In this weeks edition of RADAR RAIDERS, I'd like to present to you a very close homie of mine from middle school and beyond. We've both been grinding ever since lunchroom freestyles and bedroom recording sessions and the plans are still set in motion. Hailing from San Antonio, TX, this focused and conscious individual has laid his own path and continues to follow it. Distancing himself from the typical southern rap that has run amok these days, Krysis finds time to build compositions of purpose and poetic luster with a delivery chalk full of venom and thunder. Get ya mind right folks, here's part one of this three part special edition of Radar Raiders!!_____________________
PART I:- What's your name and what city do you represent?
The name is Krysis aka "The Deepest" aka "Tha K/R" aka "K-R to the I wit the lil antennas on it"(u remember dat line Ocky,lol). I am on an underground independent record label called "L1 RECORDS. The "L1" stands for "Lyrics 1st". This label was formed by me and my older brother Kemo. We formed this label in an effort to emphasize and deliver true lyricism for the listeners who really are lovers of good music. Not just hip-hop or rap, but MUSIC in general. But yeah, I'm from San Antonio, Texas. Some of us down here like to call it "SA TOWN" or "Tha 'Tone". I was born and raised down here. Overall it's a very nice and cultural city. It's good food down here, there's also good people. It has it's bad areas too, but what city doesn't. I love this city, but I could definately say without a doubt, it's not the city for an artist to be exposed or to catapult a musical career at. Hopefully, that will change within the next couples of years.
- How would you describe your direction & sound?
The overall direction of my music is to send out a positive message and to also showcase true lyricism in my songs. I feel like God blessed me with a talent to not only be able to write songs, but also to be able to change people's lives and to drop knowledge on them through my songs that could help them in present time and in the future. My "sound" really can vary, due to the fact that I was influenced by different kinds of music... mostly being gospel, R&B, Soul, Jazz, Neo-Soul and of course hip-hop. So I really have a wide range of "sound" in my music.
- When did you start creating music?
Honestly, the beginnings of me gettin' into music as a whole came about when I was only about 9. I started writing poems in my free time. My 4th grade teacher at the time got a hold of one of my poems I wrote during class and was extremely impressed and showed it to one of the teachers for the Gifted and Talented class and they actually offered me to be in the G&T poetry class. I didn't accept the offer, but I thought it was coo' that they felt the poem that much. Around that same time, I got interested in wanting to play instruments. I was intrigued by it at the time, because my father actually is a band teacher and an outstanding musician himself. He could play drums, trumpet,saxophone, piano...anything, jus name it. Every Sunday at church, I would study my dad as he would play the drumset. And when church was over, my pops would let me play around a lil bit on his drumset. I just kept practicin' at it and one day, I finally got it and once I figured it out, I could play any beat I heard by ear. At the time, I was a big Timbaland fan. One beat that I remember learnin how to play was for the song "One In A Million" by Aaliyah, which is still one of my favorite beats to this day. That beat was a lil difficult, because of the timing, but once I learned that, I pretty much knew I could play any beat I heard by ear. I started playin' for the church choir from ages 9 to about 17. And by the time I hit middle school, I was already about 3 years deep on knowing how to play drums, so I decided to go into band to further my skills on drums. I actually did real good doin' that, I was the main drummer at the middle school I was attending and I won numerous awards. It was a good experience, and I also acquired the skill of learning how to play other instruments that are in the percussion section. I also learned how to read music, and not jus how to play by ear.
