Nick: Hey Kiki, how are things, man? 

 

Kiki: I've been good buddy. How are you doing, Mr. Nick?

 

Nick: Good. I saw that you had a show on Sunday. How did that go? 

 

Kiki: Oh, the one with Kenny, the Booker show? It was amazing. You know, Kenny hit me up and he's just like, “I’m coming in town. We should rock some songs.” It was actually a good idea to go out and do that because I had a show prior to that that wasn't so good, but this one was amazing. 

 

Nick: Right on. I've seen on your Twitter that you're currently cooking up a new album, fresh off the heels of “Genuine Dexterity,” which we'll talk about in a little bit. But I'd like to simply ask, how's it coming along? Who’ve you been working with on this one? 

 

Kiki: We're four songs deep right now. I almost don't want to leak who it is, you know what I'm saying? Because I have a feeling when people hear it, they're going to be utterly surprised. It's sort of like the Kenny one, you know what I'm saying? Like the Kenny one wasn't surprising. People are familiar that me and Kenny know each other but no one knew that we're gonna make a project together. The next project I have, actually the next two lineups of projects I have, people are going to be a little bit confused because you're not gonna expect it. But we’re four songs deep right now and it's coming out amazing. I'll tell you offline though. But by the time it releases, people are going to be shocked. They're going to be like, “y'all made a-hold on, what?”

 

Yeah, I remember when I was listening to the “Spellcasted” track when Billy Wood’s verse slipped and I was like “...he did not.” (Kiki: Oh yeah!) Where are you currently making and recording this album? Is this a home studio situation? 

 

Kiki: Well that one, as funny as it sounds, I don't know if you've seen the Instagram post earlier,  I go to this studio of my friend and he's sponsored by a bunch of studio companies and stuff like that. Vanguard was the company that sent him a couple of mics to check out and they just did a writing for “Genuine Dexterity” today, which was surprising. It's a little quick blurb that they did on their newspaper. So basically I go to my homie spot to record but now that's even opening up brighter horizons because this my company really liked my album, so hopefully future sponsors and stuff like that. So I'm really happy that everything is formulated correctly.  

 

Nick: Okay. Any other details you'd like to reveal or are you wanting to keep that enclosed for the time being?

 

Kiki: Oh! I mean, I'll tell you. Thus far Doseone on my record and my homegirl Perseph One. Look her up. She's from Houston, amazing female rapper. So this one, I'm trying to go in a little different direction than “Genuine Dexterity.” It's in the same vein, but this one's a little more melodic and harmonious because the dude that I'm doing stuff with is more of a quintessential musician. He produces beats, but if you're familiar with the producer, you know he uses a lot of instrument gear. Kenny uses a lot of  gear too, but he uses a lot of toys and samples. Kenny just got a plethora of randomness. This guy uses more instruments. So it's gonna sound a little more organic, but raw too, both nerdy in its way, which is funny, because one is more electronic nerdy and plays with anything from toys to whatever. The other one, he just takes instruments and knows how to rearrange them to sound very cool, basically. 

 

Nick: It's not a K-the-I??? record if it's not a little bit nerdy. 

 

Kiki: It has to be and I've been fortunate enough to work with producers and MCs at the same caliber. They say, you know, you work with the people that are likewise, like yourself, you know what I'm saying? It's been fortunately easy enough to get the records done because they're just as nerdy as me. So we can just sit down and jot short ideas down, then those short ideas become full movies, you know?  

 

Nick: Absolutely. So going back to collabs, I saw that you have a list of rappers that you're hoping to collab with in the near future, one of which really caught my surprise when I first saw it, Mach-Hommy, which actually makes sense when considering that both of you share Haitian blood and are from around the East Coast area, granted Mach is way more mysterious and has more mainstream connections such as Jay-Z and Black Thought. 

 

Kiki: Way more mysterious. I'll tell you a little secret. I reached out to him like maybe four or five years ago, before he became the Mach-Hommy he is right now. I reached out to him and he was down. But I have a horrible tendency sometimes of not following through with things because I have eight million things going on. By the time I was able to curate the actual beat that I wanted him on, he became the Mach-Hommy that we know. So it went from talking to him directly to now I'm talking to a manager and I'm like, “you know what? I messed that one up. I should have jumped on that one quickly.” We could have got something because he was definitely interested. And obviously yeah, we're both Haitian, but it would be interestingly cool because there's only but so many of us in the scene. There's a lot of people. Video Dave is also Haitian. So there's some, but there's only a few of them. But I feel like it's definitely bucket list worthy. Like I have to get it done and I feel like people would really enjoy the song because I feel like we would make something crazy.

 

Nick: Yeah definitely. Since you said four to five years ago, did this coalesce with the time that he dropped “Pray for Haiti?”

