Ka - The Night's Gambit Album On Sale Now! *New Interviews For Days*
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New Ka Interview from (F!) Complex: Who Is Ka?
Growing Up in Brownsville
"There was a lot of uncertainty growing up. You weren't sure what was going to happen the next day. You weren't sure if shyt was going to pop off. There was just a lot of doubt. It wasn't a good area to be a child in. "I lived in my grandmother and grandfather's house, and there was 13 of us in the house. It was a little crowded, you didn't have a lot of space for yourself. But it was home. It was what it was at the time. "You didn't know any better until you start growing up, and you start getting out of the neighborhood and seeing other people live. Or you start watching television and you're like, 'Oh okay, so this how you're supposed to be living?' And your life is nowhere near that.' "I was one of the youngest for a long time. I always had older people around me. I was always the one getting jewels dropped on. Of course, being very impressionable at a young age, I picked up everything that they was doing as far as the guns and the drugs... all that."
Getting Into Hip-Hop
"I grew up at the time when hip-hop was born. I remember my mom used to play disco and R&B that was on the radio a lot, and my pops, who was home from jail, he played a lot of jazz. And then, in 1978- or 1979 was when hip-hop came on the scene, and as soon as I heard it, that's what it was—the death of disco and the birth of hip-hop. From then on, I was a fan of hip-hop music. "I saw hip-hop from its inception to what it is today. I saw every stage of it. And I was a part of every stage of it. I was there in it. From the very beginning, from wanting to do it, listening to it, I just loved it. "I wanted to rhyme when my cousin came home from Spofford [Ed. Note—Juvenile correctional institution in NYC]. I was really young, I forgot how old I was. He came home and was around 13 or 14, was rhyming. I started beatboxing and banging on cars and shyt, making beats for him. That was kind of my introduction to it. He was the first person I knew that was doing it, and I wanted to be like my cousin."
Being a Teenager in the Reagan Era
"New York City was crazy. I would take the A train and I would have my box cutter on me not knowing if I had to split somebody's face open or if somebody was going to split my face. You know, if I had a $40 pair of sneakers, I wouldn't know if I would have to fight for these sneakers, because there was just bulls out on the streets. "Halloween in the '80s was fukking crazy. It was mayhem in the streets during Halloween. I remember 42nd Street, like before credit cards was popping, we used to hit people's pockets... There were just no rules in the '80s. No rules. And if you survived the '80s, that was a blessing. "And then came the '90s, which were just as dangerous, because then the guns kinda started to become introduced a little more. There was just a lot of poverty. You were either going to take it or you were not going to have it. It was that time and the rich were really rich and the poor were really poor. It was a big social and economic gap between the two and it made for desperate times."
Playing Basketball With Grant Hill
"I played [basketball] in high school. That saved me from being in a lot of situations. I don't know nobody who was from the hood that I was from that didn't play basketball. From the most knuckleheads to the most nerds, they all played ball. That's what it was. That's how we socialized. We'd go to the park, and we'd play ball. I'd go to either 271 Park, I'd go to Howard Projects Park, I'd go to Kelly Park... That's how we just got off a lot of our angst, was through playing ball. And not everybody was really good, but it didn't matter. We just played ball. "I played a lot. I was fairly decent. I knew I wasn't going to go to the pros when I went to Five-Star camp. Grant Hill was there and I was like, 'That's good, and I'm just alright." Five-Star Camp was my first time seeing guys from all over the country and testing my skills against theirs. That's when I realized that I'm going to be a medium player. On the street I'll be good, but as far as taking it any further than that then I knew I wasn't going to be there. "Grant was always a good dude. Not that he'd remember me but I remember him. He was a superstar in high school. But yeah, he was really good back then and he would have been a Hall of Famer had he not gotten hurt."
Dropping Out of College
"After high school, I didn't want to play ball anymore because I just knew it wasn't going to go anywhere for me. I wasn't going to get money. I went to school because my mother didn't want me to be out in the streets, thugging. I just went to school to appease my moms. But that shyt wasn't serious for me. "I went to City College, up at 137th St. in Harlem. Going up there might have been even worse for me because that's where the drugs were at. That's where you would go to get drugs from was right there on 145th, 155th and Broadway. I was going to school up there seeing it all and it was a turning point for me, knowing that the school shyt really is a gamble. "There was a lot of kids who were way smarter than me—I wasn't even smart, I felt like I was a dummy—and these kids were like fukking geniuses. They were going to get all the good jobs, and I was going to become a janitor or something. No disrespect to janitors, but I just knew that I wasn't going to be an actuary or an engineer. It was just time for me to realize how I was going to make money in this world. How would I survive? And as a result, the dark shyt started coming. My cousin was selling drugs, and it was just a natural progression." "I started by dabbling and trying to be any one of my cousins who was out of state, getting money, and had spots over here and there. I started with my cousin giving me just a little something to move on my own, and we were all in the same house together anyways, so I already knew what I was supposed to do with it. "I'm not really proud of that shyt, so I don't really like to talk about it. I wish I would have just stayed in school. It's a part of me but I'm not proud of that shyt so I don't really like to talk about it too much." "There was a lot of kids who were way smarter than me—I wasn't even smart, I felt like I was a dummy—and these kids were like fukking geniuses. They were going to get all the good jobs, and I was going to become a janitor or something. No disrespect to janitors, but I just knew that I wasn't going to be an actuary or an engineer. It was just time for me to realize how I was going to make money in this world. How would I survive? And as a result, the dark shyt started coming. My cousin was selling drugs, and it was just a natural progression." "I started by dabbling and trying to be any one of my cousins who was out of state, getting money, and had spots over here and there. I started with my cousin giving me just a little something to move on my own, and we were all in the same house together anyways, so I already knew what I was supposed to do with it. "I'm not really proud of that shyt, so I don't really like to talk about it. I wish I would have just stayed in school. It's a part of me but I'm not proud of that shyt so I don't really like to talk about it too much."
Growing Up in Brownsville
"There was a lot of uncertainty growing up. You weren't sure what was going to happen the next day. You weren't sure if shyt was going to pop off. There was just a lot of doubt. It wasn't a good area to be a child in. "I lived in my grandmother and grandfather's house, and there was 13 of us in the house. It was a little crowded, you didn't have a lot of space for yourself. But it was home. It was what it was at the time. "You didn't know any better until you start growing up, and you start getting out of the neighborhood and seeing other people live. Or you start watching television and you're like, 'Oh okay, so this how you're supposed to be living?' And your life is nowhere near that.' "I was one of the youngest for a long time. I always had older people around me. I was always the one getting jewels dropped on. Of course, being very impressionable at a young age, I picked up everything that they was doing as far as the guns and the drugs... all that."
Getting Into Hip-Hop
"I grew up at the time when hip-hop was born. I remember my mom used to play disco and R&B that was on the radio a lot, and my pops, who was home from jail, he played a lot of jazz. And then, in 1978- or 1979 was when hip-hop came on the scene, and as soon as I heard it, that's what it was—the death of disco and the birth of hip-hop. From then on, I was a fan of hip-hop music. "I saw hip-hop from its inception to what it is today. I saw every stage of it. And I was a part of every stage of it. I was there in it. From the very beginning, from wanting to do it, listening to it, I just loved it. "I wanted to rhyme when my cousin came home from Spofford [Ed. Note—Juvenile correctional institution in NYC]. I was really young, I forgot how old I was. He came home and was around 13 or 14, was rhyming. I started beatboxing and banging on cars and shyt, making beats for him. That was kind of my introduction to it. He was the first person I knew that was doing it, and I wanted to be like my cousin."
Being a Teenager in the Reagan Era
"New York City was crazy. I would take the A train and I would have my box cutter on me not knowing if I had to split somebody's face open or if somebody was going to split my face. You know, if I had a $40 pair of sneakers, I wouldn't know if I would have to fight for these sneakers, because there was just bulls out on the streets. "Halloween in the '80s was fukking crazy. It was mayhem in the streets during Halloween. I remember 42nd Street, like before credit cards was popping, we used to hit people's pockets... There were just no rules in the '80s. No rules. And if you survived the '80s, that was a blessing. "And then came the '90s, which were just as dangerous, because then the guns kinda started to become introduced a little more. There was just a lot of poverty. You were either going to take it or you were not going to have it. It was that time and the rich were really rich and the poor were really poor. It was a big social and economic gap between the two and it made for desperate times."
Playing Basketball With Grant Hill
"I played [basketball] in high school. That saved me from being in a lot of situations. I don't know nobody who was from the hood that I was from that didn't play basketball. From the most knuckleheads to the most nerds, they all played ball. That's what it was. That's how we socialized. We'd go to the park, and we'd play ball. I'd go to either 271 Park, I'd go to Howard Projects Park, I'd go to Kelly Park... That's how we just got off a lot of our angst, was through playing ball. And not everybody was really good, but it didn't matter. We just played ball. "I played a lot. I was fairly decent. I knew I wasn't going to go to the pros when I went to Five-Star camp. Grant Hill was there and I was like, 'That's good, and I'm just alright." Five-Star Camp was my first time seeing guys from all over the country and testing my skills against theirs. That's when I realized that I'm going to be a medium player. On the street I'll be good, but as far as taking it any further than that then I knew I wasn't going to be there. "Grant was always a good dude. Not that he'd remember me but I remember him. He was a superstar in high school. But yeah, he was really good back then and he would have been a Hall of Famer had he not gotten hurt."
