Who Is Kilo Kish?

The Homeschool artist talks serving Kanye, her middle school girl band, working with Childish Gambino, and starting to take her music seriously.

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Growing Up in Florida

Kilo Kish: "I grew up in Orlando. It was pretty cool, really chill down there, really hot, kind of boring. When I turned 18, I moved to New York and I’ve been here ever since. It’s a better change of pace. 


 

They all had these dreams of going to Stanford and all these different places and they went but that’s not my wave. I moved to New York and wanted to pursue art.


 

“My mom was on disability and my dad isn’t around at all. My mom was around a lot of the time and we have a really good relationship because we’re always around each other. I have one brother he’s 30-something, he lives in New Jersey. I don’t see him that much. He came to one of my shows.

“You know how people are always like I come from a family of musicians? I don’t come from one of those families. My tries to understand what’s going on but she doesn’t have a concept of like-she doesn’t know what Complex is, she doesn’t know what The Fader is but if I’m in the New York Times or if I’m in Time she’s like, ‘Oh my God.’ And I have been. But to her, everything else is somewhat irrelevant but she has no idea.

“I always wanted to do art and design and make things with my hands. In high school, I was in this weird International Baccalaureate program. I didn’t do IB Art, so I kind of just did the program as it was. It took up your whole life. After that, I didn’t want to do anything that these other people in IB wanted to do. They all had these dreams of going to Stanford and all these different places and they went but that’s not my wave. I moved to New York and wanted to pursue art. 


 

I had a singing group in the fifth grade and it was called D’Angelz, with some asterisks and shit after that too. It was a clique and we had to audition to get into it.


 

“When I was growing up, I danced and the only one weird thing involving music was that I had a singing group in the fifth grade and it was called D’Angelz, with some asterisks and shit after that too. It was a clique and we had to audition to get into it. I wasn’t really good at singing so I just did some dance steps and wrote some of the songs.

"The only D'Angelz song I remember was ‘I Saw You With My Best Friend.’ I don’t even know how we wrote this but it was like, “I saw you with my best friend/Or was it some brunette/You had your arm around her/I couldn’t break through it/I can’t believe you lied to me/I can’t believe its true/When I confronted you/You didn’t know what to do.”

“We went to karaoke bars and made them call us by D’Angelz. That lasted a couple months, but I super randomly talked to one of the girls on Facebook the other day. She’s like, ‘Told you’. D’Angelz reunion, that’s going to be really scary. D’Angelz should never be resurrected.

“We listened to lot of 90s, early 2000s pop music-Britney Spears. We practiced a lot and played a lot of Christina Aguilera ‘Genie In A Bottle’ and shit. My first concert was N’Sync. I think it was the “Pop” tour. I just remember it was raining like crazy and I was in Tampa, Florida and we all had ponchos on and we could barely see them."

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Moving to NYC for Art School

Kilo Kish:“I was ready and I never really looked back. I know people who go home often because they get really homesick and I’m like, ‘Oh, I’m fine.’ I go home maybe twice a year, but its mostly for like my mom’s sake more than anything. She came once to New York for my graduation. 


 

I had to make the decision whether I was gonna go home and take a year off from school and go home and chill or if I was gonna try to thug it out in New York by myself. I decided to just do that.


 

“I got a partial scholarship to Pratt Institute. I was doing fine arts. It was a foundation program there so I did that and then something got messed up with my financial aid in the second year. Then I had to make the decision whether I was gonna go home and take a year off from school and go home and chill or if I was gonna try to thug it out in New York by myself. I decided to just do that.

“I just stayed up here and worked really hard. That was one of my favorite years. I just worked and it really shaped me as a person work-ethic wise because I was just doing really random jobs. I moved into the dorms initially and then after that, that was the year I was off from school and I moved in with J. Scott and Smash and that was when I started making music.”