 

Kiki: It's something around that time because I feel like that's the album that really catapulted him into mainstream level. His records were already out and about but he wasn't mainstream yet. He was just an underground artist that people were familiar with, he was still selling records for $100. That's insane. 

 

Nick: More than $100!

 

Kiki: You know, I mean, he looks at it more like art art pieces, which I don't knock him for. If you can get it off like that, go ahead. But he was always a person who’s willing to work because I literally contacted him by myself when he had a Twitter. He doesn't do it anymore but he was on it for a short period of time and I contacted him on Twitter and he was just like “yo, here's my email send me some stuff” and we talked and he was like, “yo dope let's do some stuff.” Then I just froze for a second which I tend to do. I literally froze up and I'm like “I don't have a beat yet.” If I came to him with a beat at that time in the same breath in the first email, it could have got done. We heard each other's stuff and it was like, “that's awesome. Send me the beat” that I just was just like,  I don't have any,  I don't have anything yet. I just wanted to make sure that it's possible that we can make this happen. 

 

Nick: What do you think that would even sound like if you had the chance to actually make that happen? 

 

Kiki: Well, depending on who made the beat, if I made the beat, it would be something really weird. I would probably go to my parents' crib, look at some old Haitian records and sample some stuff, stick in the vein of what he's like. I don't necessarily follow that code, but I think it's dope that he pushes the culture. I push my culture, but it's not the forefront of my music. It's the forefront of his music. He even goes back to the war days. He talks about, “oh, soldier, Haitian soldier.” Like, I don't do that. He's political with it. How can I put it? Like Woods is with his African heritage is what Mach is with his Haitian heritage. People don't know that about me unless you ask me. In fact, I'm the weird connection. I'm Haitian and Dominican so there's multiple and they all have issues with each other on the same island. So my history is a little more in depth. My culture consists of both parts of the islands that just bump heads with each other and have a crazy history, you know? You know, he dives deep into like, black magic ancestry and just weird stuff that I'm familiar with but I'm so Americanized (laughs) you know what I'm saying? It's hard for me to tap into that. Am I cultured enough to understand all of that stuff? Am I familiar with it? I'm familiar with everything he says. It's just not part of my music as much as his, but I would be willing to tap into that if I did like a project or a song with that dude. Like I speak Creole, I speak French, so I can at least slide some funny stuff in and we can do some interesting, cool, random stuff. It would be crazy knowing what it could be already, I know it'd be probably crazier than what I could possibly decide at the moment. 

 

Nick: Yeah definitely, I was actually listening to “Luh Hertz” and “The G.A.T.” So with that in mind, while we’re talking about the guy, what are some of your favorite Mac projects? I gotta know.  

 

Kiki: “Pray for Haiti” for sure. “HBO” might be my favorite…straight up. I get asked about some of his older work, he was perfect on that album like how I consider Roc Marciano's “Reloaded,” a perfect album. You know what I'm saying? Like these dudes are incredible MCs. Sometimes they do stuff I don't really care too much about. I'd say they are like 90 percent to me. There's like 10 percent of their stuff that I just can't deal with. Not that I can't deal with it, but it just misses the mark for me, you know? But pretty much everything on “HBO” was perfect to me. That's a non-stop record. “Balens Cho (Hot Candles)” that one is my shit too, but it's like 20 minutes. I will say, one of the reasons why I like that EP is…rest in peace to my homie Ras G. He got one of the dopest Ras G beats that I've ever seen him give to a rapper. Like he's usually just known to make raw instrumental stuff but that was the first time I heard him give to an MC at the caliber of Mach-Hommy, like some filthy shit. “Ohh right!” like that song…

 

Nick: I need to re-listen to that, because it's been a while since I've checked out “Balens Cho (Hot Candles)” but I've been listening to a lot of his stuff from that 2017 run, like what I mentioned before as well as “Dump Gawd: Hommy Edition.”

 

Kiki: Oh those are filthy! I'm big on if it's not broke, there's no need to fix it. All of those old Mach-Hommy records that we're talking about, those are perfect records. You can tell he literally sat down and scripted and thought out thoughtful amazing stuff. Now you can tell sometimes. When you get to that comfortability point where you're just like he's just writing and he's just, I think he's gotten too comfortable. But those albums are still extremely amazing but personally “HBO” is my favorite. 

 

Nick: Hell yeah. Let’s put the focus back on you and jump into “Genuine Dexterity.” But before we jump into that you mentioned that you were considering leaving music after, I believe, not putting anything out since 2018 and I think you were last featured on anything since 2020. So, what circumstances were at play that caused you to move in that direction, if you don't mind me asking?