In my 7th grade year, I started writing raps. I was influenced by hearing my older brother Kenny(aka KEMO). At the time, him and his wife were puttin out cassette tapes and cds of their music. It was mostly gospel rap, and I really gravitated towards their music because of the honesty in it. When I heard Kemo's music, he would throw all of his emotion into his music, and by the end of the song, he would let you know how he would always find God to help through anything he went through. But he would also talk about the dirt he did, or how he would have second thoughts about havin faith...he would even role-play in his music to show how to deal with problems and how to approach God for assistance. This influenced me to start makin' my own raps and my earlier rhymes were very gospel-oriented. I actually would make lil homemade beats on this cheap Yamaha keyboard I had at the time. I wasn't recordin none of these songs at the time, I was jus really trying it out and trying to perfect my skills lyrically. I wasn't real serious about the rap though until I turned about 14 years old. The one MC that really sparked me to take it to the next level lyrically at the time was Mos Def. That's around the time his single "Ms. Fat Booty" came out, I also heard this other song that him, Talib and Common did called "Respiration". That song til' this day is one of my favorites, and once I heard more of Mos Def and other lyrical artists music..I fell in love with hiphop and I started really trying to sharpen my lyrical skills. I started bumpin' artists like Nas, Jay-Z, Biggie, Eminem(Marshall Mathers LP was my favorite album in my 8th grade year and still is in my top 5 best albums), RedMan, Wu-Tang. I always felt outta place sometimes too, because down here in Texas, everybody was trippin' on the "Chopped and Screwed" music. I liked it, but I was bumpin' mostly east coast artists, because I've always gravitated towards lyricism..screwed music was too slow to listen to all the time.
I soon started writin songs and lettin my brother Kemo hear 'em. He was producing music for underground artists in Nashville,Tennessee at the time while recording his own music. He liked my songs, but he always told me to stay on my pen-game. It was one particular song I spit for him one day over the phone that got him really interested in workin' with me tho'. When I was 15, I wrote a song called "Issues"...it was basically a song that depicted all of the problems that the world is goin through and how people are just sellin their soul instead of staying pure. Once he heard that, he wanted me to come down to Tennessee to record some tracks. I saved all the songs I would write in my notebooks and took all of them wit me when I flew down to see Kemo. I had about 15 solid songs at the time, and I actually cut a 15 track cd. It was my first time ever recording in a studio period...and surprisingly..I recorded all 15 tracks on that cd in ONE night. Kemo decided to actually called it "One Day's Work". I didn't release it or anything, I just let people around school hear it, so I could get some responses on how people felt about it. I was actually gettin GREAT feedback from people and they were most impressed by the deep messages I was providing on the tracks and the punchlines I would throw on the tracks. This is also around the same time, me and this monster RED OCTOBER met up wit each other! I knew dude since 8th grade in Middle School, but I never knew he was into music at the time. We started showin our music to each other and eventually linked up and recorded sum tracks together. I could relate to Ocky, cuz we both liked the same kind of music. He actually put me up on game on alot of undergound artists that I didn't know about at the time...like Cage, Copywrite, Cannibol Ox, Yak Balls, & Atmosphere. Til this day, Ocky has made sum of the best mix cd's I've heard!! He mixed in all of the dope music from R&B, HipHop, Neo Soul and he even put me up on "Trip-Hop". I also got tight wit my boy KuoteOble at this time. Ocky and KO were actually in a group called "Alpha Bionix". I stayed a close affiliate with them and I would do tracks with them whenever they needed a feature for any project. Ocky and Kuoteoble started puttin their own mixtapes out at the High School we were at. And I appeared on maybe one or 2 songs on each of their mixtapes, but I still created a real nice buzz around the school, and people really respected me as a lyricist. People also knew us because we would always have ciphers at school, and we always freestlyed at the lunch tables or even outside on campus. We always had people gatherin' around us to hear our rhymes. It was cool man, I really enjoyed it...I know u remember dem good ole' days Ocky! I started with this music thing REAL early and I've enjoyed this journey of learning more about it and expanding my knowledge on it. It's a great experience,and I'm still learning alot til this day.
