Khary – An Xperience Interview

Khary – An Xperience Interview – by Rob Smittix.

KHARY: Let me get this burp out real quick. (burp) There we go. All right, should be good.

RRX: (Laughs) Sounds good. Hey man … one of my jobs here is to interview people, and a lot of times I’m assigned people to interview and that’s fine and everything, but I’m just an absolute fan. I’ve been digging everything I’m hearing, so I just wanted to chat with you. Thanks for doing this.

KHARY: No worries at all, man.

RRX: One of the things that I found interesting about your music is … you seem like you’re a young guy, but your hip hop seems a lot different than a lot of the new hip hop that’s being released, if that makes sense?

KHARY: Yeah, no, that makes sense. I get what you mean.

RRX: I grew up on hip hop. God, in the ‘80s, man, it was LL Cool J and all those guys … what do you think was the greatest era of hip hop?

KHARY: I’m a 34-year-old millennial … the era I came up in was probably like … a lot of my favorite artists are from the 2000s, like mid-2000s.

There’s this era of Double XL, I think it was their second freshman cover when they had Lupe Fiasco on the cover, Kid Cudi, Asher Roth … there’s a few other artists, but that was probably my favorite era. Older eras that not even influenced me but just got me really into hip hop was probably the A Tribe Called Quest era, I would say.

RRX: In my opinion, A Tribe Called Quest is the greatest rap group of all time.

KHARY: Hmm, I’m going Outkast, but I see the vision.

RRX: I could lean that way too, but I always had that New York thing going on. Most of my favorite rappers are from New York, but now one of my favorite rappers, I think, is from Providence, Rhode Island. Is that where you’re from?

KHARY: Yeah, that’s where I grew up from the age of 3.

RRX: So yeah, we’re branching out, we’re still East Coast, though.

KHARY: Something like that.

RRX: That’s cool. What was it like growing up in Providence? I’ve been through it a couple of times, but never really had the pleasure to chill out there.

KHARY: I mean … growing up there, you probably didn’t miss much. It’s a much cooler place now than it was back then. I mean, even now, it still kind of has its drawbacks, just being a very small city. It’s a lot more lively and cooler things going on now. But when I was growing up there … just small towns feel very confining. If anyone did music, within a couple of months, you knew who was doing certain things; it’s just that small. But the benefit of that, though, there were a lot of opportunities for me. Whereas I got my start really just being my brother’s hype man, and he would sneak me in clubs when I was under 18 and stuff, and I’d just be the hype man on stage. Through that, I met other people. When you’re in a smaller place, they see this young kid who’s really into hip hop and really into like studying it, you know? I was buying CDs every week from the ‘90s and ‘80s and just really brushing up on the history of it. There’s this promoter named Charles who started putting me on a lot of shows. Like I was opening up for Cannabis, Killer Priest, and random nineties rappers who would come to do a B market, or I guess Rhode Island’s probably like a C market … but being small, they provided me a lot of opportunities to get better.

RRX: No, that’s true. If you go back to the nineties, and I would say 1993 for me was like the golden year of hip hop. But if you weren’t in New York City or say LA at the time … there wasn’t much of a hip hop scene outside of that because it wasn’t getting put onto MTV. It wasn’t being played on the radio, so if it existed, the country didn’t know about it. The times have changed a little bit. With the little fish, big pond scenario, where now you don’t have to go anywhere. Even if you’re a country singer, you don’t have to go to Nashville anymore. It might do you better to stay in your small town or your small city so that you can shine there.

KHARY: Yeah, I mean … we’re definitely in a different era, in that regard.

RRX: Now, I’ve seen today a post that you put up, “fakey laser flips.” So you’re a skater as well?

KHARY: Yeah, that was actually what I was into before I started rapping. Granted, it was a short window of when I got into both. I started skating probably when I was 15 or 16. I actually stopped at some point cause I just got more into rapping. I’ll always do it on and off, just like a little bit throughout the years, but about three and a half years ago, I was like, damn … I don’t have any hobbies in life. I was just trying to reconnect with myself, and I’m really back into skating now. I’m better than I ever was. I definitely couldn’t do fakey laser flips when I was a kid.

RRX: Nice. Skating has been something that’s been near and dear to me for quite some time. Skaters used to listen to punk rock. They skated to punk rock, or they skated to underground hip hop music, basically anything that could’ve made the Tony Hawk soundtracks.

KHARY: (Laughs) yeah.

RRX: They’re literally perfect soundtracks, but these days I’m seeing these amazing skateboard videos, and they’re skating to Drake or something … I don’t know, man, it’s not really the same kind of vibe.

KHARY: This is one of the most amazing and bad things about skateboarding: it is one of the truest gate-kept countercultures that ever existed. To this day, selling out is still an important thing to people in the community. Like making sure people aren’t selling out, or posers, or X, Y, and Z. So you have this thing that allowed it to be cool for a long time, but it also doesn’t promote new skaters. Because of that, it also doesn’t allow skaters to make that much money because people are so anti-selling out. I say all that to say this … skateboarding is so counterculture that I think at this point it’s almost counterculture to skate to Drake in a weird ironic fashion, or some of these songs … they were really into like Chief Keef. They might still be into it, but there was an era where skaters were skating to drill music, like drill hip hop from like Chicago or Detroit. I could see people skating to like stuff just because at some point whatever was counter becomes the norm, so you either have to counter against the norm or find something new.

RRX: That was very well said, but it breaks my heart when I don’t think they even know that’s not skateboarding music. What I like about a lot of your songs is that it is skateboard music. Is it hip hop? Yeah, but you do have that alternative kind of punk feel to you as well, that’s got a mass appeal that you have to many different audiences.

KHARY: It’s been a big journey to that sound. Originally, I started off just completely hip hop into boom bap rap and stuff like that. I even got into the Drakes, I got into more sort of R&B stuff, the pop stuff … I like everything in some capacity. But almost tying it back to me getting back into skating – I got bored with straight-up rapping just because I’ve been doing it for 10+ years. Skating helped me figure out who I was again. It was happening at the same time that I really got into alternative rock, punk rock, and grunge. You mentioned the Tony Hawk soundtrack – that was my introduction to most rock because I grew up on hip hop. No one was listening to that s*** where I’m from, or just circles I was in, definitely not my family. Now that I’ve found myself through skating again, I got into this alternative rock, and it gave me a new way to express myself. I like to say it sounds familiar, but it’s also new through my own lens. I feel very comfortable where I’m at sonically right now.

RRX: Well, you are the “Big Man!”

To find out more about Khary’s Big Mania Tour or merch visit: weird

 

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