Dropping Out of College
"After high school, I didn't want to play ball anymore because I just knew it wasn't going to go anywhere for me. I wasn't going to get money. I went to school because my mother didn't want me to be out in the streets, thugging. I just went to school to appease my moms. But that shyt wasn't serious for me. "I went to City College, up at 137th St. in Harlem. Going up there might have been even worse for me because that's where the drugs were at. That's where you would go to get drugs from was right there on 145th, 155th and Broadway. I was going to school up there seeing it all and it was a turning point for me, knowing that the school shyt really is a gamble. "There was a lot of kids who were way smarter than me—I wasn't even smart, I felt like I was a dummy—and these kids were like fukking geniuses. They were going to get all the good jobs, and I was going to become a janitor or something. No disrespect to janitors, but I just knew that I wasn't going to be an actuary or an engineer. It was just time for me to realize how I was going to make money in this world. How would I survive? And as a result, the dark shyt started coming. My cousin was selling drugs, and it was just a natural progression." "I started by dabbling and trying to be any one of my cousins who was out of state, getting money, and had spots over here and there. I started with my cousin giving me just a little something to move on my own, and we were all in the same house together anyways, so I already knew what I was supposed to do with it. "I'm not really proud of that shyt, so I don't really like to talk about it. I wish I would have just stayed in school. It's a part of me but I'm not proud of that shyt so I don't really like to talk about it too much." "There was a lot of kids who were way smarter than me—I wasn't even smart, I felt like I was a dummy—and these kids were like fukking geniuses. They were going to get all the good jobs, and I was going to become a janitor or something. No disrespect to janitors, but I just knew that I wasn't going to be an actuary or an engineer. It was just time for me to realize how I was going to make money in this world. How would I survive? And as a result, the dark shyt started coming. My cousin was selling drugs, and it was just a natural progression." "I started by dabbling and trying to be any one of my cousins who was out of state, getting money, and had spots over here and there. I started with my cousin giving me just a little something to move on my own, and we were all in the same house together anyways, so I already knew what I was supposed to do with it. "I'm not really proud of that shyt, so I don't really like to talk about it. I wish I would have just stayed in school. It's a part of me but I'm not proud of that shyt so I don't really like to talk about it too much."
Rapping in the '90s
"Early '90s is when I started taking it seriously. That's when I started rhyming openly to people. I was always writing but I started rhyming openly to people, I would join the cyphers. At that time, I wasn't as good skill-wise, but those are usually the loudest, right? "I met up with Mr. Voodoo, and that was my introduction to Natural Elements. I was just fukking writing rhymes. They were making songs. We used to go every Saturday to The Bronx to Charlemagne's studio, and that was like 'Rap Grad School' because you learned how to make songs, you learned what a hook is, you learned what bars are, you learned how to structure songs, etc. "We never put a project out. We did a couple of songs but nothing ever came out. I feel bad. I blame it on me, man. I felt like I was so bad on that fukking demo that I kinda fukked it up for them. Probably because it was like, 'These rappers are so good and so talented, and then this guy is so horrible and so fukkin wack.' It's hard to go back and listen to the shyt because I sound so bad. "It just so happened that one of my boys that I knew right down the block from me, Kev, who was my best friend, he started rhyming. He was ill. And he knew that I was rhyming. So we got together, and formed a group called Nightbreed. We did a single. We had an album that we did; that album never came out. But the single came out on Fortress Records, "2 Roads Out The Ghetto." You know, every now and then I hear people talk about how they have it. I don't even have it. "We thought that the Natural Elements album that was about to come out on Nervous Records was going to be the catapult for us. We were on that album. We felt like we had a good showing on there, and people were going to be like, 'Who are those two dudes?' But the album never came out, and it kinda hurt all of us. I guess by then we were all dejected. We were already like seven years in and it was just harder. So everybody kinda was like, 'You know what? We're starting to get older now, it's kinda irresponsible for us to still just be doing this music shyt. We have families and shyt like that.' "We still remain friends, you know. Especially me and Kev, that was my fam before hip-hop. After we stopped ourselves we became the harshest critics of everybody. We were the mad rappers telling everyone like 'Yo, he's corny." Like 'How come they ain't sign us?' shyt like that."
Reviving His Rap Dream
"It got to a point where like everybody had stopped doing it, but it was funny because I was still doing it in private. Every time that I quit, like even if I said it out loud, it didn't matter. Rhymes still came to my head. During the time frame when I said I quit, I just wouldn't write them on paper anymore. But it was still coming and still coming. It just so happened that for a long stretch of time I just wouldn't put it on paper. That was my 'quitting:' Not writing it down. "I had a lady now in my life by this point. She used to catch me every now and then, when I would get a beat or I would hear some music and would just zone out, and she would be like, 'Baby, what are you thinking about'" And you know, I was embarrassed in the beginning to tell her that I rhymed and shyt. I was just like, 'Every black man rhymes.' I didn't want to be that. I didn't even like the fact that I rhymed anymore, because it felt dirty to me. Everybody did it, it wasn't respectable anymore. "It took me a long time to tell her that I rhymed, but she was real dope about it. She was like, 'You know what, if you really love it then you should just do it.' It was that confidence that I got from her that was just like, 'You know what, I'm not going to hide it anymore. I'm just going to do it and whatever happens from it happens.' I already knew that what I did wasn't going to make it on radio anymore, but it didn't mean that what I did was any less important."
Dropping Iron Works and Meeting GZA
"I put out Iron Works in 2007. That was supposed to be my swan song. I wasn't supposed to do more. I wanted to do that album for all the people that believed in me. For all the people in the studio with me, for my sister who was my biggest listener when I was a kid. I wanted to give them a CD to put in their hand. I wanted to give my mother a CD to put in her hand. Like all of these years of rhyming... I just wanted to prove that I didn't waste 20 years of mastering a craft without anything to show for it. I did that album to give to my loved ones. "I printed up CDs and I put it in his hands, and that was it. And it just so happened that one of the friends that I gave it to knew GZA. She was like 'I think GZA might like this.' I was like, 'Whatever. This is your copy.' I really didn't care. 'Whether you like it and listen to it or you let it sit there and collect dust, whatever, this is just my contribution for you being a good friend to me for all these years.' "She gave it to him and he listened to it. She reported back and was like, 'He thinks you're ill.'That was enough for me. One of the greatest lyricists ever thought I was ill. I could've stopped there. That could've been it. "But then she said that he said he was thinking about maybe doing an album and that he would like if I would come to his spot and record a track with him. When I heard that, I was emotional. Actually, at the time I wasn't emotional. I thought it was bullshyt industry shyt, like 'Yeah I'll do a song with him.' And then one day he called me and then we got in the studio, and it was just a dope experience. "It's funny because when I went in there, I got into the studio and I thought it was just going to be like... He said he wanted me to be on a song, I thought I was just going to be on a posse cut with a bunch of dudes. You know, I would spit a bunch of rhymes and send my ass on home. But I got in there and it was just him and an engineer dude. It was great. "I didn't actually get to see him write any rhymes, because he was already in the process of just finishing off the project. When I got in the studio he was like, 'Yo, I've been listening to you and I think I got a beat that you might like.' And he played this 'Firehouse' joint and I was like 'Oh yeah, this is perfect.' And so I went into the booth and laid the first verse down. He got on the monitors and was like, 'That was dope. You got more?' And I was like, "Yeah, I got 20 years of more.' He let me rock on the whole song. We speak every now and then on the phone but I let him do his thing. "I hit him with a text like "Yo, I got a new project out." I just want to be able to give him the work that I've done just off the strength of what he did. Like I want to give him every project that I ever did just to thank him, like "This is what you did. Thank you."
Learning to Produce
"Well, producing was a necessity. After you start rhyming, nobody knows who you are so you can't just manage to walk up to somebody's studio talking about ' I need some beats.' So it came to the point where I just had to make my own beats in order to rhyme over them. "Early on, I was just rhyming over people's songs—I didn't even have instrumentals. I was rhyming over the words. I would play a song over and over again, and all of a sudden I don't even hear you anymore on it. Now I'm rhyming on your shyt. And that was how I started getting back into it. "Ka the rapper takes a lot of time from Ka the producer. Like with those two hats on I got to find a whole lot of beats for Ka the rapper to decide that he's going to rhyme over this. "In other words, a producer is going to have to do the same thing. He would have to be patient with me and know that I might love it today and then three weeks later, 'Nah that beat ain't right.' You know what I'm saying? I know that I have time and I can dig and I can go through record stores. I'll just do it myself and I don't have to be a headache for nobody else. I'll be a headache for myself."
Shooting His Own Music Videos
"I knew that in this time of instant gratification, you can't tell kids to sit down and listen to a song. You can't keep anybody's interest for that long. Everything has to be associated with a visual. That's the only thing that can keep people interested. And I knew that. I knew that the kind of music I do is so dense. It's nothing that you can just pop in and just find some catchiness in it. It's real cerebral shyt, so I had to do a visual for a song. "'Cold Facts' was the first song, and so me and my lady got a camera. She went out at 3 a.m. one night, walked through the streets, picked some locations, filmed, and she was holding the camera like a soldier. Then we got back home, and I'm like, 'What am I supposed to do with this shyt?' [Laughs] I have a Macbook and so I put it in the iMovie, and I started dabbling with it. I edited 'Cold Facts' on iMovie. It took me a whole day, and by the end of it we were both like, 'I think it looks good.' Then we put it on YouTube and I started a Twitter that day, and I tweeted it out, and then somebody picked it up. "iMovie was just for the first video. I started doing some research and found Final Cut Pro. Now I do it on that. I don't know if I'm getting better, I'm not a director or nothing. It's just all out of necessity. But I don't want to take anything away from actual directors. I'm not a director, I'm not a producer, I'm an MC and that's what I do the best. It just so happens that I can put something together that can look halfway decent. I'm just glad that the people liked it."
