Hip-hop heavyweight

Award-winning rapper K.I.L.O preaches self-love and acceptance

by

Dressed in a dark sweatshirt and jeans, the local rap artist known as K.I.L.O pulls a gray baseball cap over her long dreads, calmly steps on stage and looks out over the crowd. After brief welcoming remarks, her first track begins to erupt through giant speakers and she starts swaying back and forth, arms waving, head nodding.

The song is “Salvation.” It’s a fan favorite and one she often uses to open shows. Like much of her catalog, the mid-tempo piece offers parts of her personal story — including the struggles of being a gay Black woman — and encouragement to others seeking their own truths.

“No more pointing fingers, revealing all of my demons, I think my closet needs some cleaning,” she raps confidently in a fast-paced, alto tone. “This is me — is that what you wanted? The good, the bad, the flaws and all.” She explains how she’s overcome self-doubt and learned to love herself. “Idols become your rivals, you part ways like the Nile. The river runneth over as you look over your shoulder. You see pain, you see pleasure, rainy days, bad weather. Had to shed a few feathers. It was all for the better.”

At five feet 9 inches the former basketball player swaggers around the stage at the Harmony Bar, often hopping down to the floor to get closer to the crowd. After just a few tracks, the crowd is rapt, watching her every move.

It’s easy to see why K.I.L.O has been crowned Hip-Hop Performer of the Year at the Madison Area Music Awards the last three years in a row.

“Live shows are my chance to give people more than just my music, to give them a part of me,” she tells Isthmus. “I feel closer to the music during shows and I hope the people there feel closer to me.”

K.I.L.O has released just one solo album — available at first only on CD — and that was in 2018. Her scant catalog is perhaps the reason she is not that well known outside of the city’s tight hip-hop circle. But that might be about to change. She is working on a new album that she plans to release on streaming services.

She’s also the co-founder — with fellow Madison emcee and friend 1neofmani — of LessWork Lifestyle, a company that assists local rappers with studio recording as well as apparel and flyer design, photography and other promotional materials. It’s a deliberate response to the city’s unfortunate reputation as an unwelcoming place for rap artists.

“We’re already in the scene here. We know how it can be,” explains K.I.L.O. “So our goal with LessWork is to grow a business that helps others grow their music and build up their exposure.”

Always a rap fan

Born Akiya Alexander in Evanston, Illinois, 36 years ago, K.I.L.O didn’t try her hand as an emcee until 2010. But she had been a rap fan for as long as she can remember.

There were a couple of pivotal points that nudged her toward the stage. First was a concert by teenage rap duo Kris Kross when she was 7 years old. That’s when she first remembers being fully captivated by hip-hop culture.

Around that time, she also became a super fan of two female emcees from the East Coast — Queen Latifah and MC Lyte. “They were the first two that I saw who were really independent and able to operate without some male backing,” says K.I.L.O, who often performs solo, playing beats plugged into a laptop connected to a venue’s sound system. “They kept it about the culture. Their message was about peace but they still gave us that gruff, strong vibe.”

Another important influence was K.I.L.O’s mother, who instilled a sense of responsibility in the rapper to help others in her community. “She would always ask me things like ‘How are you going to educate and enlighten your people?’”

K.I.L.O came to Wisconsin in 2004 to play basketball at UW-Madison. She played a couple of seasons here, transferred to the University of Southern Indiana and then moved back after college.

While living on Darbo Drive on the city’s east side back in 2010, she would hang out with 1neofmani and help him record songs in a basement studio. After a few sessions, she got brave enough to write a few of her own lyrics and step up to the mic.

“I never had dreams before then that I wanted to be a rapper,” she recalls. “But I loved it as a listener and just being around it so much and having the opportunity to record, I decided to try it.”

She kept at it and a couple of years later decided to get on the stage at a talent showcase at a bar in Janesville. “I won’t lie — I was so nervous that I threw up,” she says. “But after that, I did the show. And then there was another show and others and it went from there.”

Over the years, K.I.L.O has played at a number of spots around Madison — probably more than most other local rappers — including Crucible, Robinia Courtyard, Cafe Coda, Liquid and even the Overture Center as part of a Madison Area Music Awards show a couple of years ago.

And then came COVID. “The pandemic canceled almost everything,” she says. “But hopefully things will get going again and maybe even be better than they were before.”

Being a woman in hip-hop

Though rap is as popular here as it is everywhere, the hip-hop community in Madison is relatively small and the number of female rappers even smaller.

“Being a woman in hip-hop is a stand-out feature in itself,” says Rebecca “Boss Lady” Barber, who hosts the Universal Soul Explosion rap radio show on WORT-FM (89.9). But it’s more than that for K.I.L.O, adds Barber, “especially when it comes to her gender and sexuality.”

K.I.L.O “embraces who she is as truth and with transparency, while encouraging others to be proud of who they are without facade,” says Barber. “Her natural ability to walk with integrity and pride also comes out in her lyrics, often speaking of love, strength and determination.”