“J. Scott and me were really good friends, we met at an N.E.R.D. show, and Smash is his really good friend from Atlanta so he just moved up. There were like a million roommates that lived in that apartment, but then they moved in and out and for the time I was out of school I lived there.

“I went back to school to FIT for two years and I started in 2010. I was going for textile design, it was a lot more business-related than Pratt. Pratt is a super art school where you sit in the grass and you smoke hookah and you hang out and it’s really fun.

"Pratt really prepared me for FIT because I feel like my stuff was a little different than my classmates that only went to FIT because I feel like I’m a lot more conceptual from just a year alone at that school and the faculty is just amazing. At F.I.T., it was more work related and you had your projects and they were due and this is what you’re working on. Really, really structured. It was tough while I was doing music and random modeling jobs."

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Miscellaneous Part-Time Jobs

Kilo Kish:“I was out from school, art supplies are expensive, I didn’t really have the money and I was busy with working random jobs. I worked at Crumbs Bakery in the Garment District for a while, which was really weird. I would wake up at 5:00 a.m. in the freezing cold, go to Crumbs, be there by 6:00 a.m. and then be there until like mid-day and then after that I’d go to a different job. 


 

They always had my back and saw me as a girl that was down and willing to work and I just needed the opportunities. They always kept me up.”


 

“I actually worked in a salon on Houston that’s closed now, it was called Georgia Salon. It was really cool because it was a small salon. I met two amazing women that I really look up to, business-wise. I ended up just starting as an intern and then I worked up to like doing reception and then to doing sales, payrolls.

"I worked and worked until I was a manager there and key-holder. When the managers weren’t around it was basically my place to be in charge of everything, which was cool especially for me because I had never really had jobs like that before. In Florida I didn’t really work, at Pratt I didn’t work. In Florida, actually, I worked at an Outback Steakhouse as a hostess, that was my first job in high school.

“At the same time I started working at Crumbs, then I started working at La Esquina, a Mexican restaurant on Kenmare. I started working there and I met a lot of my friends now and a lot of cool people that I gain inspiration from. Then I just started my night-life career, which is just working in random, cool restaurants. I met a lot of people that way and then I got this internship with Salvor Projects when I was trying to figure out what I wanted to go to school for when I went back to school.

“I feel like La Esquina was cool because I didn’t really know anyone before that and Georgia was really cool because it was so random, Justin was like, ‘Why don’t you go in this place and try?’ They’re like, ‘Do you want to be an intern?’ I was like, ‘For free?’ They were like, ‘Yeah.’ I was like, ‘No.’ Then they were like, ‘Okay, then we’ll pay you $7.’ I was just so happy but there were girls that were interns for free there.

"Literally my whole New York experience is all tied into that job at Georgia because from Georgia, I met the owner of La Esquina. From there, he kind of looked out for me for other jobs like Miss Lily’s, it’s similar, the same owners and stuff. They always had my back and saw me as a girl that was down and willing to work and I just needed the opportunities. They always kept me up.”

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Serving Celebrities

“I still technically work at Miss Lily’s but I don’t go there, I haven’t worked there in a couple of months. Miss Lily’s is really cool, it’s a downtown restaurant world reunion cause it’s all of us who have ever worked at any restaurants and hotel and are all filtered people from different places. 


 

I served Kanye West twice, the first time he had all gold grills on and I was like, ‘I have one too.’ He was like, ‘Why don’t you have it in?’ I was like, ‘I’m working!’


 

“I was a host at La Esquina so it was cool to meet everyone and not freak out. They always came in to Miss Lily’s and La Esquina. It was funny at Miss Lily’s because I just kind of started getting buzz with music and I was still serving people and I was like, ‘I wonder if one day if I get more known, if they’ll remember me as the girl that always served them at this restaurant.’

“At a restaurant like Miss Lily’s you know the people you’re serving. At other restaurants, you don’t. La Esquina and Miss Lily’s are both crazy busy and they’re both experience restaurants, they’re not super crazy service. They’re really fun, you sit down and talk about random stuff.

