“Is it ok if I sit here?” asks Rafael, trying to find a place where he feels comfortable as he gets ready for the conversation. It’s a trivial question. But one that, ironically, pinpoints the core of what his work sets out to be.

Late Again is a project born out of the search for a place to belong. And the alter ego of the Brazilian-born, Brooklyn-based artist thrives off his creator’s many limbos:

Physically, Rafael lives in a hemispheric ambiguity: on one hand, he was raised in a small beach town on the coast of São Paulo without knowing how to surf. On the other, he learned to call New York home in his mid-twenties, without ever being able to get rid of his foreign accent no matter how hard he tried.

Sonically, he sits at the intersection of North American indie pop and obscure Brazilian bossa nova references, with a hint of dreamlike film soundscapes and Japanese ‘80s grooves, just to make the mix a bit more chaotic. “I was raised between Brazilian psychedelia vinyls from my best friend from school and Shania Twain mixtapes in my dad’s car — there’s no way my references wouldn’t be chaotic” he jokes, listing a wide range of influences: the genre-jumping ethos of Gorillaz, the poetic sharpness of Caetano Veloso, the textural experimentation of artists like Ryuichi Sakamoto, and the catchy riffs of contemporary indie pop. Also worth highlighting, Late Again recently collaborated with Brazilian jazz legend Arthur Verocai on the song People Pleasers.

Lyrically, Late Again hovers between dense topics like belonging and existential dread and ironic, unpretentious love songs dedicated to chicken tenders. “There’s something powerful about allowing yourself to be silly sometimes. I love tragic comedies. They lower the viewer’s guard, only to then stab them in the chest with something true.” Are the lyrics not serious enough? Or not funny enough? “It’s just another limbo I find myself in”. And the more we talk, the deeper that amusing limbo seems to get.

Perhaps one of the most interesting parts of the conversation was realizing that Late Again is the work of someone who’s lived many lives: from having to “sell his soul to advertising to pay the bills”, and somehow becoming a notably successful creative director for some of the biggest brands in the world, to unpretentiously making a video game with his childhood friend that ended up going viral and becoming the most successful Brazilian video game ever made, his hyperactive brain has been around and achieved some impressive things. Look up Sad Socket, his videogame studio, on Wikipedia by the way. “I always hoped Late Again would be my first thing to get a Wikipedia page” he jokes, admitting he doesn’t feel entitled to one yet, even though Late Again gathered over a million  listeners on Spotify in under two years. “My little video game hit the charts much faster than my music.”

Still, it’s an impressive and highly unusual track record from a multi-hyphenated artist: from award-winning films, to funny deodorant ads that got into the Guinness World Records, to an indie videogame that helped him quit advertising for good to focus on his art before turning 30, not many people manage to thrive on such randomness and still push for another run. But Rafael doesn’t feel like he’s found whatever it is he’s looking for. And he certainly doesn’t think he deserves a pat on the back. “I got lucky a couple of times and hope it can help me make something I’m truly proud of with my life.”

And it does seem to help. His experience as a writer and director enabled him to produce and direct ambitious music videos like Caterpillars, created in collaboration with Landia and his co-producer Heal Mura. His background as a designer helped him handcraft a rickety stage lighting rig he now travels with across the country to create a unique live show. “Most small artists don’t care too much about stage aesthetics early on, but I really wanted to find a way to make something affordable that was still somewhat memorable from my first tour”. Before setting off on his first East Coast run last April, he built and programmed the setup himself with the help of an engineer friend. Life’s too short to be just one thing, especially a life lived by someone with ADHD. But “the first thing I was and the last thing I’ll be is a musician”, he insists. In retrospect, it does seem like everything that came before was just a propeller, helping Late Again exist creatively, financially, and emotionally.

The positively chaotic lore of Rafael is the core ingredient of his upcoming EP, “I Dreamt I Was Awake”. The 6 tracks explore the gap between the life you picture and the one you’re actually living and the strange ways people make peace with that distance. With self-aware, sometimes funny, always subtly critical songs, the EP fluctuates between tenderness and irony, minimalism and chaos, and the hyper-personal and the universal.

Late Again’s fourth studio EP starts to show a common thread across his past work, while a confidence shift becomes clearer as he doubles down on his unique writing style with each new track. Drawing from dream pop textures, alternative beats, melodies from his native Brazil, and cynical yet friendly lyrics, a space where lucidity and self-delusion coexist is created. A collection of songs that are sonically nostalgic and welcoming, without losing a nuanced, soft but exacting edge.

After relocating from São Paulo to New York, Rafael turned to the project as a way to process displacement, reinvention at the wrong time, and the absurdity of trying to belong anywhere in the first place. “Late Again was born out of trying to find a place to belong. I didn’t quite belong where I was born, and I don’t belong here. But I’ve realized this same craving for belonging exists everywhere”.  While Late Again comes from a unique background, his yearning is universal. And his songs seem to be made for anyone floating between places, languages, or selves — the ones who want to laugh about it, cry about it, and maybe dance a little while they’re at it.

When Rafael asks, “Is it ok if I sit here?”, it almost feels like he’s asking himself the question. And with its unpretentious lyrics and smooth textures, every Late Again song seems to ask the listener the same. But it’s not a passive prompt: as the chaos of its creator is made clear, it becomes evident that his work has the weight of someone who’s doing his best to enjoy the ride, but is ultimately restless. His productive ambiguity keeps him writing, experimenting, and shape-shifting through sounds, mediums, and emotions. A limbo in the most positive sense of the word. For Late Again, maybe finding a place in other people’s hearts is the first step to finally finding a place of his own. He’ll take the second step on Sept 2nd, when the new EP is released, followed by New York shows, a pocket tour, and maybe some early glimpses of a debut album.

Even though this may be a journey that’s only just begun for the project, that prolific search has been a steady note in its creator’s life. A note that led to interesting places before, and that makes me really want to stick around to see just where it might lead this time. Regardless of where the journey ends, Late Again is already a reminder to his listener and also himself: it’s never too late to search for a place to belong.