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Music

Welcome to KIT's Ever-Changing, Lownt World

KIT went from freestyling in Cincinnati to binding books in Atlanta to pursuing constant innovation in Chicago's music scene.

Photos by the author

“I really don’t like being called a rapper,” KIT told me as we switched the conversation toward music in a Chelsea café. Fellow Chicago musicians Sticky Ricardo and Khalfani Global’s laughter circled in the background. KIT was getting ready to shoot the video for “Spoiled,” a song off this summer's Lownt God Rising project, at a nearby art gallery, but first he was laying waste to a gyro and some fries.

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Up until that point, the Chicagoan was candid in telling me his life’s story. He spoke with a slight but noticeable Midwestern drawl and constantly suffixed his sentences with “and shit.” When he widened his hazel eyes as he rescinded the rapper label, it was clear that despite his laid back demeanor he possesses a kind of artistic restlessness.

For whatever reason, this past year or so has featured a few artists emphasizing not being “just a rapper”: Raury, Jaden Smith, Childish Gambino, et al. It comes across reactionary, self-consciously pushing back against a centralized view of blackness and some sort of perceived artistic limitation.

KIT, born Keary Baldwin, doesn’t seem interested in shaking his fists, though. His genre crossing comes across naturally and fluently. The 25-year-old caught some attention last year when he released NewWavey, produced mostly by Jeremiah Meece, one-half of The-Drum. The title came after the project was complete and the English language had failed them.

“We were like, ‘This shit kinda sounds like new wave,’” he said. “So we were like fuck it. We just added the ‘ey.’ It was kind of like a new wave sound but not really. It was a new sound, but we didn’t know what to call it.”

Dark and id-driven. NewWavey takes place in a sonic nether region where hooks interrupt verses, druggy croons are a lone constant, and mantras are pulled out of substance-influenced excess. It sounds haphazard on paper, but the idiosyncrasies flow well in this turn-up abyss. New Wavey could have caught on as a genre of its own, but KIT quickly left it behind in his continuous search for new sounds. Lownt God Rising followed the next summer. The ten-track project, produced by duo Supreme Cuts over the course of a year, features more distressing production that sounds made for shows.

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“Now I really just fuck with the energy of the song,” KIT said. “I really don’t fuck with lyrics really because a lot of people really don’t care about that shit. They really care about the feeling.”

KIT is planning to drop the first of a planned Holy Trinity EP series later this year. He said that this time he’s going to get more emotional and personal. Apparently this transition means becoming more melodic; KIT played a track from the project on his phone after struggling to find the words to explain its sound. It’s notably more minimalistic: A twinkling key riff that provides an open enough sound bed for KIT to skate between slippery word entanglements and singsong. It’s a bit of an earworm that’s an example of KIT’s over-it views of simply rapping.

“Rapping is so easy because I’ve been doing it for so long,” KIT said. “I freestyle a lot of shit, but when it comes to singing, I just go straight off emotions.”

KIT's freewheeling approach hasn't just applied to music. The majority of his formative years were guided by a passive annoyance at structure, convention or a lot of the things that seem designed to steer the average person into a genteel existence. Between sips of his Mountain Dew, he described growing up in the rough part of Cincinnati through discontinuous vignettes.

There weren’t a lot of things that held KIT’s interest back in the day. He started playing football when he was about nine but eventually stopped because he was too skinny. His stint as a child artistic painter was also pretty brief. What stuck was 106 & Park during its peak years, when AJ and Free introduced videos from Ja Rule, Nelly (KIT specifically remembers “Hot in Herre” and “Country Grammar”), and Dipset to a young KIT staring at his television.

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After switching through three different high schools thanks to his academic disinterest, KIT dropped out of the University of Cincinnati due to annoyance with the school’s requirements. He had other things to focus on anyway. He was doing a series of freestyles before joining the Cincinnati-based Zoo Krew in 2008. The material was a far cry from KIT’s current style, and the rudimentary videos and paper-thin beats from that period don’t show any indication of his eventual sonic eccentricities, even though the group did receive some local buzz. Still, the noise wasn’t loud enough for KIT to quit his nursing home job.

With menial life staring at him, KIT took his chances by leaving the group and moving to Atlanta for greater exposure. KIT wasn’t destined to become a member of New Atlanta, though. He worked an odd book re-binding job before cutting his planned six-month stay short.

So Chicago was the place. During his Atlanta period, KIT visited Chicago and had a fortuitous run-in with producer The GTW at a party. The well-connected producer linked KIT up with The-Drum and a few other like-minded artists in Chicago when he did make the move to the city in 2012. NewWavey followed.

“My parents still live in Cincinnati,” KIT said as we made our way to the art gallery for the shoot, accidentally leaving the leftover fries behind. “They really don’t travel that much. If I didn’t take the initiative to get out here on my own, I wouldn’t be standing here next to you.”

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KIT, Khalfani and Sticky Ricardo are all part of Posture, a label Supreme Cuts founded in September. Khalfani met KIT through The GTW, and Sticky Ricardo connected through Dre Green, who was KIT’s girlfriend’s roommate. The label partnership made sense as they started hanging with each other and noticing they had the same personal interests and style.

“I think at a point you realize who is at your frequency and wavelength,” Khalfani said. “I just kind of meshed with them off the fact that we were two black dudes with hair—our septums were pierced and girls liked us anyway. We were respected in the 'hood. Then we started going around each other, and we really liked the same music.”

They’re still independent of each other, though. That’s especially the case for KIT, who’s what Khalfani considers a “loner in his own right.” That seemed true to an extent. As the conversation diverged into musings about Chicago and New York’s gentrification issues and the Ferguson situation, KIT quietly made his way to a dimly lit room to start shooting.

The “Spoiled” video will be animated, and filming it required numerous takes of KIT dancing, cavorting with the homies, and throwing money in the air (and scooping it back up to redo). The process, fueled by a few beers and de facto director Mega Max’s off-color banter (“That strip club was horrible. It looked like an orphanage!”), took up the entire afternoon.

But soon enough it was done, and KIT was quietly putting on his dark clothes, getting ready to tackle his plans for the near future. He played a show that night at a Williamsburg bar called The Flat as part of CMJ, and a few days later, he was back in Chicago shooting the video for “I Sell Everything” with Sasha Go Hard. The Holy Trinity EP is on the way, and soon Lownt will be back catalog; “Spoiled” will likely be the only video to come from the project. Whatever genre is next or created is anyone’s guess.

Brian Josephs is a lownt god writing. Follow Brian Josephs on Twitter.