The FADER’s longstanding GEN F series profiles the emerging artists you need to know right now.
Nate Sib is almost ready for the big reveal. In a few hours at Baby’s All Right in Brooklyn, the 20-year-old prospective pop star will play his fifth-ever headlining show. The gig is sold out, but Sib’s not nervous. After a couple months on the road opening for his dear friend and close collaborator 2hollis, Sib defeated his nerves and now feels ably primed for the solo come up he’s been experiencing throughout 2025.
“That’s why he’s one of my best friends,” Sib says of 2hollis, the more popular (as of now) alt popstar who produced and sang on the younger singer’s first-ever song. “He fully got me to get out of my shell and [helped] me be like, ‘fuck what anyone thinks.’”
Sib’s humble catalog — a couple EP’s and a few singles — has earned him notoriety in the internet underworld encompassing SoundCloud rap, jagged EDM, and left-of-center pop. In all of his cover art and Instagram photos, Sib’s boyish face is either concealed by shadows or submerged in the cryptic fibers of an overexposed filter. On the cover of his addicting May EP for us, his sullen gaze casts shadows across his face, projecting a casual yet modelesque mystery.
He looks similarly immaculate for our interview at an outdoor table in the Lower East Side, wearing an oversized Greg Ross hoodie with shoulder pads and Balenciaga sneakers. But today, he’s not letting his considerable aura do the talking for him.
It took Sib years to attain his new level of personal conviction, he says, and he’s still adjusting. He might look tuff, but he talks tamely, dotting his speech with “goshes” and “hecks” and answering each question with a patient sincerity. Now a cult figure in music circles with a Republic Records contract, it was only three years ago that Sib was an average teenager who was too timid to release music.
“[2hollis] fully got me to get out of my shell and [helped] me be like, ‘fuck what anyone thinks.’”
“I was just too insecure,” he says, reflecting on his younger teen years. “I had a lot of fake friends and bad influences around me when I was 14 or 15. I just had a shitty friend group.”
That all changed when 2hollis moved into his family’s house. Sib, born and raised in Los Angeles, attended the same small private school as 2hollis, where the boys first bonded over flag football games. Sib’s father, Joe Sib, fronted the early ‘90s pop-punk band Wax and kept instruments around the house in hopes that his son would follow in his footsteps. Privately, Sib took up the piano and flexed his natural pipes but his musical passions didn’t leave the house until the latter half of his 17th year. That’s when 2hollis dropped out of college to pursue music and began crafting much of his early output under Sib’s family roof. “Why aren’t you doing this?” 2hollis repeatedly asked his housemate, until one day, Sib heard a beat 2hollis was cooking and decided to hop on.
“I could see how much he believed in what he was doing and how much he believed in me,” Sib explains. “Something awakened in me.”
Through a very L.A. series of coincidences, that first song, “Why can’t you see,” ended up landing on the soundtrack for NHL ‘24 before it’d even dropped on streaming services. “I was like, ‘what the heck?,’” Sib remembers. “It was such a blessing. Like, this is from God. My first song is in NHL? I felt spoiled.”
“It was such a blessing. Like, this is from God. My first song is in NHL? I felt spoiled.”
Sib doesn’t subscribe to any one religion, but prays as much as he can to a non-denominational higher power, usually asking for guidance in his own life. When I ask what he needs guidance for, he stares off into the distance to contemplate, the sun reflecting off the table in front of him like a lip-gloss glimmer beckoning heavenward.
“Sometimes it’s self-love,” he says. “I feel like I can be very hard on myself and I ask for guidance to show me the way to be less hard on myself.”
Right now, his biggest songs feature the starbound 2hollis, but Sib’s beginning to distinguish himself from his longtime buddy. Sib is a more ambitious vocalist — and really more of a singer — than 2hollis, capable of stratospheric runs like the pre-chorus on “go” and more equipped for vascular crooning than quickfire rapping. The kind of singing that’s earned him countless comparisons to Justin Bieber, whose breakout hit, “Baby,” crashed the Top 40 when Sib was just five years old.
“I actually love it, I’m not gonna lie,” he says of the comparisons with a proud smile. “I love his voice, his runs are amazing, I think he’s a legend.”
Sib doesn’t think it’s possible for a modern artist to achieve the ubiquity that Bieber did, but that won’t stop him from trying to get there himself. “I look at it as a challenge,” he muses. However, while he’s thankful for the countercultural underground that’s embraced him, he hopes his upcoming debut album will reach a wider, more dynamic audience. “I don’t want to be caged in by all these hyperpop internet-y things,” he says with a grain of frustration in his voice.
Apparently, there’s a whole other side of Nate Sib that listeners haven’t even heard. To this point, most of his music including the for us EP has been upbeat and hooky. His go-to producers, 2hollis and New Jersey digicore vet kimj, have affixed Sib’s balmy voice with taut, plunky beats that’re forged in the image of PC Music auteurs like A. G. Cook and SOPHIE. Sib doesn’t want to be a bubblegum maximalist, though. Lately, he’s been obsessed with the weary interiority of Frank Ocean’s Blonde and Mk.gee’s Two Star & the Dream Police. He’s attracted to the slow build and emotional density that the album format can provide and wants to put his own spin on his generation’s wounded balladeers.
“I want to make an album that people can cry to,” he says.
“I don’t want to be caged in by all these hyperpop internet-y things.”
That record, due out later this year, will center on stripped-back piano ballads with a more vulnerable lyrical approach than Sib’s fans are used to hearing from him. Thematically, the singer is working through memories from his childhood, his desire to be loved, and the complicated relationship he had with his mom growing up.
“Back in the day there was a disconnect there due to me being a kid and who I was,” he says. “My mom’s so loving and has been there for me like no one else, and I want to give her the world.”
Sib doesn’t seem too concerned about whether his mosh-happy fans will appreciate the new direction; change is working for him in other ways. He’s sober. He has his first-ever girlfriend (fellow singer-songwriter Ella Woolsey). He has a great group of friends who support each other’s creative endeavors. He loves himself more than he ever has. As for what comes next, the goal he’s been praying for guidance on, Sib just has one simple ask: “I just want to be known for me.”