"Early '90s is when I started taking it seriously. That's when I started rhyming openly to people. I was always writing but I started rhyming openly to people, I would join the cyphers. At that time, I wasn't as good skill-wise, but those are usually the loudest, right? "I met up with Mr. Voodoo, and that was my introduction to Natural Elements. I was just fukking writing rhymes. They were making songs. We used to go every Saturday to The Bronx to Charlemagne's studio, and that was like 'Rap Grad School' because you learned how to make songs, you learned what a hook is, you learned what bars are, you learned how to structure songs, etc. "We never put a project out. We did a couple of songs but nothing ever came out. I feel bad. I blame it on me, man. I felt like I was so bad on that fukking demo that I kinda fukked it up for them. Probably because it was like, 'These rappers are so good and so talented, and then this guy is so horrible and so fukkin wack.' It's hard to go back and listen to the shyt because I sound so bad. "It just so happened that one of my boys that I knew right down the block from me, Kev, who was my best friend, he started rhyming. He was ill. And he knew that I was rhyming. So we got together, and formed a group called Nightbreed. We did a single. We had an album that we did; that album never came out. But the single came out on Fortress Records, "2 Roads Out The Ghetto." You know, every now and then I hear people talk about how they have it. I don't even have it. "We thought that the Natural Elements album that was about to come out on Nervous Records was going to be the catapult for us. We were on that album. We felt like we had a good showing on there, and people were going to be like, 'Who are those two dudes?' But the album never came out, and it kinda hurt all of us. I guess by then we were all dejected. We were already like seven years in and it was just harder. So everybody kinda was like, 'You know what? We're starting to get older now, it's kinda irresponsible for us to still just be doing this music shyt. We have families and shyt like that.' "We still remain friends, you know. Especially me and Kev, that was my fam before hip-hop. After we stopped ourselves we became the harshest critics of everybody. We were the mad rappers telling everyone like 'Yo, he's corny." Like 'How come they ain't sign us?' shyt like that."
Reviving His Rap Dream
"It got to a point where like everybody had stopped doing it, but it was funny because I was still doing it in private. Every time that I quit, like even if I said it out loud, it didn't matter. Rhymes still came to my head. During the time frame when I said I quit, I just wouldn't write them on paper anymore. But it was still coming and still coming. It just so happened that for a long stretch of time I just wouldn't put it on paper. That was my 'quitting:' Not writing it down. "I had a lady now in my life by this point. She used to catch me every now and then, when I would get a beat or I would hear some music and would just zone out, and she would be like, 'Baby, what are you thinking about'" And you know, I was embarrassed in the beginning to tell her that I rhymed and shyt. I was just like, 'Every black man rhymes.' I didn't want to be that. I didn't even like the fact that I rhymed anymore, because it felt dirty to me. Everybody did it, it wasn't respectable anymore. "It took me a long time to tell her that I rhymed, but she was real dope about it. She was like, 'You know what, if you really love it then you should just do it.' It was that confidence that I got from her that was just like, 'You know what, I'm not going to hide it anymore. I'm just going to do it and whatever happens from it happens.' I already knew that what I did wasn't going to make it on radio anymore, but it didn't mean that what I did was any less important."
Dropping Iron Works and Meeting GZA
"I put out Iron Works in 2007. That was supposed to be my swan song. I wasn't supposed to do more. I wanted to do that album for all the people that believed in me. For all the people in the studio with me, for my sister who was my biggest listener when I was a kid. I wanted to give them a CD to put in their hand. I wanted to give my mother a CD to put in her hand. Like all of these years of rhyming... I just wanted to prove that I didn't waste 20 years of mastering a craft without anything to show for it. I did that album to give to my loved ones. "I printed up CDs and I put it in his hands, and that was it. And it just so happened that one of the friends that I gave it to knew GZA. She was like 'I think GZA might like this.' I was like, 'Whatever. This is your copy.' I really didn't care. 'Whether you like it and listen to it or you let it sit there and collect dust, whatever, this is just my contribution for you being a good friend to me for all these years.' "She gave it to him and he listened to it. She reported back and was like, 'He thinks you're ill.'That was enough for me. One of the greatest lyricists ever thought I was ill. I could've stopped there. That could've been it. "But then she said that he said he was thinking about maybe doing an album and that he would like if I would come to his spot and record a track with him. When I heard that, I was emotional. Actually, at the time I wasn't emotional. I thought it was bullshyt industry shyt, like 'Yeah I'll do a song with him.' And then one day he called me and then we got in the studio, and it was just a dope experience. "It's funny because when I went in there, I got into the studio and I thought it was just going to be like... He said he wanted me to be on a song, I thought I was just going to be on a posse cut with a bunch of dudes. You know, I would spit a bunch of rhymes and send my ass on home. But I got in there and it was just him and an engineer dude. It was great. "I didn't actually get to see him write any rhymes, because he was already in the process of just finishing off the project. When I got in the studio he was like, 'Yo, I've been listening to you and I think I got a beat that you might like.' And he played this 'Firehouse' joint and I was like 'Oh yeah, this is perfect.' And so I went into the booth and laid the first verse down. He got on the monitors and was like, 'That was dope. You got more?' And I was like, "Yeah, I got 20 years of more.' He let me rock on the whole song. We speak every now and then on the phone but I let him do his thing. "I hit him with a text like "Yo, I got a new project out." I just want to be able to give him the work that I've done just off the strength of what he did. Like I want to give him every project that I ever did just to thank him, like "This is what you did. Thank you."
Learning to Produce
"Well, producing was a necessity. After you start rhyming, nobody knows who you are so you can't just manage to walk up to somebody's studio talking about ' I need some beats.' So it came to the point where I just had to make my own beats in order to rhyme over them. "Early on, I was just rhyming over people's songs—I didn't even have instrumentals. I was rhyming over the words. I would play a song over and over again, and all of a sudden I don't even hear you anymore on it. Now I'm rhyming on your shyt. And that was how I started getting back into it. "Ka the rapper takes a lot of time from Ka the producer. Like with those two hats on I got to find a whole lot of beats for Ka the rapper to decide that he's going to rhyme over this. "In other words, a producer is going to have to do the same thing. He would have to be patient with me and know that I might love it today and then three weeks later, 'Nah that beat ain't right.' You know what I'm saying? I know that I have time and I can dig and I can go through record stores. I'll just do it myself and I don't have to be a headache for nobody else. I'll be a headache for myself."
Shooting His Own Music Videos
"I knew that in this time of instant gratification, you can't tell kids to sit down and listen to a song. You can't keep anybody's interest for that long. Everything has to be associated with a visual. That's the only thing that can keep people interested. And I knew that. I knew that the kind of music I do is so dense. It's nothing that you can just pop in and just find some catchiness in it. It's real cerebral shyt, so I had to do a visual for a song. "'Cold Facts' was the first song, and so me and my lady got a camera. She went out at 3 a.m. one night, walked through the streets, picked some locations, filmed, and she was holding the camera like a soldier. Then we got back home, and I'm like, 'What am I supposed to do with this shyt?' [Laughs] I have a Macbook and so I put it in the iMovie, and I started dabbling with it. I edited 'Cold Facts' on iMovie. It took me a whole day, and by the end of it we were both like, 'I think it looks good.' Then we put it on YouTube and I started a Twitter that day, and I tweeted it out, and then somebody picked it up. "iMovie was just for the first video. I started doing some research and found Final Cut Pro. Now I do it on that. I don't know if I'm getting better, I'm not a director or nothing. It's just all out of necessity. But I don't want to take anything away from actual directors. I'm not a director, I'm not a producer, I'm an MC and that's what I do the best. It just so happens that I can put something together that can look halfway decent. I'm just glad that the people liked it."
Working With Roc Marciano
"I linked with Roc through GZA. The beat that GZA played me ['Firehouse'] was a beat that Roc Marci gave him. When he told me who produced it, in my mind, I knew I really wanted to work with Roc and do a project with him. "I just thought he was a producer. I didn't know that he was the same guy from the UN. I had just been into the UN album but I didn't put it together at the time. So I put out the feelers to see like how I could get in touch with Roc Marci to get a beat, and I ended up speaking to him. From then on it was just a mutual respect. "We just clicked. We spoke all the time, he was telling me how dope I was, and it was good to hear because a lot of people were killing me for 'Firehouse.' I was interested at the time to see what 'Firehouse' did. Did people like it? And it was like nobody really liked it. They were talking about how it was the worst song on the album and that I sounded horrible. 'His voice is all gravelly, you can't even understand what he's saying. He's corny, he's wack.' It was hard to read all that shyt. But it was good to know that someone who I actually respected was like 'fukk the people. You murdered that.' He gave me strength. Roc was another big factor in me having the confidence to continue to do it."
Response to Grief Pedigree
"I liked the fact that people recognized after so many years of people not paying attention to what I do. I didn't have any expectations, I just wanted people to hear the music. People were caring to listen to it and people were paying attention to the time that I took into writing it and quoting my lines, and using beautiful words to describe the art that I was making. It was finally like the justification for those times that I hated that I was even doing this. "With love comes hate. I already know that it's coming. I don't dwell on it. I have enough hate in my life. I'm good. That shyt doesn't faze me. In fact, you can say whatever bad words you have to say. The fact is that you're not trying to kill me. I had people that tried to kill me before. So hearing people say that your music is wack does absolutely nothing to me. "I'm my own worst critic. Nobody can say anything worse than what I already said about myself. I know that I was wack at one time. I know that I don't make party music. I know that sometimes it may seem like I'm boring. I know that I have a monotone kind of style. I know all this shyt. But I know that what I do, nobody else is doing. "You can't party your whole life. If you live in a party then all of a sudden that party isn't going to be a party anymore. You gotta have a balance with this shyt. If you have sugar all the time, all of a sudden salt is going to be what you want. You know what I'm saying? If you eat salt all the time maybe sugar is what you want. I'm trying to be that salt to all of this sugar that's being given out right now."