"When I met Kanye, he was kind of preoccupied. He was cool. I served him twice, the first time he had all gold grills on and I was like, ‘I have one too.’ He was like, ‘Why don’t you have it in?’ I was like, ‘I’m working!’ Damn, at least now I can get new ones. I was like, ‘Yeah, I have grills! I like yours though.’ He was like, ‘Yeah, alright.’ The second time, he was with a bunch of people and this crazy woman was talking to him for the entire time. I was like, ‘Are you okay?’ He was like, ‘Yeah.’ This lady would not leave his table, poor guy. Maybe she knew him? But she would not let him eat his jerk chicken.

“I have a lot of weird relationships like this where people know me for different things but they don’t know necessarily realize it’s the same person. This happens a lot with me. Per say, Questlove, I serve him all the time, if he sees me he’ll know who I am, he follows me on Twitter as Kilo Kish but I don’t think he knows that we’re the same person. I think maybe he will, I think maybe he knows. Questlove came in a lot to Miss Lily’s, everyone knew him or waited on him. A lot of people come to Miss Lily’s a lot, they’re like regulars.”

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Her Start in Modeling

Kilo Kish: “I was sitting in ‘Georgia’ one day and a scout from COACD came in and they’re like, ‘You should do some different things.’ I was like, ‘Okay, cool.’ They put me in their database and a little while after I booked a Levi’s campaign. That was my first real modeling job.

"After that, I did a little more work with them. Through VICE, I got some jobs with A.D.I.D.A.S. and some little things here and there. I still do random modeling stuff now but it’s funny because it’s like, at least for A.D.I.D.A.S. it’s funny because I’m like, ‘Can I get a pair of running shorts?’ Or with Vice, they’ll be like, ‘Oh you know, Kish, who does the modeling stuff’ but they don’t cover my music."

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Taking Rap Seriously

Kilo Kish:“At first, the stuff was there and I’m really inquisitive and I’m always really curious about trying to do different stuff. If it’s there, I’m going to try to do it. Smash already made music, he already had tapes out, he was working on music and he’s actually a legitimate, good rapper. 


 

I was going to name the mixtape The Lost Huxtable. It was definitely a joke and I wanted to cover Lil Wayne songs and do stuff but then when I played it for people, they didn’t really laugh.


 

"He would have little songs here and there and he would need to have a girl to say this on the song just as a voice. I was around, in the house, when I wasn’t at work. He would ask me to do it and I would, that turned into me joking around saying, ‘I want to make a mixtape too. That’s funny, it would be hilarious, I could show it to my friends, random guys at parties, pass it out on Broadway like a joke.’ I was really into this joke. [Laughs]

“I was really about this. I was going to name the mixtape The Lost Huxtable. It was definitely a joke and I wanted to cover Lil Wayne songs and do stuff but then when I played it for people, they didn’t really laugh. I was like, ‘Okay, come on, this is really good.’ And they would be like, ‘Sick, where did you record that?’ I was like, ‘No, you’re not getting the fact that it’s a joke.’ I just kept going with it and it was my joke inside and then it just got to the point where I started working on it more and I thought it was fun and I guess you guys don’t see it as a joke so I’ll just do it.

“The first song I recorded was called “Ooo, Nigga, Ooo.” It’s a real song, there’s a video for it on YouTube. When people mention it on Twitter, I’m like, ‘What! How are you playing that right now!’ We just put them out for the hell of it. Nobody ever sees it. Random people probably skimmed over it and were like, ‘What the fuck is that?’ I wasn’t taking none of those songs seriously, I didn’t take music seriously until I stopped working at Miss Lily’s like three months ago.

“Smash and J. Scott are both from Atlanta so they put me onto to Kilo Ali and I was kind of obsessed with it for a month. Then I changed my Twitter to that name and at the same time, I was making music as a joke or whatever. I didn’t really have a name for it so when my friends listened to my music they’d be like, 'Oh, I heard that Kilo Kish song.' I was like, ‘Well, I guess that’s my music name.’”

