mentioned that he can never do music if it didn’t give him a sense of enjoyment. Mal states, “At the time, I would write some depressing shit because of all of the loss I’ve experienced, and Jae, whose dealt with that as well, is just cranking out music, having fun, and that’s what I wanted to emulate.” 

You can feel the exuberance on their collaborative track “XOXO” from the Good Nature demo Malcolm released in 2022. He never imagined ten years later, that the song would amass a thousand streams simply because they just were having fun making the music.

Another track known from the demo known as “Tore Up”, features another peer known as Adolf Manson. It was a track that Nomad appreciated because he was able to share his depression in an upbeat way. 

Loss was another experience he emphasizes in many interactions with friends as Malcolm has personally lost 10 people that were close to him. 

“Tore Up” was inspired by the death of his Uncle Jerry who was killed in a car accident back in 2015. That experience really set him back vocationally, and he ended up in therapy for about 3 years straight.

During that time, he felt like that was his awakening as an artist as he built the courage to create more lively tracks. His more recent loss was a close friend of 20 years named Charles Johnson who died this past Sept.

It was a bittersweet time period because Malcolm’s musical career was beginning to gain traction while he was grieving for whom he considered family. Malcolm never had a close connection with his other siblings and Charles was the closest thing to a brother since they practically grew up together.