Evolution from Grief Pedigree to The Night's Gambit
"I don't know if I've 'progressed.' You know, I think what's good about this project is... I don't know if it's my progression or if it's the listener's progression. I think people know how to listen to me now. If you're going to sit down with a Ka album, you really got to sit down with this shyt. It's not disposable shyt. I think the progression is that people understand what I'm doing now. They're listening to my songs and they're waiting for the lines to come. "You know those paintings that you stand in front, and you wait for your eyes to adjust until the picture comes out? I think that's the kind of music I do. They know there's something in there, and they first got to just wait and listen and listen and look and look, and then all of a sudden it will reveal something. That's what happens when you listen. That's what I have now. I think people know that now about me. "And that was the biggest hurdle that I had to overcome because that's a big hurdle because not a lot of people have the time to do that shyt. They'll listen one time and not understand it and be like 'That's a bunch of bullshyt.' Now, people that really care about the art, they wait and they're looking at that picture, they waiting for the shyt to reveal itself man."
The New Era of Rappers
"I love it. I'm not regional though. I care about the art more than about the region. The boys in Brooklyn are doing it, the boys in Chicagoare doing it, the boys in LA are doing it... They have so many new movements of young MCs that care about rhyming. "I root for them. I root for Chance the Rapper. I root for Joey Bada$$. I root for Ab-Soul. I root for Earl Sweatshirt. I want all of those young boys that care, that give a fukk about rhyming, and that love it, to continue to get better and I want them to be more ill than me. I want hip-hop to always thrive. This is the music that I love. I want this shyt to be around forever. "I'm glad that we had Nas, Jay, Big, Slick Rick and all of them. Right now, while I'm still strong and my mind is still right, I want to be one of those soldiers holding it up until those young dudes come and they grab it from me and hold it up even higher. I root for anybody that loves hip-hop. If you love it, if you respect it, I love it."
Respecting Rap's Pioneers
"I feel like something about the culture of hip-hop doesn't reflect back enough. We don't go back and we don't check enough. In rock 'n' roll, kids go back and they know who Led Zeppelin is. They know who The Doors are. "You know, I really feel bad for the pioneers because I hear shyt like, 'greatest of all time' or 'best MC alive,' and that shyt bugs me out. KRS-One is still alive. Rakim's still alive. I see that everybody who is hot right now gets that moniker of 'Best MC Alive.' That's crazy talk. Kool Moe Dee is still alive. Slick Rick is still alive. They don't get the props that they deserve, because they didn't get the money. "I know that one hundred years from now, Eminem is going to be the greatest MC ever. Not because he's the greatest MC. It's because when they go back, that kid that's going to be introduced to hip-hop 100 years from now, what's he going to go back to? He's going to look and see who won the most Grammy's. 'Oh, so he must be the greatest.' "I think it's beautiful that KRS-One is still doing music. He should be still doing music. The problem with hip-hop is that there is a lot of ageism—'just because a man is a certain age he shouldn't be rhyming, that it's a young man's art.' Art is art. If you're a poet or a sculpter or a painter, there's no age limit. It shows a lack of respect for the art."
Having a Regular Job
"I have a full time job and I work all the time. I try to keep that kinda low. I just have a job. It ain't my calling or nothing. It's just my job. But I love my job because it gives me the freedom to do the art. I feel like if I didn't have a job, that's when I would have to compromise myself a little bit more. "That's what happens when art becomes your bread and butter. Sometimes you gotta extend yourself a little bit more because that's your only means of eating. I'm blessed to have a job because a lot of people don't have one, but it's still just a job. "It's funny, they didn't know I rapped for a long time. But then Grief Pedigree put the kibosh on that shyt. One of the dudes was driving home from my job and he had satellite radio and 'Cold Facts' came on. And he said 'Hold on... that sounds like Ka? And his name is Ka?' He put two and two together, he came to work the next day and started telling everybody, and then he went on YouTube and pulled up the videos. But until then, it was very quiet. But it's funny because now, I didn't tell them I put out a new album. I let things just die down, they thought it was just a one time shot."
The Future
"If I have a child I wouldn't hide hip-hop from them, but I'm going to introduce them to it, and I want them to love it as much as they want to love it. I'm not going to force it on them. They'll have the right father who can play them this music from the beginning to today. But if they don't feel it, if you love hip-hop so crazy but then your child likes country, it just is what it is. "I don't have any children yet. Honestly, if I am blessed enough to have kids then that might be the last time you hear me, because I know how much time as I take away for the music, I don't know if I'd be able to take away that much time away from my child. Each time I finish a project I have to apologize to my family, because I neglect them for months doing music. I wouldn't be able to do that with a child. If you don't hear me anymore, like all of a sudden you don't hear from me again, it's either because I died or had a child, one of the two [Laughs.]"
"I linked with Roc through GZA. The beat that GZA played me ['Firehouse'] was a beat that Roc Marci gave him. When he told me who produced it, in my mind, I knew I really wanted to work with Roc and do a project with him. "I just thought he was a producer. I didn't know that he was the same guy from the UN. I had just been into the UN album but I didn't put it together at the time. So I put out the feelers to see like how I could get in touch with Roc Marci to get a beat, and I ended up speaking to him. From then on it was just a mutual respect. "We just clicked. We spoke all the time, he was telling me how dope I was, and it was good to hear because a lot of people were killing me for 'Firehouse.' I was interested at the time to see what 'Firehouse' did. Did people like it? And it was like nobody really liked it. They were talking about how it was the worst song on the album and that I sounded horrible. 'His voice is all gravelly, you can't even understand what he's saying. He's corny, he's wack.' It was hard to read all that shyt. But it was good to know that someone who I actually respected was like 'fukk the people. You murdered that.' He gave me strength. Roc was another big factor in me having the confidence to continue to do it."
Response to Grief Pedigree
"I liked the fact that people recognized after so many years of people not paying attention to what I do. I didn't have any expectations, I just wanted people to hear the music. People were caring to listen to it and people were paying attention to the time that I took into writing it and quoting my lines, and using beautiful words to describe the art that I was making. It was finally like the justification for those times that I hated that I was even doing this. "With love comes hate. I already know that it's coming. I don't dwell on it. I have enough hate in my life. I'm good. That shyt doesn't faze me. In fact, you can say whatever bad words you have to say. The fact is that you're not trying to kill me. I had people that tried to kill me before. So hearing people say that your music is wack does absolutely nothing to me. "I'm my own worst critic. Nobody can say anything worse than what I already said about myself. I know that I was wack at one time. I know that I don't make party music. I know that sometimes it may seem like I'm boring. I know that I have a monotone kind of style. I know all this shyt. But I know that what I do, nobody else is doing. "You can't party your whole life. If you live in a party then all of a sudden that party isn't going to be a party anymore. You gotta have a balance with this shyt. If you have sugar all the time, all of a sudden salt is going to be what you want. You know what I'm saying? If you eat salt all the time maybe sugar is what you want. I'm trying to be that salt to all of this sugar that's being given out right now."
Evolution from Grief Pedigree to The Night's Gambit
"I don't know if I've 'progressed.' You know, I think what's good about this project is... I don't know if it's my progression or if it's the listener's progression. I think people know how to listen to me now. If you're going to sit down with a Ka album, you really got to sit down with this shyt. It's not disposable shyt. I think the progression is that people understand what I'm doing now. They're listening to my songs and they're waiting for the lines to come. "You know those paintings that you stand in front, and you wait for your eyes to adjust until the picture comes out? I think that's the kind of music I do. They know there's something in there, and they first got to just wait and listen and listen and look and look, and then all of a sudden it will reveal something. That's what happens when you listen. That's what I have now. I think people know that now about me. "And that was the biggest hurdle that I had to overcome because that's a big hurdle because not a lot of people have the time to do that shyt. They'll listen one time and not understand it and be like 'That's a bunch of bullshyt.' Now, people that really care about the art, they wait and they're looking at that picture, they waiting for the shyt to reveal itself man."
The New Era of Rappers
"I love it. I'm not regional though. I care about the art more than about the region. The boys in Brooklyn are doing it, the boys in Chicagoare doing it, the boys in LA are doing it... They have so many new movements of young MCs that care about rhyming. "I root for them. I root for Chance the Rapper. I root for Joey Bada$$. I root for Ab-Soul. I root for Earl Sweatshirt. I want all of those young boys that care, that give a fukk about rhyming, and that love it, to continue to get better and I want them to be more ill than me. I want hip-hop to always thrive. This is the music that I love. I want this shyt to be around forever. "I'm glad that we had Nas, Jay, Big, Slick Rick and all of them. Right now, while I'm still strong and my mind is still right, I want to be one of those soldiers holding it up until those young dudes come and they grab it from me and hold it up even higher. I root for anybody that loves hip-hop. If you love it, if you respect it, I love it."
Respecting Rap's Pioneers
"I feel like something about the culture of hip-hop doesn't reflect back enough. We don't go back and we don't check enough. In rock 'n' roll, kids go back and they know who Led Zeppelin is. They know who The Doors are. "You know, I really feel bad for the pioneers because I hear shyt like, 'greatest of all time' or 'best MC alive,' and that shyt bugs me out. KRS-One is still alive. Rakim's still alive. I see that everybody who is hot right now gets that moniker of 'Best MC Alive.' That's crazy talk. Kool Moe Dee is still alive. Slick Rick is still alive. They don't get the props that they deserve, because they didn't get the money. "I know that one hundred years from now, Eminem is going to be the greatest MC ever. Not because he's the greatest MC. It's because when they go back, that kid that's going to be introduced to hip-hop 100 years from now, what's he going to go back to? He's going to look and see who won the most Grammy's. 'Oh, so he must be the greatest.' "I think it's beautiful that KRS-One is still doing music. He should be still doing music. The problem with hip-hop is that there is a lot of ageism—'just because a man is a certain age he shouldn't be rhyming, that it's a young man's art.' Art is art. If you're a poet or a sculpter or a painter, there's no age limit. It shows a lack of respect for the art."
