Def Sound (pronouns they/them/he/hims) is an Afro-Caribbean transdisciplinary artist born and based in South Central LA. Def is a postbinary Grammy Award-considered contemporary hip-hop artist, producer, poet, and award-winning academic.

Def’s work as a poet has been included in Saul Williams’ Anthology CHORUS, while their music has been featured in LA WEEKLY, LA Record, The L.A. Times, The Frieze Art Fair, the Emmy Nominated Television series Music Diaries, and the Emmy winning Artbound on KCET. Def is currently teaching Hip Hop/Black Critical Theory at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts).

Here on Something Else, we wanted to start 2026 with an insightful innerview with polymath and filmmaker Terence Nance.

Terence Nance is a creative mind beyond description, born in Dallas, Texas in what was then referred to as the State-Thomas community. Nance wrote, directed, scored, and starred in his first feature film, An Oversimplification of Her Beauty, which premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival and was released theatrically in 2013, was named a Guggenheim Fellow in 2014, and debuted his Peabody award-winning television series Random Acts of Flyness on HBO in the summer of 2018. In our conversation we touch on Performance as possession, his collaborative relationship with his brother Nelson Bandela, self-making, and how to be inhabited by a story beyond your own.