Driving around Chicago with hip-hop eccentric Kid Static in his ‘95 Toyota Tercel (with a suped-up engine), there’s no mistaking how connected this adventurous MC/producer is to the people of his city. Going from a meeting at the headquarters of the new artist development resource site Veoba near Wicker Park to downtown and eventually back to his home studio in Humboldt Park, this towering dynamo doesn’t slack off. Admittedly, today is busier than average, but on this overcast afternoon he appreciates the opportunity to move his music forward and just talk with some of the many folks on the scene he has met over the past five years. During a brief stop at Kinko’s, Kid Static reveals that a trip he’s taking the following day to L.A. is actually a precursor for his move out West to expand his recording career. While surprising news, it also makes this day around his city all the more significant.

Yea Big and Kid Static – The Nameless

Reaching downtown, we visit one of the Midwest’s premier street wear boutiques, Jugrnaut, and it’s here where Kid Static’s connection to Chicago is truly felt. Once inside, he catches up with the shop’s owners, shoppers, and artist Mr. Tastees—who is setting up a display with his acrylic jewelry line. Then all of a sudden a couple of guys from a website come to the store and interview him on video for a segment on underground hip-hop. Attention seems to buzz around him most places he goes—not because he demands it but because he genuinely wants to build with people from all walks of life. And that’s in part why his solo material and his Yea Big + Kid Static project has caught the attention of a wide range of listeners: people appreciate that he creates his oft-energetic tracks without worrying about appeasing a specific audience.

After grabbing lunch and checking out some graffiti by Asend, Pancho, and other local heavy-hitters, we head further north, and Kid Static pulls up to the house of Dawson Prater, founder of Locust Music and Jib Door Productions. Here, he picks up more copies of the latest YB + KS album, The Future’s Looking Grim. But the pick-up winds up turning into an extended conversation about the music industry and how people didn’t initially know how to categorize the glitchy hip-hop of Yea Big + Kid Static. Amid some expressed frustration, the positive note during the talk was that Kid Static’s free flowing existence actually helped open his audience to punk and electronica kids that most rappers never reach.
As the sun sets in Chicago, Kid Static heads back to his home studio in Humboldt Park. Here, he plays me a gamut of unreleased material, including a booming dubstep beat, a catchy hip-hop cut called “Tattoos” — about being proud of his ink — and a darker, industrial-styled track produced by members of the hyper rock group The Mae Shi. And while sitting down to talk in his studio, he explains that it’s his plan to work with members of the aforementioned act and others in L.A. that have him feeling eager about the future.

Now that you see your end in Chicago and L.A. opening up, what are you looking forward to as far as developing as an artist?

Kid Static: I just want to keep doing what I’ve been doing—just keep learning and adding what I’ve learned to my existing material to make an artist that is representative of who I am. I feel like I’m constantly discovering new avenues and things about myself. And as I discover these parts of myself, I try and put them into myself as an act. I think maybe gettin’ out of Chicago and going somewhere else and following this dream I got, I can go somewhere new, go somewhere different and get that inspiration that honestly I think I still have here, but the avenues to push it are dying out in Chicago. You have to go somewhere different. I just hope to find something different—new people to work with, new people to network with, new people to talk to you know? Cos I feel like I made a decent enough splash in Chicago that people will remember me when I come back.

Do you think it will be easier to juggle all the different sounds that run through your mind, like the dubstep stuff — the more glitchy stuff?

KS: I might just have to start different projects (laughing). Honestly! I was thinking about this the other day—the best way to do it would just be start different projects so people know exactly what they’re gettin’ when they go, instead of just being that artist that you go to the show and the show’s always different—you never know what you’re gettin’ into.

Talk about the specific things you want to do with the guys from The Mae Shi. Is there a band name yet?

KS: Nah, we don’t know yet. I’m actually going out there to start working with ‘em. I don’t know. I just think that they’ve all been rock kids and all the music we make together where I bring the hip-hop side of it and they bring that rock side of it and something interesting comes out of it. I don’t necessarily have to rap. I can sit here and play drums or play keys or something but I still think that background I come from will shine through whether it’s more repetitive beats or repetitive keyboard lines and drum breaks that are set into the background so that the vocals pronounced. But we’ll see. They sent me a bunch of tracks. I played you that one track where I was kinda singing and you said it sounded kind of industrial—that was from those guys so if that’s how it goes, that’s how it goes. I’m open for anything. I like music, I like making, creating music, I like playing music, I like selling music so wherever that goes, that’s where I’m gonna go with it.

You know I think you’ve always taken the perspective of hip-hop from a very old-school sense in that it encompasses everything — every type of music — not to where some people think with the stereotypes : ego, image, money. But you kind of took it back to where it’s really encompassing anything that you come across. So can you talk about that — using hip-hop in the broadest sense and how that’s been working for you?