Having a Regular Job
"I have a full time job and I work all the time. I try to keep that kinda low. I just have a job. It ain't my calling or nothing. It's just my job. But I love my job because it gives me the freedom to do the art. I feel like if I didn't have a job, that's when I would have to compromise myself a little bit more. "That's what happens when art becomes your bread and butter. Sometimes you gotta extend yourself a little bit more because that's your only means of eating. I'm blessed to have a job because a lot of people don't have one, but it's still just a job. "It's funny, they didn't know I rapped for a long time. But then Grief Pedigree put the kibosh on that shyt. One of the dudes was driving home from my job and he had satellite radio and 'Cold Facts' came on. And he said 'Hold on... that sounds like Ka? And his name is Ka?' He put two and two together, he came to work the next day and started telling everybody, and then he went on YouTube and pulled up the videos. But until then, it was very quiet. But it's funny because now, I didn't tell them I put out a new album. I let things just die down, they thought it was just a one time shot."
The Future
"If I have a child I wouldn't hide hip-hop from them, but I'm going to introduce them to it, and I want them to love it as much as they want to love it. I'm not going to force it on them. They'll have the right father who can play them this music from the beginning to today. But if they don't feel it, if you love hip-hop so crazy but then your child likes country, it just is what it is. "I don't have any children yet. Honestly, if I am blessed enough to have kids then that might be the last time you hear me, because I know how much time as I take away for the music, I don't know if I'd be able to take away that much time away from my child. Each time I finish a project I have to apologize to my family, because I neglect them for months doing music. I wouldn't be able to do that with a child. If you don't hear me anymore, like all of a sudden you don't hear from me again, it's either because I died or had a child, one of the two [Laughs.]"
listening to Iron works now, this is my fav Ka album.
i know what its like
Hood
^ those two joints are crazy nice and could sound on another level with more production added to it.
i know what its like
Hood
^ those two joints are crazy nice and could sound on another level with more production added to it.
Big Mel
@bigboss
Not mine. I ordered last year when Grief Pedigree dropped and it's a full digipack. not the cardboard slip like the next 2.
Ka Tells The Stories Behind The Self Directed Videos From His Album Grief Pedigree: direct link
Chamber: "I was driving one day and I saw this overpass on a highway that looked like a barrel of a gun. When you clean your gun you see the barrel, and to me, that shyt looked like the hammer. I looked at it and was like 'I wanna be in there, in the nestle of the chamber,' and that ended up being the theme of the video. That's where I was going with that with 'One in the Chamber.' It was just me driving around looking at shyt, and when I saw that, I was like, 'I'm a shoot a video in there, and I'm a wait till the night time so nobody is walking through there.'"
Cold Facts: "'Cold Facts' was the first joint, so I had to make that strong. For years you always see MCs rhyming with the hands and shyt, I felt like nobody really did that in their videos, really accentuate the hands like that. I'm looking at everything going on at night from the rooftop surveying the streets. I like looking over shyt. When looking over things, and rhyming and surveying and shyt, not to sound corny or whatever, I was reporting the streets. When you're reporting the streets, you gotta have a good reference point. I wanted to be close where I could see everything, write everything, and just observe. When I shot this, it was the nighttime, like 2, 3, 4 o'clock in the morning, before the sun come up. It's the peacefulness I like during that time.
No Downtime:
"The first scene is down on 42nd St., what I call 40 "hectic" because it's so busy. I wanted to show the actual area of the city because they say the city never sleeps, and it really doesn't. I love NYC, I rep it as much as I can. I wanted to show the grind, the hustle of New Yorkers, so I chose 42nd. This video shows me never sleeping either; I rhyme, I take pictures, I try to do my lil' photography shyt. If I'm not rhyming, I'm digging for new records making beats, if I'm not making beats, I'm out with my camera out taking videos, taking pictures. No down time.
"The random cat at the end of the video just came out of nowhere. [Laughs.] There use to be packs of random dogs in the city. It seems like there are no dogs anymore, like they got replaced by packs of cats, so it's a side of New York that's intriguing to me—how it changed from packs of dogs to packs of cats. If you go out in the street at night there's cats everywhere. Cats are always looking for food, and no matter what time of day it is, they're always out there taking no breaks trying to get it, just like a New Yorker."
Summer: "When I did this video, I remember going in and out of different projects: Van Dyke, Glenmore, and I just wanted to show the surface of the projects and how it looks in the summer. Everybody's summer song in the hood is about barbecues and fly shyt; summer in the hood is a dangerous time because you die in the summer. That's the time when everybody's out, the guns are out, you're more likely to get into contact with people, get into confrontations with people, shyt gets physical, and escalates from there. You know how many block parties I been to that got shot up? It makes no sense. I wanted to show the rough part of the summer; I've had rough summers. In the summertime, you out there naked. At least in the winter you could throw on a lil' vest under your snorkel coat."
Chamber: "I was driving one day and I saw this overpass on a highway that looked like a barrel of a gun. When you clean your gun you see the barrel, and to me, that shyt looked like the hammer. I looked at it and was like 'I wanna be in there, in the nestle of the chamber,' and that ended up being the theme of the video. That's where I was going with that with 'One in the Chamber.' It was just me driving around looking at shyt, and when I saw that, I was like, 'I'm a shoot a video in there, and I'm a wait till the night time so nobody is walking through there.'"
Cold Facts: "'Cold Facts' was the first joint, so I had to make that strong. For years you always see MCs rhyming with the hands and shyt, I felt like nobody really did that in their videos, really accentuate the hands like that. I'm looking at everything going on at night from the rooftop surveying the streets. I like looking over shyt. When looking over things, and rhyming and surveying and shyt, not to sound corny or whatever, I was reporting the streets. When you're reporting the streets, you gotta have a good reference point. I wanted to be close where I could see everything, write everything, and just observe. When I shot this, it was the nighttime, like 2, 3, 4 o'clock in the morning, before the sun come up. It's the peacefulness I like during that time.
No Downtime:
"The first scene is down on 42nd St., what I call 40 "hectic" because it's so busy. I wanted to show the actual area of the city because they say the city never sleeps, and it really doesn't. I love NYC, I rep it as much as I can. I wanted to show the grind, the hustle of New Yorkers, so I chose 42nd. This video shows me never sleeping either; I rhyme, I take pictures, I try to do my lil' photography shyt. If I'm not rhyming, I'm digging for new records making beats, if I'm not making beats, I'm out with my camera out taking videos, taking pictures. No down time.
"The random cat at the end of the video just came out of nowhere. [Laughs.] There use to be packs of random dogs in the city. It seems like there are no dogs anymore, like they got replaced by packs of cats, so it's a side of New York that's intriguing to me—how it changed from packs of dogs to packs of cats. If you go out in the street at night there's cats everywhere. Cats are always looking for food, and no matter what time of day it is, they're always out there taking no breaks trying to get it, just like a New Yorker."
Summer: "When I did this video, I remember going in and out of different projects: Van Dyke, Glenmore, and I just wanted to show the surface of the projects and how it looks in the summer. Everybody's summer song in the hood is about barbecues and fly shyt; summer in the hood is a dangerous time because you die in the summer. That's the time when everybody's out, the guns are out, you're more likely to get into contact with people, get into confrontations with people, shyt gets physical, and escalates from there. You know how many block parties I been to that got shot up? It makes no sense. I wanted to show the rough part of the summer; I've had rough summers. In the summertime, you out there naked. At least in the winter you could throw on a lil' vest under your snorkel coat."
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Decisions: "One of my homies worked in the school and hooked it up. We went up in there on a Saturday or a Sunday. I don't want to give the school away to get my mans in trouble, but it was in Brownsville. He said nobody's here, it's Saturday, come through. I was in the gym, I was in the classroom, I was the teacher, I was the student, I was everywhere. I wanted to do it here to show to the lil' shorties that you have to make decisions in life. I'm not gonna make them for you, but I'm gonna present them to you so you can make the choice. I wanted the shorties to know that staying in school is the best decision, even though sometimes it's the hardest one because fast money ain't in school, fast money is on the streets. You gotta catch them before they get too old. They hear too many things when they're older. I wanna catch them when they're learning how to read and write, when they are absorbing what you're telling them like a sponge."
Collage:
"'Collage' is the kind of song that you get rocked to sleep with. It's kind of monotone, and I wanted the video to be real visual. I do videos like this because I know the music that I do is not radio music, it's not commercial music. In order for me to be heard, I have to give visuals like this because I know that some people think this music is bland, or mundane, they don't have the ears for it. So when I give them visuals, I'm trying to give them another aspect of the song. 'Collage' is black and white like my music. The flashes of color, I'm giving you glimpses of powerful imagery. Before you get rocked to sleep too much, boom you get another flash. I showed it to one of my boys and he didn't notice that the flashes was going on. I tried to show images that I've seen that inspired me. Images that people might think are ugly that I think are beautiful like street signs, light poles, things you see in the city on the regular. Things we take for granted as just being there like train stations. Nobody thinks train stations are beautiful, they see it as a way to get around. I see the beauty in that.
"The dice in the video is a reference to playing Cee-lo. That's a hood game, they don't play Cee-lo in Vegas. They play craps, they play two dice, we play Cee-lo. That shyt is only for the hood. Everybody know that 4, 5, 6 is an automatic win. It's something that's synonymous with the hood. I remember playing one time, and this dude got chopped off with a machete. There was an argument and dude was like 'I'm a be back.' Nobody believed him, and the nikka came back. The other dude they found him chopped off in the projects somewhere."
Every...: "With 'Every,' I wanted to go back on my block and the neighborhood that made me, and introduce the Brooklyn that I know. I was in the car and had the camera out there just recording, recording all the blocks. Blocks that the people from my neighborhood would know. Went around to the Brooklyn Bridge, Rockaway Ave., I was reppin. I always rep BK to the fullest. Rockaway Ave. on the C was my train stop as a kid. Spending time as a kid taking the trains, I always paid attention to the sign Rockaway. 'Ka,' that's what we called it. It was like 'This is my station.'
