Nick Swoboda with DJ Vybe, the Sunchild, Dat Boy Rob, Young Smoke, Nixo Fortune, Wranq

“We’re gonna need a big space,” thought local pop auteur Nick Swoboda after his little sister asked him to perform at her Sweet 16 celebration. She’ll get her wish: the Knitting Factory will host Emma’s Birthday Bash, featuring a headline performance by her brother. Swoboda’s intricately crafted, genre-bending productions, nimble wordplay and confidence behind the mic are the results of hard work; he writes, produces, engineers, records and runs a mixing/mastering service out of his home studio, even doing audio/visual work on commercials for clients like STCU. What started with voiceover work as a 12-year-old has become his passion. Like Wiki and the Letter Racer crew in NYC, Swoboda, now 20, hopes his efforts help give rise to a self-sustaining scene. “If we can make a new sound or something, and get something poppin’ here,” he says. “Then everybody will want to come here.”