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The Making of Homeschool

Kilo Kish:Homeschoolstill was not a serious tape. Matt [Martians] from The Internet happened to come to my house and they went to high school together. He was there, he slept over. I was like, ‘Oh I’m making these songs.’ I played him “Ooo, Nigga, Ooo” or some other weird song and he was like, ‘Uh, I’m putting out a tape, I’ll give you a beat if you want.’ He gave me this crazy beat, which was nearly impossible to rap over, it’s called “I Want You Still.” 


 

I would describe my music as sing-y, talk-y, rap-y-I feel like it’s me just talking and rambling about stuff for like three minutes. I feel like that’s how Homeschool is.


 

"He put it on the tape and people liked it so he was like, ‘We should make some music for you, why not?’ He said, ‘I’ll fly you out to LA in the summertime and you can come make the tape or work on music.’ I was like, ‘I’ve never been to LA before.’ That was literally my only reason why I did it. I was like, ‘I’ll just go, I have nothing to do this summer.’

“I went and I worked on songs and I met a lot of cool people-I met Vince Staples, I met Speak! They’re on the tape and they were really there, no one really knew what I could or couldn’t do. Speak! was invited to the studio to help me write songs so he asked me what I had and then he was like, ‘Oh you don’t need any help writing songs, you already write good songs on your own.’ I just kept going with it, everything was natural.

“The production on Homeschool was mostly Matt and Syd [of The Internet] and some other producers that they found that fit the same style. Matt and Syd, mostly. The songs are, I guess, pretty spacey sounding. Really chill. I would describe my music as sing-y, talk-y, rap-y-I feel like it’s me just talking and rambling about stuff for like three minutes. I feel like that’s how Homeschool is.

“It kind of took us a year to make Homeschool because I left after that week, I had some songs done. That was last summer, 2011. I went back to school, when I’m in school and working, I’m just focused on that. I thought about music, maybe, once a month. He would send me some songs or they would come here and then they needed a verse for Purple Naked Ladies so they came to New York. That’s when I recorded that and then I recorded ‘Navy.’ They were like, ‘This should be the single.’ From then on, we were still slowly working on the tape but not really working on it. Then, finally, in April we were like, ‘I guess it’s done.’ So we threw it out there and then this.

“‘Navy’ dropped in January. It was interesting, I still didn’t really take it seriously. I figured people were listening to it because it was with The Internet or because their album came out. I thought they were listening to it because it reminds them of 'Ode To A Dream.' I was still all school and work, not focusing on that at all.

"Not until Homeschool came out did I kind of take it seriously and then now, I make a lot more music than I used to. I actually find it interesting to see what else I can do with music. Now I’m just experimenting. Homeschool was a capsule tape, just like ‘Oh I was thinking this and this was my first trip to LA and this is my time spent in New York with these people and this is what I’m thinking now.’ I’m surprised people like it but I’m happy that they do.”

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Behind Her Songwriting

Kilo Kish:“I really could not tell you, I just hear music and I automatically think of a scenario. It just happens. If you play one song, I’m just going to think of a scenario. If I don’t think of a scenario, I don’t use it. It’s not saying anything so I just scrap it. The music that I actually chose-musicians, especially rappers, go through tons and tons of beats and find ones they really like. 


 

Music, I feel that it’s super personal and I have such a good connection to being at my house doing it. I love making songs on my Mac as opposed to being in the studio.


 

Homeschool is a pretty short tape so I went through a lot of different beats and I just sat down, I was in LA at my friend’s house and I was sitting in her windowsill and I wrote a few songs. I just wrote what came to mind first. They weren’t finished songs, didn’t have any format but I kind of expected them to be like, ‘Oh we can work on this.’ I really expected Speak! to help me write my songs but when he was like, ‘No you don’t need it,’ I was like, ‘Really?’ Then I just left these.

