The second Foreign Exchange album, Leave It All Behind, came later in the year on the Foreign Exchange label. In 2008 the producer teamed up with Houston rapper Kay - whom he had also met through message boards and had put on a track on Here - and issued the album Time:Line. The Dutch Masters, Vol.ġ, which featured Nicolay DJ'ing, came out that same year, followed by Here in 2006.
1.5 initially only online and then through BBE Records in 2005.
This transatlantic collaboration, which they called the Foreign Exchange, led to an album, Connected, in 2004, after which Nicolay continued producing tracks for Little Brother and Cesar Comanche, releasing City Lights, Vol. In 2002, Little Brother MC Phonte Coleman stumbled across one of them on Okayplayer's message board and asked if he could put his rhymes over it, and soon a friendship and a musical relationship were born. Born and raised in the Netherlands, Nicolay played in a number of bands around his homeland, but it wasn't until 2000 that he decided to start producing his own beats. Known as a beatmaker prior to fully flexing his skills as a producer and classically trained multi-instrumentalist, Nicolay (Matthijs Rook) has been a significant factor in the progression of hip-hop, R&B, and electronic music since the early 2000s.
