“Space is everything”, says Ka.
We’re sitting in the foyer of Brooklyn Museum, amidst noisy school kids, an arrangement of Rodin sculptures and a huge, wooden Mickey Mouse-meets-Spiegelman Maus plastic by BK artist KAWS. We were supposed to meet outside on the stairs of the building, but the days’ unbearable humidity forced us into the artificial AC-haven of the entrance hall.
New York climate is weird these days, but then again, maybe just weird for folks who have never lived in a place where catastrophic weather becomes a thing. Tropical Storm Joaquin has just been pronounced a full-blown hurricane and will hit the city any day now. Half of Brooklyn carries around broken umbrellas and clammy hoodies, so does Ka. “This shyt is too muggy” – agreed.
Now in his early 40s, Kaseem Ryan has become a master of negative space. Everything that makes Ka’s take on East Coast lyricism so serenely spectacular has to do with what he leaves out: the words he doesn’t use, the pauses that he allows to let the beat breathe, the drum loops that are sometimes barely audible, sometimes not even there in the first place. The harrowing emptiness of the Brooklyn streets at night that are the real star of Ka’s youtube channel.
In a sense, it feels almost strange to encounter him as the humble, super-approachable interview partner that he is. In the gritty ambience of his four albums “Iron Works”, “Grief Pedigree”, “Night’s Gambit” and, most recently, “Days With Dr. Yen Lo” alongside producer/DJ Preservation, Ka rarely appears to be a real person. His voice hangs over the beat like an apparition, a growling narrative voice that is essentially bodiless.
He took his time to hone this specific style, more than 20 years to be exact. First as part of the Tommy Boy-signed 90s crew Natural Elements, later with Nightbreed. “Iron Works”, the slept on compilation of left overs that initiated his time as a critically acclaimed solo act, was supposed to be a farewell to music. Instead – with a little encouragement of GZA – it paved the way for one of the most unlikely comeback stories the New York underground has brought forth. With three back-to-back-to-back masterpieces to his name, it’s about time to catch up with the elusive MC. —Julian Brimmers
You don’t live in Brownsville anymore, right?
Ka: No, no more. I moved out of the ville and lived in a couple of areas in Bed-Stuy since. Bed-Stuy is big, a couple of blocks I named on some songs, like Lafayette, for example.
I just walked down Broadway to Myrtle Avenue yesterday. It’s crazy how the demographic on the streets changes so abruptly once you turn right into Bushwick.
Ka: Yeah, the lines are not even blurred, they are pretty drastic. It goes from bodegas to patisseries within two blocks.
How was that in Brownsville?
Ka: The block I grew up on is not gentrified yet. The whole New York is not what it was. That’s good, and that’s bad. It’s good that the kids are not living as dangerous as we used to live. It’s a safer place on a whole. It’s bad, to me, just because people that come here think New York is soft, is sweet now. That’s not the New York I grew up in. And I don’t want you to think it’s all like that here. There are million dollar homes now on blocks that I used to call the hood. So where are they pushing all the poor people to?
Well, where?
Ka: The areas that haven’t been gentrified yet are Brownsville and East New York. That’s just Brooklyn, packed and packed with impoverished people. Where are you gonna push them to next?
Did you have any mentors in Brownsville?
Ka: Smooth Tha Hustla lived around the corner from me. We were good friends, Smooth, Trigga {tha Gambler} and me. We played basketball together in 271 park. Smooth was great, he took me to his producer… who didn’t like me (laughs).
Would we know him?
Ka: Probably, it was D.R. Period. He just didn’t like my sound. But Smooth was great, they both were super talented. D.V. Alias Khrist, do you remember him? I don’t know what block he was on, but he used to hang around. Those were my friends and I was very proud when they made it. I was happy for them. They were the only known persons that I knew at the time, but of course I was aware that Masta Ace came from Brownsville, obviously M.O.P., Steele from Smif-n-Wessun, Sean Price…
How do you feel now he’s passed so untimely?
Ka: I miss Sean Price, he was just a really good dude. I met Sean later on, he was just a perfect gentleman. I miss what he was as a person, I miss what he was as an artist. I’m sure there were other dudes from the ville, but those were the ones that stuck out to me.
Someone affiliated with Sean tweeted shortly after he died that, if there is an independent rap artist you like, you should tell them now. Just because Sean wouldn’t have had any idea of how much he meant to people.
Ka: I don’t think that he knew his impact, no. The love that he got when he died, I would have loved him to have seen that. That’s with every artist, when they die there is a sudden influx of love. Show those persons love while they are alive! I speak to a lot of underground artist and people don’t know how close they are to quitting. Your favorite underground artist is probably on the verge of quitting right now. People don’t understand it, they take it for granted that he will make more music. Then all of the sudden he goes away and they’re like, ‘what happened to him’? On this underground level you have to comment those artists, because you know they’re not doing it for money. In a sense they’re the purest artists because they do it for the love of the craft. It’s a beautiful thing. And if you’re not getting the money, you’re not getting exposure, you’re not being played on the radio – you need that love on social media. You need all these intangible things that inspire you to say “I’ma do this for the listeners”. I wish fans did that a little more. It’s tough to be a not-acknowledged artist.
You seem to have a very devoted fan base, in Europe especially. Folks that get each release the day it is out…
Ka: Wow. I hope that’s because they feel a genuineness in it. It’s obviously for a more mature audience. You have to be a listener. You gotta be somewhat intellectual, I feel, not smart or anything but a little bit aware of what I’m talking about. There’s no star here, I don’t have no pixie dust on me, nothing. I’m just giving you exactly what I can give you, in the best way I possibly can. That’s it. Also, I don’t give a lot of stuff, I might take two years to do an album. But – I hope – you listen to the album for two years.
What might play into that: you make music that requires concentration. You can not listen to it while doing something else, except going for a walk maybe. Which is a unique listening experience these days.
Ka: It is more cerebral. If you’re listening half-heartedly, you gonna miss a lot of things. I don’t want you to sit down every time you listen to a Ka record. But if you want to really absorb what I’m saying, you may have to take some time. If you just like the song, the pacing of it, the melody, you can do other things on the side. But on the initial, if you wanna know what I’m talking about, you might wanna fall back and chill for a second.
I’m inspired by pain, by heart-ache. It’s very moody. Not fake moody, I’m not trying to make you cry or sit and ponder. It’s just stuff that I feel and when I feel it, I happen to have a gift of writing down exactly how I feel. By doing that, I think people can feel it too, which is beautiful.