Homeschool, the name, just popped into my head because it’s a take on the fact that when I started making music, it was at home. Music, I feel that it’s super personal and I have such a good connection to being at my house doing it. I love making songs on my Mac as opposed to being in the studio. I hate being in the studio.

“It was strange, [going to the studio in LA] was a surreal experience. Tequila was involved. I had to just drink and get contact highs from other people’s weed in the studio. I don’t smoke, so I was just like, ‘Let me drink some nasty ass Cuervo.’ I was just ripping tequila shots and I already wrote the song so I wasn’t freaking out, I got in the studio.

“I wasn’t drunk but I was loosening myself up enough to do it. Even now, when I do shows, I don’t drink and they’re like, ‘Why don’t you take a shot?’ I’m like, ‘I need it to be perfect.’ I feel like on tour I’m just going to rip some tequila shots before I go on stage.

"It was scary because it was my first time in a real studio and the studio Odd Future uses is so legit. To be in there and for people to be around, like a lot of people that I’ve never met before was kind of scary. But I just did it. Now it doesn’t really bother me so much but before I couldn’t really listen to my music or play it back. I originally find my voice really annoying. Now I’m able to listen to it but it’s still weird to hear your voice recorded. When music is playing over it, in an interview, if I hear a video interview, I’m like ‘Oh my God.’"

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The Kool Kats Klub

Kilo Kish:Kool Kats Klub is me, Smash Simmons, and Mell [McCloud]. Mell usually does our beats and raps, Smash raps and also engineers a little bit and then I do whatever, rap, sing, talk-whatever. We just kind of get in the studio together and it’s really fun making music with them. 


 

Kool Kats is the main name but it can keep changing. We’re just forcing people to say KKK, kind of. It was a joke to make people say it.


 

"It’s impossible to get us in the same place, at the same time. The three of us are the most random people. It was a lot easier when I was living with Smash. It’s easy to get me and Smash together, it’s easy to get Smash and Mel together, randomly I’ll get with Mel but to get all three of us at the same time is crazy. It’s not necessarily that all of us have to be on everything, all the time. It’s a collective of people that like making music together and like the sounds that we create.

“We like to have fun moreso than everything else. KKK is the place where I can make my joke songs that I’ve always been trying to make. Where as my Kilo Kish stuff alone is more introspective, delving into my own personality, but with the KKK stuff it’s fun to do covers of other shit. We made a remix of this Bollywood song, we’re going to make some remixes and covers of old 90s R&B.

“KKK is a name that J. Scott and A$AP Yams started and we just jacked their shit. It changes; Krispy Kreme Killas. Kool Kats is the main name but it can keep changing. We’re just forcing people to say KKK, kind of. It was a joke to make people say it. We just do stuff on a ‘Whenever I’m at the house’-basis. They still live in the old apartment. Now I live in Fort Greene alone with one roommate.”

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Working With Childish Gambino

Kilo Kish:“That came about naturally, too. I don’t know how that happened. Donald was in town and he invited me to hangout. We hung out a few times before we got in the studio. It was really fun working in the studio with him and he really takes his time-he’s quick but he takes his time trying a bunch of different things. 


 

He has so many different ways to deliver his verses and I really learned a lot from him and am taking that into the music that I’m making.


 

"When I’m in the studio, I’m like ‘Blah, blah, blah’ I’m done but after two takes I just don’t want to do it anymore. I just get so bored and ADD about it, I’m like, ‘How many times do I have to do this?’ But it’s good to know that you can actually take time and try different things and not necessarily do things the same way everytime.

“He has so many different ways to deliver his verses and I really learned a lot from him and am taking that into the music that I’m making. It was cool working with him though. We actually didn’t put out the song that we worked on in the studio together. It’s an amazing song but it’s a crazy story.

