Image via Complex Original
In the early 1990s, you could find Brownsville MC Ka rhyming with Natural Elements, the underground East Coast group led by producer Charlemagne. Like too many other talented outfits, label drama kept NE from receiving the shine they deserved, and eventually Ka left the group to pursue a solo career.
On his own, Ka's single-minded vision and auteur approach set him apart from other NYC MCs. While some receive shine for incorporating the styles of other cities, Ka is fiercely New York. Like Louie CK is doing with his show Louie, Ka is documenting the city via his songs and self-directed music videos through a focused lens and with similarly bracing results. The songs from his latest LP, Grief Pedigree, capture the coldness of Brownsville and the other parts of Brooklyn that New York magazine won't be mining for "quirky" bars and shops.
His music videos are simple and stark: Ka rapping in front of a housing project at three o'clock in the morning, the only sign of life for blocks his concise hand movements and his words echoing between the buildings.
Over the past year, Ka has released roughly a video a month, covering each of the tracks on Grief Pedigree. On Friday he released the final video, for "Iron Age," featuring Roc Marciano. We spoke with Ka about the making of his previous videos. You can check out the new video for "Iron Age" below.
To see Ka live, come out this Thursday, October 18, as Complex presents Judgement Night at The House of Vans in Brooklyn.
For more info on Ka, peep BrownsvilleKa.com
Ka Tells the Stories Behind the Self-Directed Videos From His Album "Grief Pedigree"
In the early 1990s, you could find Brownsville MC Ka rhyming with Natural Elements, the underground East Coast group led by producer Charlemagne. Like too many other talented outfits, label drama kept NE from receiving the shine they deserved, and eventually Ka left the group to pursue a solo career.
On his own, Ka's single-minded vision and auteur approach set him apart from other NYC MCs. While some receive shine for incorporating the styles of other cities, Ka is fiercely New York. Like Louie CK is doing with his show Louie, Ka is documenting the city via his songs and self-directed music videos through a focused lens and with similarly bracing results. The songs from his latest LP, Grief Pedigree, capture the coldness of Brownsville and the other parts of Brooklyn that New York magazine won't be mining for "quirky" bars and shops.
His music videos are simple and stark: Ka rapping in front of a housing project at three o'clock in the morning, the only sign of life for blocks his concise hand movements and his words echoing between the buildings.
Over the past year, Ka has released roughly a video a month, covering each of the tracks on Grief Pedigree. On Friday he released the final video, for "Iron Age," featuring Roc Marciano. We spoke with Ka about the making of his previous videos. You can check out the new video for "Iron Age" below.
To see Ka live, come out this Thursday, October 18, as Complex presents Judgement Night at The House of Vans in Brooklyn.
For more info on Ka, peep BrownsvilleKa.com
"Cold Facts"
Released: 9/17/11
"'Cold Facts' was the first joint, so I had to make that strong. For years you always see MCs rhyming with the hands and shit, 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 shit. When looking over things, and rhyming and surveying and shit, 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.
"Every"
Released: 10/14/11
"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.'
"Collage"
Released: 11/10/11
"'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 shit 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 nigga came back. The other dude they found him chopped off in the projects somewhere."
"Chamber"
Released: 12/16/11
"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 shit 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 shit, 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.'"
"Vessel"
Released: 2/13/12
"'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 shit 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 shit 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."
"Decisions"
Released: 3/16/12
"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."
"Summer"
Released: 4/20/12
"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 shit; 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, shit 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."
"No Downtime"
Released: 6/5/12
"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 shit. 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."
"Up Against Goliath"
Released: 7/13/12
"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 fucking 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."
"Born King N.Y."
Released: 8/11/12
"The floating head thing in the video was me fucking with the exposure, playing with the camera. I remember playing with the camera and it came out all white, and to me, that shit 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 shit 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."