 

Kiki: Oh, I don't mind…I was just bored of it, (laughs) you know what I'm saying? The direction that the universe was showing me is that it seemed like everybody else was bored with making music or the kind of music that I make anyway. There's always been an industry that differs from what we make but it never interfered with my music. I slowly started to feel that it was interfering with my music. So I just grew out of it, even though it's something I've done forever. One thing I tell people, man, you can be as talented as you want but there comes a time where you have to decide if you're going to put the actual effort into it and if the heart isn't there, you won't put the effort into it. I started realizing, I was touring for the last six years on a whim. The simple fact is, I don't think I'm the best, but I'm out tooting my own horn. I can freestyle like crazy, I can play beats randomly. So basically I was freestyling every show for like five to six years. It let me realize that, damn, I was getting away with murder. People were like, “what songs are those?” I'm like, “if you recorded it, you recorded it” because they weren't real songs. I saw where the scene was going and no one cared, so I stopped caring. Right now it's a renaissance, there's the Woods and the Hommys and you're like “yes I want to write!”  That was gone. I didn't care about writing, didn't care about making beats. I was doing it because it kept me alive in LA for a while. In the beginning when I moved to LA, I was still on that, but I'm saying towards the end of it is when it was keeping me alive so I can bullshit my way to still have a career and not care about putting out anything new. Then I realized that was whack and the funny thing is, to be honest with you, Sharif…he hit me up. We were talking and he was just like, “where you at?” That's why I love this dude. I like Sharif's, my brother. He makes amazing music, fuck his music, as a human being, he is like top three. I thought about that and just watching Sharif do his shit, it gave me that old young feeling again. I'm like “oh shit all the OG homies…they're reinventing that old shit that we used to love” so just to see all that stuff that I loved come back and Sharif telling me to pretty much get off my ass, It woke me up and I started working on the record. I contacted Kenny because me and Kenny already knew of each other. I said, “hey,  you should jump on the record and send me a couple of beats.” We did two songs and we said, “I think we're doing an album together.” It was because the two songs were, it wasn't intentional, you know? I was just working on an album that I was going to submit to whoever, maybe Woods, maybe Ninja Tune. He (Kenny Segal) sent it to Woods and Woods was just like…finish it and I want it. It was literally as simple as that.

 

Nick: From what I’ve seen of him, that seems very on brand for Woods, something that he'd say. 

 

Kiki: Yeah because but I knew Woods for a minute, so it was more like he gotta see that you care…to care and for years I just didn't care. I dealt with him for years. It used to be through Uncommon Nasa. He used to put on stuff and that's how we were familiar 20 years ago. We were on a compilation together and they used to run these Mule Prog shows, festivals, so Woods has been around for a while doing that stuff. One of my first big shows was when Armand Hammer just started in Rhode Island. I might have posted that flyer because it's an old flyer. So we've been knowing each other for a long time. It was just that he got this thing launched perfectly and he was willing to bring up all the people that he's seen in that struggle or there from the beginning. He's taking us out of the, not the grave because we haven't really stopped, he’s just putting us in the forefront and I respect that to the end, you know what I'm saying? So yeah, I'm glad I care now again. There's too many dope artists and they keep me up between Blackchai, Jay Cinema, there's so many dope new artists.

 

Nick: I will say too. I have never seen a year start so strongly in Hip Hop like 2025. 

 

Kiki: Dude there's so many dudes Miles Cooks, Pink Siifu, there's too many dope rappers and there's too many dope producers, you know? Kenny's just one of them. Child Actor, August Fanon, the list is crazy, there's too many. I'm that old elitist, the kid that used to be into trying to keep everything for myself. It feels like that vibe is back, you know what I'm saying? Like everybody's trying to be different and do their own thing instead of sounding like Sample A or Sample B, you know? It's like, no dude, be original. If you took this prior to the 2020s it's like everybody was trying to sound like too many of my homies,  you know what I'm saying? You had the “I'm trying to sound like Sage Francis” or “I'm trying to sound like Sole” or “I'm trying to sound like EL-P.” Just too many pockets back then. Now everybody's just trying to do themselves and it's amazing. That's what we started off with, everybody's originally  

 

Nick: I remember from your appearance on The Rap Music Plug Podcast, great podcast by the way, that you pretty much accepted every beat that Kenny gave you. Is that something that you do to challenge yourself or does that filter of choosing beats kind of dissipate with experience? 

