First discovered by many when his explosive NPR Tiny Desk Concert aired on YouTube back in 2015, Xavier Amin Dphrepaulezz - or Fantastic Negrito, as you’ll more likely know him - has one of the most incredible and unique musical life stories imaginable. Indeed fantastical at times, and calamitous at others, it would probably be deemed too implausible by even the most fanciful of Hollywood movie directors - if it weren’t entirely true, that is.
After growing up in an Orthodox Muslim household in Massachusetts, Xavier’s cultural horizons exploded into full technicolour when he relocated to California in the 1980s, settling in “beautiful, grimy old west Oakland”, as he calls it. He learned to play and write music on multiple instruments by infiltrating classes at the University Of Berkeley, and by 1993, had landed himself a million dollar deal with Interscope Records. Around this time, he met Masa Kohama - a Japanese self-taught guitarist who was living and working in L.A. at the time, and they began making music together.
Then in 1999, Xavier was involved in a near fatal car accident which left him in a coma for three weeks, and robbed him of almost all mobility in his right hand and wrist.