KS: I think my interpretation personally is the way that hip-hop was built on sampling and I don’t think that you just sample that one verse or that one song or that one horn hit–you sample life. Like, ‘Oh man, I went to this punk show and the kids were gettin’ crazy and how can I bring that into what I do?’ Like, ‘Oh, man, I went to this classical show and people were gettin’ really introspective and head nodding and stood up and gave ‘em a standing ovation at the end of it and he didn’t even have to act a fool on stage. How can I bring that kind of respect, that kind of awe into what I do?’ So it’s not so much, ‘Aw man, this is what the lead hip-hop heads are doin’ so that’s what I have to do,’ it’s more like, ‘Where do I come from, what do I know, and how can I add that to what my personal definition [of hip-hop] is?’

Do you think that’s how you got respect here fro a good amount of people — that you were able to capture all these different perspectives and bring it into your style?

KS: I think at first, people didn’t know what to think. People were just like, ‘This dude is weird. He’s different.’ Like we were talking about earlier, you keep seeing the same person everywhere, obviously they’re working hard and everywhere you go, they keep calling you, asking for collabs. You may not give it to ‘em, but their face and their name are known and then all of a sudden people start acknowledging me and shaking my hand, people who turned their back on me like, ‘We don’t even know that dude’ all of a sudden, they’re like, ‘Hey, what’s up?’ and acknowledge you. Cos people admire work ethic. No matter how weird or how crazy your music is, if you work hard, people are just like, ‘he’s really doing his thing and getting it out there.’ So at that point it really becomes camaraderie because people identify with that because that’s what I’m trying to do—that’s what they’re trying to do—so know we can trade notes. Now we’re on the same level where I may not like your music, you may not like my music, but you hit some spots on your tour that you sold out that I’ve been having trouble with. How did you do that?’ And it becomes more of a give and take relationship.

In terms of music and otherwise, what are you going to miss the most about Chicago because you’ve grown up here and lived here your whole life?

KS: The people. I don’t know, the thing is Chicago’s not that far away, I mean it’s like what? Less than a five-hour plane ride. If I want to come home, I can come home. My family’s here, a lot of my friends are here, but I’ve been here for a very long time, I leave all the time—I spend so much time out on the road that that feeling of awe, that homesickness doesn’t really happen anymore because you know you can go home if you ever feel like, ‘Oh man, I gotta go!’

Briefly, can you talk about the Yea Big/Kid Static chapter of your career and I know you were saying you will always be able to make songs but obviously Stefan (Yea Big) has gone…

KS: I don’t think the page has turned on that chapter yet. I don’t think the last page has turned, I think we’re still very much trying to figure out what we wanna do and I’m trying to give him the space to figure out what he wants to do, but in the same way, I’m not gonna stop making music so if it gets to the point where he’s like, ‘Yeah, let’s get back to making music, and I want to tour again,’ if I’m neck deep in something else, I may not revisit it. I don’t know. I don’t know where he’s gonna be and where I’m gonna be in the next couple years. I would like to continue that project—I was real excited about it. But I learned a lot from it, I feel like every project that I do become a part of, I do better so taking the lessons learned from my solo project, The Cankles, and then Yea Big + Kid Static, it’s time to go on to something else and do even better and see what happens.

Is there anyone else in L.A. you’re thinking of connecting with?

KS: I mean who’s in L.A.? All of ‘em (laughs). I’m just sayin’. I did a track with Del The Funky Homosapien, I wanna talk to him to his face. I know he’s in the Bay right now. The Bay is closer to L.A. than it is to Chicago so… I know people who have been working with him so I really want to meet him just cos I listen to a lot of his music—Deltron 3030 was one of my favorite albums in high school and I just like a lot of things about the dude. And a friend of mine Hopi Spitshard who actually got on the Paid Dues this year, big ups to her for that one—I think she’s doing a whole album with him so I assume she talks to him on a regular basis. So I don’t think it would be that difficult to get in touch with him. But there’s a couple people—pretty much all the West Coast cats. I want to at least talk to Murs—I think that dude’s hilarious. I’ve talked to Snoop, but I at least want to sit down in a way—I want to get big enough and broad enough that I can sit down and have a conversation—not just on some, ‘Oh this dude’s a fan.’ I’m sure a lot of these people have a lot to tell. I’ve only been doing this for a couple of years and I have a lot of stories to tell so I wanna know through the twenty plus years some of these guys have been doing it.

And what about the whole beat movement in L.A. — it’s like not really so reliant on MCs anymore. You know, like Daedalus, Flying Lotus?

KS: I think I would fit in well with them, honestly, because I started off doing instrumental tracks. I come from an instrumental background. I still write instrumental tracks. I’ve got stuff that I just sat down and I’m like, ‘I don’t feel like writing a beat,’ let me just write something.’ I got crazy, orchestral RJD2 sounding stuff, I got really ambient, almost minimal stuff. I got drum n bass, drill n bass, dubstep—whatever. It’s all just a matter of where I am and what I feel like. So I feel like if I ever run into Daedelus, which I have friends in the IDM scene so I might get back into, I think I’ll be okay, man. I don’t have a problem with it. I feel like I float back and forth well and I feel like I do and make what I want to make at any given time so I do what I do.

Words and Photos by Max Herman

Yea Big and Kid Static – Grim