Up Against Goliath: "Everybody knows the story of David and Goliath. David was at war with an army of giants, and the biggest one was Goliath. He was under equipped because all he had was a fukking slingshot and a rock. They had swords and they were deep, and he still took down Goliath with a slingshot. In the hood you're fighting against neighboring dudes trying to get money like you, your boys who are conspiring against you to get you for that paper, and then there's the police, and in New York City, they're deep. The boys in blue are real. In the video I'm David going up against Goliath trying to survive in these streets. I wanted to focus on the boys in blue and the precincts that I knew like the one closest to my hood: 73rd, the one after that was 75th, and then 77th. Those precincts, they get it popping over there. [Laughs.] That was the theme for 'Up Against Goliath': I showed me and I showed who Goliath was. I remember shooting this and getting attention from the boys in blue like, 'What you doing here filming?' I'm like 'What you mean, this is my camera, you can't tell me what I can and can't film.' It was crazy man."
Vessel:
"'Vessel' is one of my favorite songs on the album, it means a lot to me. There's two parts on that song, and in one of them, I'm talking about one of my boys that died, so I wanted the video to be special. Again, I was driving around one night and I passed by this building that had graffiti on it that said 'villain.' When I saw that I bugged out. I stopped the car and was like, 'I need to shoot here right now.' [Laughs.] That shyt was so cold. Back in the day, you would've been seen that in a video; first day that was on the wall, everybody would've tried to use that. Things aren't really like that no more, everything is kind of pretty in hip-hop. Nobody uses dirty brick walls in their videos, hip-hop has transformed into something else. In my head I'm going, This shyt is ill, but how can I bring it out, how can I make it exciting? I shot the wall first to get the word 'villain' clear, then I shot my performance scene after that. When I went to edit it, I was playing around with how to flash 'Villain' in, like do I just want to flash it in, or do it to the beat? Half the time I didn't even know what I was doing. [Laughs.] I never did a video before that.
"I consider myself to be a villain—well not no more because I'm trying to be a grown up now and a law-abiding citizen. [Laughs.] There was a time when I was a villain, the things I was representing at the time, I consider that being a villain."
Born King NY: "The floating head thing in the video was me fukking with the exposure, playing with the camera. I remember playing with the camera and it came out all white, and to me, that shyt was ill, so I kept it. [Laughs.] 'Born King N.Y.' is BK N.Y., an acronym for Brooklyn New York. I wanted to be on the rooftop again looking down, showing the sites, driving around in the car filming what I could film. There's so much shyt that makes up New York: I showed the beautiful side of the city, I showed the ugly side of the city. In New York you go through so many different neighborhoods in a matter of blocks. You walk to the Upper East Side, a few blocks later you're in Spanish Harlem; you could be in Fordham Road, and in a matter of blocks you're in Riverdale. I tried to show both sides of the city and everything in between."
The article doesn't have an entry for Iron Age.
BONUS INTERVIEW FROM 2012: Ka Talks Newfound Recognition, Mailing Out His Own Albums & What Jay-Z Is Doing For Brooklyn
Collage:
"'Collage' is the kind of song that you get rocked to sleep with. It's kind of monotone, and I wanted the video to be real visual. I do videos like this because I know the music that I do is not radio music, it's not commercial music. In order for me to be heard, I have to give visuals like this because I know that some people think this music is bland, or mundane, they don't have the ears for it. So when I give them visuals, I'm trying to give them another aspect of the song. 'Collage' is black and white like my music. The flashes of color, I'm giving you glimpses of powerful imagery. Before you get rocked to sleep too much, boom you get another flash. I showed it to one of my boys and he didn't notice that the flashes was going on. I tried to show images that I've seen that inspired me. Images that people might think are ugly that I think are beautiful like street signs, light poles, things you see in the city on the regular. Things we take for granted as just being there like train stations. Nobody thinks train stations are beautiful, they see it as a way to get around. I see the beauty in that.
"The dice in the video is a reference to playing Cee-lo. That's a hood game, they don't play Cee-lo in Vegas. They play craps, they play two dice, we play Cee-lo. That shyt is only for the hood. Everybody know that 4, 5, 6 is an automatic win. It's something that's synonymous with the hood. I remember playing one time, and this dude got chopped off with a machete. There was an argument and dude was like 'I'm a be back.' Nobody believed him, and the nikka came back. The other dude they found him chopped off in the projects somewhere."
Every...: "With 'Every,' I wanted to go back on my block and the neighborhood that made me, and introduce the Brooklyn that I know. I was in the car and had the camera out there just recording, recording all the blocks. Blocks that the people from my neighborhood would know. Went around to the Brooklyn Bridge, Rockaway Ave., I was reppin. I always rep BK to the fullest. Rockaway Ave. on the C was my train stop as a kid. Spending time as a kid taking the trains, I always paid attention to the sign Rockaway. 'Ka,' that's what we called it. It was like 'This is my station.'
Up Against Goliath: "Everybody knows the story of David and Goliath. David was at war with an army of giants, and the biggest one was Goliath. He was under equipped because all he had was a fukking slingshot and a rock. They had swords and they were deep, and he still took down Goliath with a slingshot. In the hood you're fighting against neighboring dudes trying to get money like you, your boys who are conspiring against you to get you for that paper, and then there's the police, and in New York City, they're deep. The boys in blue are real. In the video I'm David going up against Goliath trying to survive in these streets. I wanted to focus on the boys in blue and the precincts that I knew like the one closest to my hood: 73rd, the one after that was 75th, and then 77th. Those precincts, they get it popping over there. [Laughs.] That was the theme for 'Up Against Goliath': I showed me and I showed who Goliath was. I remember shooting this and getting attention from the boys in blue like, 'What you doing here filming?' I'm like 'What you mean, this is my camera, you can't tell me what I can and can't film.' It was crazy man."
Vessel:
"'Vessel' is one of my favorite songs on the album, it means a lot to me. There's two parts on that song, and in one of them, I'm talking about one of my boys that died, so I wanted the video to be special. Again, I was driving around one night and I passed by this building that had graffiti on it that said 'villain.' When I saw that I bugged out. I stopped the car and was like, 'I need to shoot here right now.' [Laughs.] That shyt was so cold. Back in the day, you would've been seen that in a video; first day that was on the wall, everybody would've tried to use that. Things aren't really like that no more, everything is kind of pretty in hip-hop. Nobody uses dirty brick walls in their videos, hip-hop has transformed into something else. In my head I'm going, This shyt is ill, but how can I bring it out, how can I make it exciting? I shot the wall first to get the word 'villain' clear, then I shot my performance scene after that. When I went to edit it, I was playing around with how to flash 'Villain' in, like do I just want to flash it in, or do it to the beat? Half the time I didn't even know what I was doing. [Laughs.] I never did a video before that.
"I consider myself to be a villain—well not no more because I'm trying to be a grown up now and a law-abiding citizen. [Laughs.] There was a time when I was a villain, the things I was representing at the time, I consider that being a villain."
Born King NY: "The floating head thing in the video was me fukking with the exposure, playing with the camera. I remember playing with the camera and it came out all white, and to me, that shyt was ill, so I kept it. [Laughs.] 'Born King N.Y.' is BK N.Y., an acronym for Brooklyn New York. I wanted to be on the rooftop again looking down, showing the sites, driving around in the car filming what I could film. There's so much shyt that makes up New York: I showed the beautiful side of the city, I showed the ugly side of the city. In New York you go through so many different neighborhoods in a matter of blocks. You walk to the Upper East Side, a few blocks later you're in Spanish Harlem; you could be in Fordham Road, and in a matter of blocks you're in Riverdale. I tried to show both sides of the city and everything in between."
The article doesn't have an entry for Iron Age.
BONUS INTERVIEW FROM 2012: Ka Talks Newfound Recognition, Mailing Out His Own Albums & What Jay-Z Is Doing For Brooklyn
Pinyapplesuckas
He's A Good Man
my nikka Ka 
"I don't want a million fanatical boyband fans": Brownsville rapper Ka opens up about his devastating album The Night's Gambit.
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“Music is my outlet and my therapy,” says Ka. “I need it in order to kind of be sane. It helps me shake those dark images that I’m always seeing. And I think people can hear that. I ain’t just doing this to be doing it, I have to be doing it.”
After a stint in the moderately successful hip-hop group Natural Elements between 1993 and 1995, Ka more or less retreated from rap music until 2008, when by chance a friend passed his album Ironworks to GZA. The Genius was so impressed that he invited him to guest on ‘Firehouse’, a song Ka all but stole. Ironworks, which Ka released on his own label, didn’t make much of a splash, but the following album Grief Pedigree was better in almost every way, sparking interest in this rapper long out of his thirties with the gravelly monotone, dark bars and knotty boom-bap beats. On his third album, The Night’s Gambit, Ka sticks to that sample-heavy sound, even weaving chess imagery into the record’s narrative fabric. But a new attention to space ensures The Night’s Gambit is both bleaker and more contemporary than just throwback hip-hop. Like Gunplay and Tree, Ka raps best when he’s at his most broken, and there’s enough harrowing, haunting material on The Night’s Gambit to break anyone.
I knew there was no way Ka wouldn’t be genuine and interesting to talk to, but even so I was surprised by how candid and generous he was.
You grew up in Brownsville, Brooklyn. How would you describe it?
Where I’m from, Ocean Hill, Brownsville… you don’t really know it’s bad until you leave and go to other places. Growing up, home is home, your friends are your friends and you’re doing things like regular people, but once you start getting a little older and maybe you start seeing other places on TV or go to school outside of where you live, you start to see people who live a little differently. Soon you start realising that you’re living in an area that’s really impoverished, and that ain’t how living is supposed to be. So you start making moves on your own so you can go and get that.
