MICHAEL CHRISTMAS

Michael Lindsey — known professionally as Michael Christmas — was raised on Warren Street in Roxbury, Boston, a neighborhood The Fader's 2014 profile described as rough. By his own account, he was a sheltered kid who stayed indoors watching cartoons and playing with action figures rather than running the streets, and even his own place in the neighborhood was partly defined through his father: "I'm from a neighborhood where they call me 'Jermaine's son,'" he told The Fader in 2014. Both The Fader and Boston Magazine document real periods of housing instability for the family, including stretches when his mother stayed in other people's homes during financial hardship.

His father was imprisoned on a firearms charge in April 2012 and was released just before Christmas's 2014 debut dropped. Despite that separation, Christmas has repeatedly pointed to his father's resilience and humor as a formative influence — the advice he recalls getting was simply to "be a dad... look at your kid as another human being" (WBUR, 2015) — and has described him as "exactly me if you took away the awkwardness" (Complex, 2014).

He attended Trinity, a private high school, until he was expelled over his family's inability to keep up with tuition. He transferred to Charlestown High School, where he felt genuinely isolated: "A regular person has their group of friends... up until I was probably 17 or 18, I didn't even have that," he told WBUR in 2015. From there he moved to an alternative school before leaving the education system altogether in early 2013, after learning his graduation would be delayed.

About a month after his father's 2012 imprisonment, Christmas started recording seriously. His first real creative backer was an artist named Goodwin, who directed videos and produced his earliest tracks, including the "Michael Cera" video. "Daily," from mid-2013, became the first song to draw genuine attention, catching the ear of artists like JoJo and Childish Gambino. Not long after, "Michael Cera" (2013) — a comedic riff on the awkward-teen persona associated with Arrested Development, produced by Goodwin and posted as a video through XXL in October 2013, then Complex — became his actual breakout record. Christmas has described meeting Childish Gambino backstage around that time, who praised the "Michael Cera" video directly.

His debut mixtape, Is This Art?, arrived on February 23, 2014 (a cassette edition followed on February 27 via Antique Records). It earned him a Fader profile and a spot on Complex's "25 New Rappers to Watch Out For in 2014" list. Per Spotify's own official artist bio, the response to Is This Art? landed him direct support slots on back-to-back tours with Logic and Mac Miller — the real context behind both artists' later feature credits on What A Weird Day.

What A Weird Day came out October 23, 2015, premiered by The Fader and praised by Vice, XXL, and MTV, which called him "your favorite every-dude rapper." WBUR's November 2015 feature framed the record as his turn toward something "more popular and more personal." In his own words, the album's idea was to "take the weirdo rap kid... put him in front of a huge spotlight... and the album is how I feel about that" (WBUR, 2015). The project includes "Where You Been," featuring Logic, and "Grab Her Hand," featuring Mac Miller — both collaborations that grew directly out of those support-tour relationships. "Where You Been" was produced by Teddy Roxpin, who now has his own ERA617 profile (/producers/teddy-roxpin); he had worked on the track back in 2013, two years before it actually reached an audience.

2016 also brought Fudge, a duo project with IDM/instrumental-hip-hop producer Prefuse 73 (Scott Herren). Their joint album, Lady Parts, came out September 9 of that year on Lex Records, built from sessions at producer Nick Hook's studio in 2015 — Prefuse 73 supplied the beats, and Christmas wrote and recorded same-day.

Christmas signed to Fool's Gold Records in April 2018 — the only outside label deal of his entire career — and released his third studio album, Role Model, through the label on June 22 of that year. "What this album is capturing is me trying to teach the kids... how I maneuver through the craziness we see every day," he told XXL at the time. The era included standout sets at Lollapalooza and Boston Calling, tours with What So Not and Tunji Ige, and appearances on Fool's Gold's "DAY OFF" live/radio franchise.

He released the EP Baggy Eyes 2 on October 4, 2019. By his own account to DJBooth in December 2020, the Fool's Gold deal had mostly been about "testing the waters" — a chance to work with bigger video and production budgets before deliberately returning to full independence. Hiding, largely recorded between December 2019 and March 2020 (just before the pandemic), was made, in his own words, "as DIY as possible," with production kept in-house among trusted collaborators, including members of Boston's Van Buren Records collective. COVID-19 wiped out two tours he had planned that year, but he still finished the album — released December 18, 2020 — along with a stand-up comedy set.

GRIMACE, his most recent album, arrived February 23, 2026 — thirteen tracks, 27:03, self-released, in collaboration with producer GRiMM Doza. One scheduling detail worth noting as an interesting pattern rather than a confirmed creative choice: that release date falls exactly twelve years after the original Is This Art? (February 23, 2014).

On August 14, 2026 came Don't Come To My House Sharing Your Location, a three-way collaborative EP with Girl Talk (Gregg Gillis) and Chicago rapper Chris Crack, released through C&G Records/Illegal Art — six tracks, roughly seventeen minutes, recorded largely in Gillis's hometown of Pittsburgh, with additional sessions in Boston and Chicago, the other two artists' own home cities. It drew real national attention: a Pitchfork review (August 14, 2026, by Matthew Ritchie), a Bandcamp Daily "Album of the Day" feature, and coverage in Pittsburgh City Paper. Chris Crack had already appeared on Unsexy back in 2024, which makes this 2026 project the continuation of an actual, repeated collaboration rather than a one-off.