KILO KISH

The Brooklyn-based singer-rapper finds her DIY project accelerating at a rapid pace

During an imposed hiatus from an art degree in New York, the Florida-born Kilo Kish found herself in the company of hip-hop’s most hyped agitators and trend setters. When Crack meets up with the 22 year old rhyming songstress on the night before her first European tour, we find an artist in the process of carving out her own sound, aesthetic and identity.

The honey-coloured tones of Kilo Kish (real name Lakisha Robinson)’s sound palette, a blend between jazz-tinged, NERD indebted hip-hop and the phased-out ambience of R’n’B infatuated bedroom producers, was crafted on her 2011 Homeschool EP by Syd Bennett and Matt Martians, the duo behind Odd Future’s neo-soul subgroup The Internet. On her new mixtape K+, Kilo’s sound has blossomed with SBTRKT, Earl Sweatshirt and Nick Hook (who has worked with Azealia Banks, EL-P and Nightslugs’ L-Vis 1990) all tailoring instrumentals for the project. Vocally, Kilo Kish’s style is difficult to categorise. Although she tends to reject the ‘female rapper’ tag, probably as a tactic to avoid expectations of a rapid flow or an alpha-female persona, the melted syllables of her half sung, conversational rhymes are carefully placed, and she rides a smooth rhythm that prompts a mid-paced head nod.

When we meet up with Kilo Kish (let’s get this out of the way – it’s pronounced ‘Kee-Low Keesh’) in London, she’s sat on the sofa between two of her close friends. On her right is her DJ, the trap-loving Kitty Cash, whose cool demeanour slips for a second when, ironically, the studio’s resident kitten creeps up behind her, pounces onto her head and claws into her braids. On Kish’s left is her former flatmate J.Scott, a key figure behind the A$AP movement and DJ for the Mob at their shows. Though the trio have just arrived fresh off the plane from New York, J.Scott appears to have developed an immunity from jetlag and is eager to party tonight. His CV boasts a recent tour of almost 40 dates with A$AP Rocky, Schoolboy Q and the notoriously hedonistic Danny Brown. Once the Kilo Kish tour is wrapped up he’ll join Rocky for his string of dates with Rihanna.

While record label execs are still trying to negotiate their way out of the post-apocalyptic rubble of the music industry’s financial condition, the internet’s reversal of the power dynamic between artists and labels has produced exciting, if polarising, results within mainstream R’n’B and hip-hop circles. If a rapper once had to meet the approval of an A&R in order reach the ears and eyes of the public, now they’re able conjure up an international fanbase without being squeezed into stereotypes by the industry. “I don’t think 10 years ago I could have got as much of a buzz and as much press as I do now”, Kish muses. “And I would never have even had a platform to make music if it wasn’t for the internet. That’s the difference of our era, if you want to find a programme, you can probably find it for free and figure it out and work it on your own. And a lot of kids have done that in a totally Do It Yourself way and taken it to levels I don’t think anyone ever really imagined.”

Since the turn of the last decade, hip-hop artists who flaunt their eccentricities have thrived. The shift which occurred (and Lil B and Odd Future deserve credit here) has led the way for Danny Brown, the guy who spent years in underground purgatory and flunked a deal with G-Unit due to his skinny jeans and toothless grin, to enjoy a belated career peak. It’s come full circle. Now artists are cottoning onto the fact that if they’re going to get noticed among the saturated blogosphere, they need a quirk. Just look at Kish’s affiliates: the leather clad, ‘molly popping’ exploits of the A$AP Mob, or the kaleidoscopic aesthetics of the hallucinogenic-advocating NY group Flatbush Zombies. “If you can shock people, whether it be through sex, weirdness, or obscenity and crudeness, you have the ability to go viral. But I don’t play on any of that, it’s just the internet has worked for me because I’m different”, Kish argues. And it’s an unique quality which is key to Kilo Kish’s charm, a homegrown artist who’s doesn’t slip into rigid categories. She’s laid back yet ambitious, her look is casually glamorous and she’s not going to play up sexiness for the male gaze, but she won’t hesitate to sing about her desires either.

While Kish exudes a sense of confidence, she’s often open about her insecurities, to an extent which sometimes verges on self-deprecation. She’s an artist who’s grown up in public, and has been under the spotlight right from the beginning. Although it’s her music that’s skyrocketing her career, she’s an active visual artist, and after being shot for a Levi’s campaign, she’s gone on to model for the likes of Vogue, Adidas and Vice. “I don’t really consider myself a model, but I do gigs from time to time” she explains. “With the Levi’s job I was so nervous and shy it was just too much for me, I psyched myself out. But since my music’s been taking off, it’s been going really, really good.”

With so many guests on the tape hailing from London, New York and LA, you’d assume that Kilo would be a practitioner of the contemporary method of collaborating – online file-swapping. It’s an efficient practice that’s eroded geographical boundaries, sure, but it’s also disenchanting and arguably undermines the excitement of a guest appearance. And Kish tells us that, in order to conjure up the right chemistry, it’s essential that she’s in physical proximity to her collaborators. “With K+, I made sure that I had everyone there in the studio. Donald (Glover, i.e Childish Gambino) was there, SBTRKT was there when we made the actual beat. It was done little by little and organically.” And while it’s the guest features of any record that may hook the attention of the Twitter-induced ADHD browser and get scooped up by a music webzine’s news feed, that 2 Chainz collaboration may not be so inevitable. Kish is insistent that each collab is for artistic merit rather than the buzz generation. “I really don’t want to push any features which seemed unnatural, just because they were a bigger name or a more established producer. If it’s a meeting that’s been set up by a manager or you just think it’ll be a good look, it can go wrong. But I always try to build a relationship outside the studio first.”