In my 7th grade year, I started writing raps. I was influenced by hearing my older brother Kenny(aka KEMO). At the time, him and his wife were puttin out cassette tapes and cds of their music. It was mostly gospel rap, and I really gravitated towards their music because of the honesty in it. When I heard Kemo's music, he would throw all of his emotion into his music, and by the end of the song, he would let you know how he would always find God to help through anything he went through. But he would also talk about the dirt he did, or how he would have second thoughts about havin faith...he would even role-play in his music to show how to deal with problems and how to approach God for assistance. This influenced me to start makin' my own raps and my earlier rhymes were very gospel-oriented. I actually would make lil homemade beats on this cheap Yamaha keyboard I had at the time. I wasn't recordin none of these songs at the time, I was jus really trying it out and trying to perfect my skills lyrically. I wasn't real serious about the rap though until I turned about 14 years old. The one MC that really sparked me to take it to the next level lyrically at the time was Mos Def. That's around the time his single "Ms. Fat Booty" came out, I also heard this other song that him, Talib and Common did called "Respiration". That song til' this day is one of my favorites, and once I heard more of Mos Def and other lyrical artists music..I fell in love with hiphop and I started really trying to sharpen my lyrical skills. I started bumpin' artists like Nas, Jay-Z, Biggie, Eminem(Marshall Mathers LP was my favorite album in my 8th grade year and still is in my top 5 best albums), RedMan, Wu-Tang. I always felt outta place sometimes too, because down here in Texas, everybody was trippin' on the "Chopped and Screwed" music. I liked it, but I was bumpin' mostly east coast artists, because I've always gravitated towards lyricism..screwed music was too slow to listen to all the time.
I soon started writin songs and lettin my brother Kemo hear 'em. He was producing music for underground artists in Nashville,Tennessee at the time while recording his own music. He liked my songs, but he always told me to stay on my pen-game. It was one particular song I spit for him one day over the phone that got him really interested in workin' with me tho'. When I was 15, I wrote a song called "Issues"...it was basically a song that depicted all of the problems that the world is goin through and how people are just sellin their soul instead of staying pure. Once he heard that, he wanted me to come down to Tennessee to record some tracks. I saved all the songs I would write in my notebooks and took all of them wit me when I flew down to see Kemo. I had about 15 solid songs at the time, and I actually cut a 15 track cd. It was my first time ever recording in a studio period...and surprisingly..I recorded all 15 tracks on that cd in ONE night. Kemo decided to actually called it "One Day's Work". I didn't release it or anything, I just let people around school hear it, so I could get some responses on how people felt about it. I was actually gettin GREAT feedback from people and they were most impressed by the deep messages I was providing on the tracks and the punchlines I would throw on the tracks. This is also around the same time, me and this monster RED OCTOBER met up wit each other! I knew dude since 8th grade in Middle School, but I never knew he was into music at the time. We started showin our music to each other and eventually linked up and recorded sum tracks together. I could relate to Ocky, cuz we both liked the same kind of music. He actually put me up on game on alot of undergound artists that I didn't know about at the time...like Cage, Copywrite, Cannibol Ox, Yak Balls, & Atmosphere. Til this day, Ocky has made sum of the best mix cd's I've heard!! He mixed in all of the dope music from R&B, HipHop, Neo Soul and he even put me up on "Trip-Hop". I also got tight wit my boy KuoteOble at this time. Ocky and KO were actually in a group called "Alpha Bionix". I stayed a close affiliate with them and I would do tracks with them whenever they needed a feature for any project. Ocky and Kuoteoble started puttin their own mixtapes out at the High School we were at. And I appeared on maybe one or 2 songs on each of their mixtapes, but I still created a real nice buzz around the school, and people really respected me as a lyricist. People also knew us because we would always have ciphers at school, and we always freestlyed at the lunch tables or even outside on campus. We always had people gatherin' around us to hear our rhymes. It was cool man, I really enjoyed it...I know u remember dem good ole' days Ocky! I started with this music thing REAL early and I've enjoyed this journey of learning more about it and expanding my knowledge on it. It's a great experience,and I'm still learning alot til this day.
_____________________
Tomorrow we'll have part two of this special edition of RADAR RAIDERS on KRYYYYYSIS!! Download "Mystic" below & vibe!!
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