"The one that we did release was so random, I recorded my part at my house and he recorded his part on his tour bus. I record reference songs at my apartment, the only song that I recorded at my house was Childish Gambino ‘Make It Go Right’ and ‘You’re Right’ and ‘I Feel Like Dying’ was all done at my desktop. Everything else I like to do in a real studio for quality purposes.”

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Working With A$AP

Kilo Kish:“I’m working with some guys in A$AP. Rocky and J. Scott are just all over the place, super busy all the time because he’s always on the road with them. We’ve all kind of been cool for a while so with that, it will just happen naturally, there’s no rush. Also Rocky is the ‘it-boy’ to work with right now and I don’t want people to just assume that I want to work with him because he’s Rocky. I want to work with Rocky because it’s a cool song and we’re friends. 


 

I don’t want people to just assume that I want to work with him because he’s Rocky. I want to work with Rocky because it’s a cool song and we’re friends.


 

“I used to host this party, twice, it was called WHORE HOUSE, it was in Brooklyn and it was a warehouse party. I was living with Smash and J. Scott, and Smash would perform and then also Rocky would perform. That’s when I first met Rocky and after that, I would see him around here and there. I know Yams and J. Scott are really good friends so I would see him around. The most random times I would run into him, we were never best friends but we know each other and it’s all friends between all of us.

“It would be cool to work with A$AP, to work with all of them at some point but it’s no rush for me.  I’m not one of those people that are like, ‘I need a hit song, let me call up Rocky!’”

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What She’s Listening To Now

Kilo Kish:Channel Orange for sure, Flatbush Zombies for sure. I kind of figured out that I don’t listen to girls that much which is weird. I love R&B and I listen to Mariah Carey and Janet Jackson but current music with girls I don’t listen to that often.


 

I get a lot of inspiration from Drake actually just because he’s kind of the epitome of male sing-rapper.


 

“I get a lot of inspiration from Drake actually just because he’s kind of the epitome of male sing-rapper. I kind of do the same thing so it’s good to see how he goes about it. I copy him all the time. I haven’t met him.

“I do sometimes listen to female artists. If I hear Azealia Banks’ ‘212’ in the club, I’m going to dance. Obviously I hear it out but I don’t really, at home, it’s not the first thing I would go listen to."

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Being A Female Rapper

Kilo Kish: “The thing is I never really consider myself a rapper so I never really felt like I had to get it and I just felt like I was making songs. I never felt like I had to be like Lil Kim or Foxy Brown or any of the ones that came before. I never had that dream that I wanted to be like them.


 

I never felt like I had to be like Lil Kim or Foxy Brown or any of the ones that came before. I never had that dream that I wanted to be like them.


 

For girl rappers that are out now, they have that thought in their head that that’s what they want to be like or maybe that’s just their personality, I don’t know, but I feel like I don’t have that sassy personality. It’s not my personality.”

“I feel like people do what works for them like I do what works for me so I’m sure that some part of them is similar to their music hopefully but I really like all the music that is out. I love listening to Nicki Minaj, Azealia Banks, when I hear the songs when I’m out, I’m dancing, it’s fun and they make fun tracks. I feel like my music is boring or depressing sometimes. [Laughs] But they make really fun songs. That’s just how it is sometimes.”

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Comparisons With Kitty Pryde

Kilo Kish:“Personally, I like the ‘Okay Cupid’ song. I haven’t listened to a lot of her other music because I listen to boys, mostly but yeah I like the ‘Okay Cupid’ song. I thought it was good. She’s a good rapper, I feel like the only thing you can compare for us is the sound of our voice. Our subject matter is completely different and I don’t know, I like the song that I heard.


 

She’s a good rapper, I feel like the only thing you can compare for us is the sound of our voice.


 

“I’m sure Earl didn’t really think about it like that, just because I work with their friends, I feel like it wasn’t that serious. I was just at school that day, I was in weaving class weaving and all of a sudden my Twitter just blew the fuck up and I was like, ‘What is going on?’ I never heard of her and I’ve never heard any music from her but just overnight, I was like, ‘What the hell is going on?’ It was funny that people would even think of me enough to compare us but I was like, ‘That’s cool.’ I went home and I listened to the song and I liked it.”