 

Kiki: No, I'm a picky person. The thing with Kenny is two things. It's one, I wanted to challenge myself and two, every beat he gave me was so dope. I don't usually get that. Usually people will send me a plethora of beats. Say they sent me 15, I might like three that are album worthy. Kenny was sending them gradually at a slow pace. The funny thing is, there was only one that I didn't know how I felt about that in the beginning. Then I wrote to it and I was like, “oh my goodness!” You know what I'm saying? Sometimes there's things that you just be like, “I don't know about this yet,” you write to it, sometimes that song becomes your favorite song because you took the challenge, you know what I'm saying? I appreciated that he was giving me a challenge, but all his beats were so dope, I wouldn't call it necessarily a challenge. If he gave me something that I despised, I would make it clear. I mean, dude, there's three songs that haven't made the record. That's what people don't even know.

 

Nick: Are you gonna drop those?  

 

Kiki: Oh, for sure. We're figuring out all of that. But they're definitely going to be utilized. There's a whole other Sharif song that didn't make it because it was, what they like to say, it was inaudible (laughs)! You know, my brother Sharif likes to take it crazy, right? 

 

Nick: He gets pretty evil sometimes. 

 

Kiki: It sounds like war, it was just too crazy. To be honest, it might be the most chaotic Kenny beat that has ever touched the surface of the earth. Like effects pedals all set to 10. I'm telling you, that stuff freaked me out when I first heard it. I think that's why this song didn't make it because it was the freakiest song. We went full fledged grimy on it and like the whole thing is just very loud and noisy. There's an electric guitar, the phaser is up to the top. Everything got pushed to the top. I'm either figuring we put it out as extra bonus stuff or some of it can go to future projects, ‘cause me and Sharif are slowly working on a record too. I can say that. 

 

Nick: So a collab record? 

 

Kiki: Yeah. it's almost common sense that that was gonna happen. Believe me, the amount of people when “Genuine Dexterity” came out that said, "You and Sharif need to work on a record together.” We're like, “Yo, that's crazy because we already took that step.” I have a lot of songs with Sharif that haven't seen the face of the earth yet. So that’s “Buffet Boys,” remember that, that's the name of the album. 

 

Nick: So in the Backwoodz description of “Genuine dexterity,” you brought up two aspects that I'll read out loud here for the readers:

 

“Genuine Dexterity is an album made in order to display my many facets, whether it be my mood, growth or the adventures that formulate my present-day outlook, letting everything come naturally to me and to never force the envelope. It’s also about the direction the universe is heading towards whether I like it or not.”

 

“Maybe I’m calmer nowadays, I don’t feel the need to ALWAYS shout like I used to. My vocabulary has grown, and my flow is more polished.”

 

Why do you think that’s the case nowadays and how did it influence the narratives and themes unpacked on the record and are there any tracks you can point to that showcase this connection?

 

Kiki: I would say if you're familiar with my older stuff, I was very angry, right? I was very very very mad. But I was mad for a reason though. There was just a lot of bullshit and political things going on. I'm as political as a political rapper, I just know how to  code it and mask it properly so I don't get looked at like one of those. I don't want to be usually asked about my politics, you know what I'm saying? I’d say “Warhammer” is on that level, I'm calmer. If I did that song 10 years ago, I'd probably be screaming profanities all over that shit. But as many books as I've read and stuff like that, I can sit down now and I'm more comfortable relaying my message sweet and sound rather than. Because sometimes the aggressive dude in the room doesn't, is not always the toughest. You know what I'm saying? I've realized throughout my time, I don't know if it was Hip Hop ego, because I never had an ego where I think I'm better than anybody, it was just the Hip Hop ego for me to just be overly aggressive for no reason. I realized throughout time that I did not really need to be aggressive like that for any reason, because I can relay my message the same way. I say “Warhammer” for sure is definitely in that direction that displays the difference of those. It's hard for me to connect it with any old songs. I don't really understand why I was hat pissed off back then. Maybe it was because I grew up in the Bush era (Nick: Oh we're gonna get to that) because the politics now,  it's so comically movie-like that I'm not as mad about it, even though Trump is like the worst idea ever. I can do nothing but laugh because if you leave this country and go to other countries, get why people laugh at us. It looks like a movie from an outlook. We have people like Trump who has no politics whatsoever and he's our president right now. You know what I'm saying? I don't try to stay too far away from politics, but I also like to hide my message. I like to keep it as quiet as possible. If I do something, I let it flow naturally. I'm very carefree with how I let my lyrics fly because I have all this information in my head. I'm not a person that sometimes can relay it properly, conversation, all the shit that I hate, all the shit that I love, it could possibly come out offbeat and it's not my choice. It just depends on if I get the feel, you know what I'm saying? So “Genuine Dexterity” was fully about that. I was letting myself be carefree, challenging myself while still remaining as political as possible, but hiding the message because I don't want to be questioned about my politics because I'm not going to sit there and have a huge debate with somebody over it because people are stern in their beliefs right now. If you're a piece of shit, you're a piece of shit, I can't get you to change that. Times are different brotha.