I have a love-hate relationship with my blocks. It’s still the same in the Brownsville area now… Williamsburg is Williamsburg now. Brooklyn’s been gentrified, Fort Greene’s been gentrified, Bed-Stuy’s been gentrified but Brownsville is still Brownsville, East New York is still East New York, and there are forgotten areas in Brooklyn, like Bushwick still, where people still live hard. There are still kids that live as hard as I lived, as hard as my friends lived. That’s where I’m from and where my people are from. You know, we weren’t bad people, just hungry. Hunger’s going to get you up outta your house and go do something.
And is hip-hop now your way of making things good?
Now I know things I used to do as a kid weren’t right. I’m not trying to be important or anything, just talk about the block, and the people that aren’t with me and the people who are with me still. In some sense I’m being like a reporter, I’ve been so affected by what I saw that I just can’t help but talk about it. If I can bring a little light to the area then that’s my responsibility.
I’m not a rich man. If I was a rich man, I’d be building parks and libraries and centres all around the hood, because I didn’t have that. I played basketball with no nets. And I would have wanted someone who was from that neighbourhood getting rich to let ’em know we still over here, we still living hard. Just let them know about this area.
The hip-hop that I grew up and loved was impoverished music, by poor people for poor people. It was aspirational, like, “Eventually we gonna make it good,” but the hip-hop now that they’re playing on the radio is celebratory music – “We’re poppin’ bottles, we’ve got so much money that I’m wasting it. You poor and I’m rich.” That’s the hip-hop that’s playing on the radio now. There is a time to celebrate, but there’s a time for loss, too.
What other music did you love when you were growing up?
I wasn’t buying shyt ’cause I couldn’t afford shyt but the radio was better back then, and I grew up in the ’70s so disco was still around, and I listened to a lot of that. My pop was into jazz so I listened to a lot of that, and my mom was into R&B. In Brooklyn, we’ve got a heavy West Indian and roots culture so I listened to a lot of West Indian and Caribbean music. And when I first heard hip-hop, I was blown away, and it just took over everything.
Grief Pedigree and The Night’s Gambit are pretty far from the Natural Elements stuff but your sound is still pretty old school. Where do your samples come from; do you spend a lot of time digging?
It’s so time consuming. I listen to so much music; I go to a record store and I’m there allday long and I’m listening to everything, every genre. You never know when you’re gonna find that right sound so you’ve got to listen to everything. That’s why it takes me so long to do an album, because it takes about a year to find the twelve quality enough samples to use. That’s a lot of work. For me, digging is like a music lesson. I wasn’t exposed to all the different kinds of music growing up, so this opens up whole new levels for me. I’m listening to kinds of music I wouldn’t normally listen to, like Turkish music, or this Russian album, or this South American or African album I would never have picked up. It was all hip-hop, R&B and reggae when I was growing up, and jazz. So now I’m listening to everything. It’s great.
What’s the last good record you got?
The last good one? You know what, I don’t like telling, I like to keep some of my digging a secret! Haha, pardon me, I can’t answer that, my bad.
What about current rappers, who are you feeling?
I’m no expert on who’s ill, but I listen to a lot of the young kids, like Chance the Rapper. I think if he carries on what he’s doing, he’s going to be a great talent. Roc Marciano is one of my closest friends, I think he’s one of the illest around right now. And I like this kid in Chicago, his name’s Tree. I feel like I’m doing a disservice to people by saying names because everybody should be celebrated. A lot of the people are not getting the shine they deserve.
I still listen to the older cats, the people I grew up listening to. They still doing it. Sometimes I want something different, sometimes I want something I’m familiar with, sometimes I want something more experimental, some new flavour. But when I’m doing records I shut everything down because I don’t want to be influenced.
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“Music is my outlet and my therapy,” says Ka. “I need it in order to kind of be sane. It helps me shake those dark images that I’m always seeing. And I think people can hear that. I ain’t just doing this to be doing it, I have to be doing it.”
After a stint in the moderately successful hip-hop group Natural Elements between 1993 and 1995, Ka more or less retreated from rap music until 2008, when by chance a friend passed his album Ironworks to GZA. The Genius was so impressed that he invited him to guest on ‘Firehouse’, a song Ka all but stole. Ironworks, which Ka released on his own label, didn’t make much of a splash, but the following album Grief Pedigree was better in almost every way, sparking interest in this rapper long out of his thirties with the gravelly monotone, dark bars and knotty boom-bap beats. On his third album, The Night’s Gambit, Ka sticks to that sample-heavy sound, even weaving chess imagery into the record’s narrative fabric. But a new attention to space ensures The Night’s Gambit is both bleaker and more contemporary than just throwback hip-hop. Like Gunplay and Tree, Ka raps best when he’s at his most broken, and there’s enough harrowing, haunting material on The Night’s Gambit to break anyone.
I knew there was no way Ka wouldn’t be genuine and interesting to talk to, but even so I was surprised by how candid and generous he was.
You grew up in Brownsville, Brooklyn. How would you describe it?
Where I’m from, Ocean Hill, Brownsville… you don’t really know it’s bad until you leave and go to other places. Growing up, home is home, your friends are your friends and you’re doing things like regular people, but once you start getting a little older and maybe you start seeing other places on TV or go to school outside of where you live, you start to see people who live a little differently. Soon you start realising that you’re living in an area that’s really impoverished, and that ain’t how living is supposed to be. So you start making moves on your own so you can go and get that.
I have a love-hate relationship with my blocks. It’s still the same in the Brownsville area now… Williamsburg is Williamsburg now. Brooklyn’s been gentrified, Fort Greene’s been gentrified, Bed-Stuy’s been gentrified but Brownsville is still Brownsville, East New York is still East New York, and there are forgotten areas in Brooklyn, like Bushwick still, where people still live hard. There are still kids that live as hard as I lived, as hard as my friends lived. That’s where I’m from and where my people are from. You know, we weren’t bad people, just hungry. Hunger’s going to get you up outta your house and go do something.
And is hip-hop now your way of making things good?
Now I know things I used to do as a kid weren’t right. I’m not trying to be important or anything, just talk about the block, and the people that aren’t with me and the people who are with me still. In some sense I’m being like a reporter, I’ve been so affected by what I saw that I just can’t help but talk about it. If I can bring a little light to the area then that’s my responsibility.
I’m not a rich man. If I was a rich man, I’d be building parks and libraries and centres all around the hood, because I didn’t have that. I played basketball with no nets. And I would have wanted someone who was from that neighbourhood getting rich to let ’em know we still over here, we still living hard. Just let them know about this area.
The hip-hop that I grew up and loved was impoverished music, by poor people for poor people. It was aspirational, like, “Eventually we gonna make it good,” but the hip-hop now that they’re playing on the radio is celebratory music – “We’re poppin’ bottles, we’ve got so much money that I’m wasting it. You poor and I’m rich.” That’s the hip-hop that’s playing on the radio now. There is a time to celebrate, but there’s a time for loss, too.
What other music did you love when you were growing up?
I wasn’t buying shyt ’cause I couldn’t afford shyt but the radio was better back then, and I grew up in the ’70s so disco was still around, and I listened to a lot of that. My pop was into jazz so I listened to a lot of that, and my mom was into R&B. In Brooklyn, we’ve got a heavy West Indian and roots culture so I listened to a lot of West Indian and Caribbean music. And when I first heard hip-hop, I was blown away, and it just took over everything.
Grief Pedigree and The Night’s Gambit are pretty far from the Natural Elements stuff but your sound is still pretty old school. Where do your samples come from; do you spend a lot of time digging?
It’s so time consuming. I listen to so much music; I go to a record store and I’m there allday long and I’m listening to everything, every genre. You never know when you’re gonna find that right sound so you’ve got to listen to everything. That’s why it takes me so long to do an album, because it takes about a year to find the twelve quality enough samples to use. That’s a lot of work. For me, digging is like a music lesson. I wasn’t exposed to all the different kinds of music growing up, so this opens up whole new levels for me. I’m listening to kinds of music I wouldn’t normally listen to, like Turkish music, or this Russian album, or this South American or African album I would never have picked up. It was all hip-hop, R&B and reggae when I was growing up, and jazz. So now I’m listening to everything. It’s great.
What’s the last good record you got?
The last good one? You know what, I don’t like telling, I like to keep some of my digging a secret! Haha, pardon me, I can’t answer that, my bad.
What about current rappers, who are you feeling?
I’m no expert on who’s ill, but I listen to a lot of the young kids, like Chance the Rapper. I think if he carries on what he’s doing, he’s going to be a great talent. Roc Marciano is one of my closest friends, I think he’s one of the illest around right now. And I like this kid in Chicago, his name’s Tree. I feel like I’m doing a disservice to people by saying names because everybody should be celebrated. A lot of the people are not getting the shine they deserve.
I still listen to the older cats, the people I grew up listening to. They still doing it. Sometimes I want something different, sometimes I want something I’m familiar with, sometimes I want something more experimental, some new flavour. But when I’m doing records I shut everything down because I don’t want to be influenced.
You and Tree and Roc Marciano don’t really sound the same but there are definitely parallels, like both you and Tree use vocal samples in a really interesting way, and you got your shine a bit later than most rappers. What’s your view on being older than other rappers when they became successful?
I’d have loved to have been noticed in my twenties and my teens, but at this age I appreciate what I have now and I don’t know if I would have appreciated it back then. When you’re young, you don’t have the presence of mind to know what’s going on around you, but when you’re older, you start to become a little more reflective and more appreciative of things because you understand what loss is. I appreciate the hell out of that shyt.