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Touring With Her Best Friend

Kilo Kish: “My DJ is my best friend, her name is Cash, her DJ name is Kitty Cash. I’ve known her for a couple years in the city and we just met somewhere dancing at the Hotel on Rivington. I dance with random girls all the time when I’m out but you never really become friends with them and before I was kind of a tomboy and I never had that type of girlfriend. 


 

It’s really cool when you actually can make your show and have your friend on stage with you and have it the way you want to be.


 

“I’m just now, at 22, gaining a group of girlfriends that I really like. She was one of my first girlfriends, she’s awesome. She’s going on tour with me and she has a history in fashion PR. We also went to FIT together, we met before we realized we both went to F.I.T. She’s super cool, fashionable, stylish. She was like, ‘I’ll DJ for you.’ But I said, ‘You don’t know how to DJ.’ She was like, ‘I’ll learn.’ So she learned and I love people like that who can pick up something and learn it. She has her own lessons like I do and we practice together every week.

“It will be so good to have her on tour. It’s my first time having a DJ, all my shows before that I’m like, ‘Alright, here dude, here are my five songs. Please don’t screw this up for me.’ It’s really cool when you actually can make your show and have your friend on stage with you and have it the way you want to be."

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The Future

Kilo Kish: “I don’t know where people get Sick Sad World from. My PR website needs to be fixed. I put on Twitter that I wanted to make a tape called Sick Sad World at some point, as a Daria reference which I think would be really funny as a tape but I don’t want to call my album that. I don’t know what anything for an album will be at all.

“I’m working on a tape now but it’s a completely unrelated project to an album. It’s like a mixtape, kind of, but more songs than Homeschool. It’s just a project and I intend to release that in the fall. When I’m done with that, maybe I’ll work on an album, maybe I won’t? I just wake up and I’m like, ‘I wanna work on this.’ Then I focus completely on that project and I just do that. I could never think of the name of something months before I started. 


 

The only thing that I don’t like as a musician that everything is a discography. It’s always being compared to what’s before and what’s after and I don’t know, the way that I do things, I think of it as it’s own project.


 

“Before I would hear melodies and stuff in my head a certain way but I wouldn’t do them because I wouldn’t feel like I was comfortable enough to do it myself. I hear beats all the time and I’m like, ‘Someone should sing this, that would be dope.’ But I never feel comfortable that I should do it myself. I’m not like, ‘I should sing this,’ it’s always, ‘Someone should do this.’ Now I’m like, ‘I have to freakin’ do it.’

“I get voice lessons from Jesse Boykins III. I started them, more so, to get prepared for performing because I’m always really soft so to do that for a long time just wears on you. I started doing that but he was like, ‘You can sing really well so you should try different things and feel comfortable and do what you want. If you hear it in a certain way in your head, just do it that way, don’t try to change it because you feel weird about how other people might feel about it or you feel uncomfortable yourself.’

“I’m not one of those people that are like, ‘Oh yeah this is going to be a banger, this is going to be that shit.’ Whenever I see people on TV or in the studio doing that, popping bottles, like, ‘This is a hit!’ I’m just like, I have never felt like that.”

“I do have the name of the mixtape but I like surprises. Different producers and some of the same, it’s like a real mix with a lot of different people. I think it will be more of experimental songs but working with different people so it will be its own entity just like Homeschool. That’s what I like about music, more so.

"The only thing that I don’t like as a musician that everything is a discography. It’s always being compared to what’s before and what’s after and I don’t know, the way that I do things, I think of it as it’s own project. If I had a gallery opening, this is this project and I don’t know. That’s the only thing I don’t like about it.

“We’ve had meetings about record deals, maybe I’ll sign to something at some point but it’s not the first thought in my mind. I can do a lot of stuff on my own, as I can see."

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