FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Music

Listen to Kitty's New EP 'Frostbite'

The rapper shows her new, electronic direction.

Well look at this, the heartcloud just spunned around and did a 360. Kitty (neé Pryde) has released her newest EP, entitled Frostbite, and it's both everything and nothing you'd expect from her. Much like her fellow Floridian T-Pain, Kitty has become a rappa ternt sanga, easing up on the leftfield hip-hop of her earlier work in favor of a sound informed by a decidedly lighter touch. Though Frostbite is all DIY, it's shown her ear for pure pop. She's rapping, still, but it's become merely a single arrow in her quiver full of vocal styles. There is the airiness of trance, crossed with the whimsy of My Little Pony—two of the tracks on the EP were originally MLP remixes by a guy named Matt R who Kitty found on YouTube—with a bit of the warped pop sensibility of the PC Music label, whose Guy Akimoto produced Frostbite's final track, "Hoaxxx."

Advertisement

Speaking on the phone yesterday between studio sessions in Los Angeles, Kitty expressed optimism for the future (Full disclosure: Kitty is a Friend of the Blog in that she has written for Noisey in the past, and she and I are literally friends). Lately, she's been working with more big-name producers, and has taken on a pair of acting roles. "I literally play the same character in both movies, it's the quirky/sexy/outrageous/crazy drug dealer girl," she says bemusedly. "I'm just experimenting with shit."

So, take Frostbite as that: an experiment gone right.

Listen to the EP below, and buy it on iTunes here.

Noisey: Tell me about Frostbite.
Kitty Pryde: I’ve been making these songs for a while. I kind of got over hip-hop, and got over writing sad weird songs, and I started writing these pop songs. I was listening to a lot of trance and Deadmau5, and was just inspired by it, and was like “Maybe I can do this!” So now I’m just kind of like, doing these experiments to see if I like electro.

All of the beats except for one were made by this guy named Matt R who I found on YouTube. He makes these really sick My Little Pony remixes. So I sent him an email asking, “Hey, can I have the instrumentals to this My Little Pony remix?” And he was like, “Sure!”

Is that a thing? My Little Pony remixes?
Yeah! There’s so many. The type of person who’s a hardcore MLP fan, outside of little girls, is guys who are super big electronic music nerds. But like, the more intense genres of it, like really old techno and stuff. So they’ll make remixes of MLP songs, and every episode has like three songs.

Advertisement

So are the other songs MLP remixes?
One of them was, and then two others aren’t. This guy’s an amazing producer but he just doesn’t really do it that much. He lives in Arizona. I have no idea what his job is, I’ve never heard his voice, I don’t know anything about him.

So he did the entire thing?
The only song he didn’t produce was “Hoaxxx.”

Most of them sound like dreamy trance, but that one sounds more like Timbaland making a trance song.
That beat was by Guy Akimoto. He makes the cutest music. I’m really into all of this PC music stuff, so I really wanted to do a song with him.

What about PC Music draws you to it?
It’s really hard to write a catchy pop song, and all of those guys nail it. But they do it in the strangest way. I’ve sat and watched MAZO produce before and he’ll be like, “This is where you should stop the beat for like three seconds.” Who thinks about that? But that’s what they do. That’s their own technique that they’re just inventing right now, and we’re all watching it happen. And it’s so sick.

Photo by Franey Miller

What do you mean you got over hip-hop?
What happened was this: Deltron needed support for their tour because somebody dropped out at the last minute and my booking agent was like, “They asked about you, they want you to do it, the first show is tonight at Brooklyn Bowl, and if they like you, then you can do the rest of the shows with them.” So I went and played the Brooklyn Bowl show, and it was literally the worst show I’ve ever played. And I was like OK, I don’t want to go on this tour. And then my booking agent was like, “Yeah, they don't want you to go on it either.” Their fans hated me so much. Hip-hop fans are the only fucking people I’ve ever seen at a show that, if they don’t like you, they will literally just scream, throw shit at you, and berate you. I work at Glasslands—I cannot imagine anyone going to see an indie rock band ever booing. That doesn’t happen. Honestly it didn’t bother me. I’m not mad at hip-hop.

Advertisement

I think part of it was I never wanted to listen to my own songs. Performing my songs became embarrassing because I was embarrassed by them. I was like, this has to stop or else I’m never ever going to succeed. If I constantly hate my songs, if I’m making nothing I can be proud of, then how am I going to make something good? So now I’m a lot more proud of them.

How did it go when you toured with Danny Brown?
I don’t understand a lot of Danny’s fans. When I found out about Danny he was this hyped-up internet guy on Fools Gold, which is a cool label in New York. But then our tour went through the Midwest, where it’s statistically proven that people find the least cool shit. But a lot Danny’s tour was awesome, too.

There were definitely times I’d get booed and be like, “Danny, are you gonna let this happen?” He’d say, “There’s nothing I can do! You need to play shows where people are gonna be mean, because once you do it for a while then you’re gonna start being amazing at playing shows.”

What are your expectations with the EP?
I think people will like it. I finally am happy now, so I’m just writing happy songs. I put one out the other day and was like, “I hope this makes you guys feel better!” It was basically about, “Fuck you, leave me alone, I don’t need you,” and then there were so many little girls that were like, “This is exactly what I needed thank you so much, I was crying all day!” I was like damn, that’s so tight. So that’s my goal from now on, to make people happy. I think one of the reasons my songs are getting happier is because I like them. I finally am into them.

Follow Drew Millard on Twitter.