Grief Pedigree was a big album for me; it was the first time anybody’s cared what I have to say about anything. I was dying that I wasn’t doing the music that I wanted to do. I mean, I was doing it, but I was like an artist in the basement making paintings and nobody ever came down to see them. It’s hard when you get eyes on shyt you’ve been doing for a lot of years, but I’m glad I let someone into my basement finally, and they got to see my art, and they spoke some good words about it. I don’t think a million people will appreciate my music, but I’m happy if one person appreciates it.
I know who I am now. I’m not reaching for nothing, I’m just doing what I love. I like that I got it now. I wanted it at 20; I needed it at 40.
I understand you like to keep your day job separate from making music. Is that more a practical thing, or do you think relying on music for income will hurt your creativity?
A lot of people don’t like me. I’m boring to a lot of people, and I know that, like, “His raps are so monotone, like he’s talking or something,” you know. I’m not for everybody, I’m not trying to be for everybody. You like it, that’s all I care about. You like this shyt and I’m happy. But I know if I had to rely on art, I’d be starving. I also know that if you’re gonna make pure, pure, pure art, you have to separate it from money. I treat it as a hobby, a really passionate hobby. So it’s for both of those reasons — so I can put a roof over my head and eat, but also so that I can be free with the art and not have to worry about doing what anybody else wants me to do.
You seem to be very protective of that artistic freedom, doing the raps, beats and videos yourself, as well as running your own label. Why do you do that?
It’s money that I fukkin’… I had to work overtime to make this album. I don’t have distribution. I don’t have shyt. I’m off the radar – but you can still download all my all three of my albums off iTunes and so on. That’s huge; the fact that anybody and their mother can just put the albums on anywhere in the whole world, that’s big. But it’s not enough. I’m from a physical time, and I know that when I really, really like an album, I need the physical copy of it.
But then what I did with Grief Pedigree and The Night’s Gambit, I went one day and told people on Twitter — I don’t have too many followers, but I told people and they told people, and a couple of blogs and websites picked it up — I went out and over a three-hour period on the day the album was released I was like, you want to buy it, come and buy it. The first time I did it with Grief Pedigree I was out there and nobody came for like an hour, and you don’t understand what it was like man, so many emotions, blaming myself, like why did I do this? It was horrible, but then people came and it was beautiful. This time, for The Night’s Gambit, a lot of people came. I just wanna carry on doing that.
So did selling your records yourself bring you closer to fans of your music?
You know, I don’t even like calling them fans, because fan stems from fanatic. I think the people that listen to me have to be a little bit sensible and cerebral. They’re just listeners. If you listen to Ka you gotta be a listener because you gotta grasp what I’m saying. I don’t want a million fanatical boyband fans. Three years from now nobody will remember this or that band. I want 10 people who are really feeling this shyt, who are telling other people “You don’t understand, Ka’s better than everyone!” That’s what I want.
I do have a close connection with my listeners though, ’cause they bring me light. When people finally meet me they’re just like, I know that man, I know his friend Dajuan that got murdered, I know his friend Hector that got murdered, I know his uncle that got murdered, and so they approach me like a long lost friend. These people give me the life to continue. When I’m working on the next album, I can be like, yeah, they’re gonna like this, they’re gonna love this line right here.
When I was selling my record on the street, they were giving me hugs, they were supporting me and what I do. That means the world to me. I write rhymes, and people tell me, “Your rhymes helped me through a moment in my life that was real dark” — it’s about that. This is the gift that I’ve been given, I’m blessed to be able to give people some kind of support system. Come on, man! Who’s fukking with that? Nothing! Nothing is fukking with that. It’s give and take, you know.
Rap is often about taking, but you seem to do a lot of giving. How does that work out?
I feel like I’ve taken away a lot too. I did a lot of bad things in my life, man, and these are my years to try and get my scales kinda even, so… I’m giving a lot but I have to, because I took a lot. When I’m ready to do a new joint, some old memories will come back to me, or I’m dealing with some shyt that I haven’t dealt with since I was 12, so much shyt that I’ve been through that I need to speak on that I haven’t spoken on yet. That’s why I got to take so much time between records, because it takes me a lot of time to recoup. It’s exhausting.
You know, it’s funny because when I was growing up, I hated that we was poor, I hated that we was dirty and I hated that we was hungry and shyt, but now that’s my motivation for doing music that I feel is beautiful, and that maybe ten other people think is beautiful too. I feel like I had to go through that, I had to live that in order to do this. Now those times don’t feel as bad – I wasn’t just hungry for nothing, I wasn’t just broke for nothing, I wasn’t just cold for nothing. It was for this – whatever this is.
I’d have loved to have been noticed in my twenties and my teens, but at this age I appreciate what I have now and I don’t know if I would have appreciated it back then. When you’re young, you don’t have the presence of mind to know what’s going on around you, but when you’re older, you start to become a little more reflective and more appreciative of things because you understand what loss is. I appreciate the hell out of that shyt.
Grief Pedigree was a big album for me; it was the first time anybody’s cared what I have to say about anything. I was dying that I wasn’t doing the music that I wanted to do. I mean, I was doing it, but I was like an artist in the basement making paintings and nobody ever came down to see them. It’s hard when you get eyes on shyt you’ve been doing for a lot of years, but I’m glad I let someone into my basement finally, and they got to see my art, and they spoke some good words about it. I don’t think a million people will appreciate my music, but I’m happy if one person appreciates it.
I know who I am now. I’m not reaching for nothing, I’m just doing what I love. I like that I got it now. I wanted it at 20; I needed it at 40.
I understand you like to keep your day job separate from making music. Is that more a practical thing, or do you think relying on music for income will hurt your creativity?
A lot of people don’t like me. I’m boring to a lot of people, and I know that, like, “His raps are so monotone, like he’s talking or something,” you know. I’m not for everybody, I’m not trying to be for everybody. You like it, that’s all I care about. You like this shyt and I’m happy. But I know if I had to rely on art, I’d be starving. I also know that if you’re gonna make pure, pure, pure art, you have to separate it from money. I treat it as a hobby, a really passionate hobby. So it’s for both of those reasons — so I can put a roof over my head and eat, but also so that I can be free with the art and not have to worry about doing what anybody else wants me to do.
You seem to be very protective of that artistic freedom, doing the raps, beats and videos yourself, as well as running your own label. Why do you do that?
It’s money that I fukkin’… I had to work overtime to make this album. I don’t have distribution. I don’t have shyt. I’m off the radar – but you can still download all my all three of my albums off iTunes and so on. That’s huge; the fact that anybody and their mother can just put the albums on anywhere in the whole world, that’s big. But it’s not enough. I’m from a physical time, and I know that when I really, really like an album, I need the physical copy of it.
But then what I did with Grief Pedigree and The Night’s Gambit, I went one day and told people on Twitter — I don’t have too many followers, but I told people and they told people, and a couple of blogs and websites picked it up — I went out and over a three-hour period on the day the album was released I was like, you want to buy it, come and buy it. The first time I did it with Grief Pedigree I was out there and nobody came for like an hour, and you don’t understand what it was like man, so many emotions, blaming myself, like why did I do this? It was horrible, but then people came and it was beautiful. This time, for The Night’s Gambit, a lot of people came. I just wanna carry on doing that.
So did selling your records yourself bring you closer to fans of your music?
You know, I don’t even like calling them fans, because fan stems from fanatic. I think the people that listen to me have to be a little bit sensible and cerebral. They’re just listeners. If you listen to Ka you gotta be a listener because you gotta grasp what I’m saying. I don’t want a million fanatical boyband fans. Three years from now nobody will remember this or that band. I want 10 people who are really feeling this shyt, who are telling other people “You don’t understand, Ka’s better than everyone!” That’s what I want.
I do have a close connection with my listeners though, ’cause they bring me light. When people finally meet me they’re just like, I know that man, I know his friend Dajuan that got murdered, I know his friend Hector that got murdered, I know his uncle that got murdered, and so they approach me like a long lost friend. These people give me the life to continue. When I’m working on the next album, I can be like, yeah, they’re gonna like this, they’re gonna love this line right here.
When I was selling my record on the street, they were giving me hugs, they were supporting me and what I do. That means the world to me. I write rhymes, and people tell me, “Your rhymes helped me through a moment in my life that was real dark” — it’s about that. This is the gift that I’ve been given, I’m blessed to be able to give people some kind of support system. Come on, man! Who’s fukking with that? Nothing! Nothing is fukking with that. It’s give and take, you know.
Rap is often about taking, but you seem to do a lot of giving. How does that work out?
I feel like I’ve taken away a lot too. I did a lot of bad things in my life, man, and these are my years to try and get my scales kinda even, so… I’m giving a lot but I have to, because I took a lot. When I’m ready to do a new joint, some old memories will come back to me, or I’m dealing with some shyt that I haven’t dealt with since I was 12, so much shyt that I’ve been through that I need to speak on that I haven’t spoken on yet. That’s why I got to take so much time between records, because it takes me a lot of time to recoup. It’s exhausting.
You know, it’s funny because when I was growing up, I hated that we was poor, I hated that we was dirty and I hated that we was hungry and shyt, but now that’s my motivation for doing music that I feel is beautiful, and that maybe ten other people think is beautiful too. I feel like I had to go through that, I had to live that in order to do this. Now those times don’t feel as bad – I wasn’t just hungry for nothing, I wasn’t just broke for nothing, I wasn’t just cold for nothing. It was for this – whatever this is.
infamousred
All Star
haha he really shiits on himself as a member of ne. i got the "lost ep's" that they released, and he really wasn't that bad. i personally liked the faster flow, and more energetic delivery. as far as rhyming goes tho, yeah, his shiit is more technical.
this one has always been one of my fav underground tracks:
the freestyle where he goes over the who/i shot ya beat was dope as fukk too. he says some shiit like "you better dodge, before i ram, put a eigth in your ass like a 125th grand am"
i'd love to hear that nightbreed album too...i know it'll be leaked at some point.