That’s particularly true when it comes to two of K.I.L.O’s anchor songs — “Lord Knows” and “New Religion.”

On “Lord Knows,” the words of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. are layered in where a chorus or hook would normally be. The beat is a repeating rollercoaster of high and low drums mixed with a bit of looped piano. 

For her part on this track K.I.L.O doesn’t mince words. “Let me take you back to 1619,” she begins one verse, a reference to when the first Black slaves were brought to the Jamestown Colony of Virginia. “Shackled in chains, we lost our way. But our music got us through it, gave us movements.”

Taking listeners through history, she arrives at the present and ponders what’s next. “Now, the bigger picture is Martin and Malcolm’s mission…. The question still remains, what are we gonna do? Sit? Walk? Run? Solve our problems with a gun? Dear America, look what we’ve become.”

K.I.L.O says her hope with this song, which is the only track she’s done a video for, is to prompt others to envision a better tomorrow without fraught racial tensions. “My goal was to ask the questions,” she says. “Like where are we now, what are we going to do next? What can be done?”

A resource for local artists

K.I.L.O picked up basketball early and says it was on the court where she learned the importance of teamwork, something she now uses in her LessWork Lifestyle venture.

Co-founder Breyon Sommerville, aka 1neofmani, says the company “was created out of survival for local artists, predominantly rappers. Music is designed as an outlet for exposure, but what we saw was a resistance of inclusiveness toward hip-hop here.”

The lack of stage time in Madison’s music venues for rap artists is an ongoing frustration for performers and fans alike.

For years, groups including the Urban Community Arts Network and the Greater Madison Music City Project have worked with city agencies, promoters and venues to increase the number of rap shows. While they’ve had varying degrees of success — including last summer’s Mad Lit outdoor concert series on State Street and the occasional show at places like the High Noon Saloon — local artists say there’s still not enough opportunity to quench the thirst fans have for local rap shows.

LessWork tries to help local hip-hop artists navigate in this environment. “We want to build the value of what’s being neglected and overlooked and to be a resource for local artists,” says Sommerville. The goal is to act as a one-stop shop for local emcees who need help creating their own brand and promoting their music.

The company name summarizes their overall philosophy, adds Sommerville: “If you’ve got a group of individuals delegated to different tasks, but have the same goal, it will be less work.”

LessWork used to host parties around town where those with common interests and different areas of expertise could network, but the pandemic put an end to those gatherings.

Currently, K.I.L.O and 1neofmani are working with other local emcees to design promotional products like T-shirts and print them through a partnership with a screen printing shop. But soon, LessWork plans to begin printing their own products in house. Going forward, the two hope to begin packaging their offerings as a subscription service to help artists who are just starting out.

I'm black, I'm gay, I rap

K.I.L.O’s “New Religion,” which won the Madison Area Music Awards Hip-Hop Song of the Year for 2021, is probably her best-known song.

In it, she takes aim at apathy and what she sees as a lack of compassion in the world. “Judge all, love none — that’s the new religion,” she raps early in the track. “Emotionally attached, but still at a distance. I’m a woman and I rap, so what’s the big difference?” she continues. “What are you battling right now? I battle everyday with myself.”

“These days, it’s a lot more judgment of others than there is love for each other,” she says of her lyrics. “Everyone is concerned with things like what people do for a living more than who they are as a person.”

K.I.L.O — which stands for Keep It Lesbian Only — was closeted earlier in life. “I come from a different era where we (as gay people) had to be secretive,” she says. “We couldn’t be as out as we are now, so I reflect on that and remember that I can only be me.”

She worked through her issues but knows many others suffer from judgment and disapproval. So, she says, “I want to be a voice for others to follow and understand we’re all different and see how that’s a positive thing.

“Race and skin color and sexual preference do not matter,” she adds. “These are things that society puts on us. Gay, lesbian, straight, whatever it is, is only part of who we are, not only what we are. So, I take ownership of it so that I don’t allow somebody else to have that control over me and it casts me in a negative light.”

K.I.L.O, who also goes by the stage name SkitL’z — another nod to the rainbow flag she always has with her — stays grounded in knowing she is who she wants to be, not who others may think she is.

“I’m Black, I’m gay, I rap. But these are all just labels,” she says. “None of them is my name. None of them define me.”

K.I.L.O, who also works at the audio and visual equipment supplier Full Compass, is expecting to drop her new, as-yet-untitled musical project in June.

So far, the bulk of K.I.L.O’s music is scattered around the web, some of it on YouTube and the lion’s share of it on her SoundCloud page. With the new album, however, she’ll be making her debut on all of the other streaming platforms, including iTunes and Spotify.

“I’m about a year behind where I want to be with that, hey, the world had stopped,” she says with a laugh, adding that we can also expect more music videos and social media content too.

Beyond her next album release, K.I.L.O is thinking big. “I want to go wherever music can take me and where I can find people who will relate to my story and message of progress — which, I think, is everywhere.”