Jaylen Caine Watkins (b. January 17, 2001), better known as his stage name NELYAJ SNIKTA (pronounced NEL-YUH SNICK-TA), is an American rapper and audio engineer striking out of Queens, New York. Widely known for his versatile range and style of music.

As a child he wasn’t too big on music, his first passion was actually dancing. Until he came across Skrillex in middle school which was the start of the music inspiration overall. Even catching an ear for bands like Nirvana, Slipknot, and Blink-182 got him lost in the turn of music and he eventually came to loving the genre of Hip Hop as well. Over time he became influenced by the works of rappers such as Travis Scott, Lil Uzi Vert, XXXTENTACION, Scarlxrd, Juice WRLD, and Jaden Smith. His style can be described as experimental but in ways mixing the hardcore sound with a deeper message behind his lyrics.

Between his 8th grade to 10th grade year in school he dropped 3 mixtapes on his SoundCloud for people to finally hear his music. None of the mixtapes went dramatic in numbers but each time he progressed more teaching himself how to engineer his own music to save literally as much money as possible instead of wasting studio time.

On November 20, 2018, he released his first all platform single “Act Out” and took his energy to create and complete his anticipated EP “NIHILIST”, a trap metal themed project. NIHILIST was later dropped on January 23, 2019 and caught the attention of a following in result. Dropping singles throughout the year like “Rawkstar Bae”, “On Da Road”, “BihImSleep”, and “Wrist Slit X” featuring Sevenlights, another upcoming rapper on the scene in New York.

On December 15, 2019, NELYAJ released his single “Fashion Models Love LSD” on Soundcloud surprising his supporters before the year end. With the start of COV-19 in early 2020, this put him in a place where he could sit and work on his project in his bedroom which is where very most of his previous tracks took place anyway.

On July 30th, 2020, NELYAJ released his independent mixtape COCAINE & CASSETTE TAPES, which he pushed like it was an album regardless just based off the hit ready sounding tracks like, “PAIN”, “CRIME SCRENE”, “Tongue Games”, and “ETERNITY”.