Kari Faux is an interesting talent, calling disco and funk influences into her mix of rap and song.
I got a chance to chop it up with Kari and touch on how she’s balancing musical influences as she moves further into her career. Honesty is an important facet to have attached to one’s art. Kari Faux takes that to another level, building her very style off a foundation of her emotions. The way she approaches singing, or flowing, on a track is unique to her feelings. Kari doesn’t necessarily plan out her music as much as she reacts to instrumentals. That kind of immediate creation leads to a gang of interesting and varied tracks you can vibe to on her new record Lost En Los Angeles.
You can see the full interview below the video, questions are in bold
So I listened through your new record, and I have to say I really love the album. I’m also impressed with the amount of range you put in your flow, because in your Noisey interview you mentioned feeling like a newcomer. It seems to me that you’ve progressed a lot, how do you feel about it?
I’m just coming into this with an open mind, anybody that I work with and any music that I find. I’m young, so I don’t know that much music. When I find stuff I like, I want to imitate or do my own rendition of it. This album, I feel, was me just listening to music and just finding different sounds that I love and didn’t get a chance to get into because I didn’t have much time on my hands when I was making music early on. So it’s really just me discovering new things.
That’s what’s up, are there any specific artists that really drew your attention?
I’m really into, as of right now, the whole disco funk era, as well as soul. “Law of Attraction”, the way it started out was much more eerie. The drums weren’t a prominent part of the song and I went to BLACK PARTY and said, “Let’s make this feel like Computer Love” because that’s a really great song. We made it feel similar, but also modern and made it into our own version of it. “Eden” sounded completely different at first, and I wanted to make it into a disco song because that’s what I’m into right now. So I’ve been listening to Patrice Rushen, the Jones Sisters, and all this random stuff I’m finding through vinyls my parents gave me. I have Marvin Gaye live, Herbie Hancock’s Head Hunters…I’m just finding all this music I didn’t know about and it’s really cool.
I definitely got the funk vibe from the record, and as soon as you said Herbie Hancock I got that connection and influence in the record. I’m also curious about your flow since it’s changed; are you looking at any specific rappers for influence?
No, I actually haven’t been listening to any rap music as far as while I was making the record so I just kind of did what felt right on the song. I didn’t want to go into this feeling like “oh I’m a rapper, I’m a rapper” I just wanted to showcase my creativity across the board. I’m singing as well and I never sang on records before this. I just wanted to do something different.
Do you think stepping into singing is a natural path as to where your creative process is going?
As far as singing goes?
Well did you go into the record thinking you wanted to try singing, or was it more of hearing the beat and feeling that singing would fit perfectly?
I sing all the time, but I never sing on records. I love to sing. Even if I’m not in key, I’ll still do it. In elementary school I tried out for choir. My mom really wanted me to do it but I didn’t think I could sing that well, and my music teacher was really tough. We were in like fourth grade and telling us “you have to try out” and “not everyone is going to make it”. She was so real and I was like okay, so I tried out, sang the “Star Spangled Banner”, and ended up making it. So I thought, okay maybe I can sing a little bit. So it’s something I love to do, and I want to do more of it, but I also do want to become more of a lyricist. I want to showcase that I can actually rap and have a good flow and cadence. All these things I still feel like I’m new to, like prior to this I didn’t really understand the art of rapping. I have friends who are rappers, I’d be meeting all these rappers who said it was an art form. They’d play me something and tell me to listen to how this dude says this, and I started to understand theres an art to this. So I still want to explore rapping more before I completely crossover into singing.
Would you say you really don’t want to put a label on where you’re going? Not say you’re a singer or rapper, and just be an artist on a track?
Yeah! Sh*t, you’re like the first person who gets it.
Haha, I think it’s because I really love Hip Hop but also love other genres and I get that crossover is important. When I spoke with Avery Wilson, we brought up how sometimes singing conveys the kind of emotion that rapping just isn’t able to, and we talked about ODB and how when he sang, it was on a totally different emotional level.
Yeah! Because that’s literally the only way he can express himself, and when he does it, it’s not even about sounding good, you understand the emotion he’s trying to get across. I feel like a lot of people are so fixated if a voice is in the right key.
That’s definitely weird to me. If we want to talk about singing solely on terms of technical skill then we can’t say the later Gil Scott Heron was a good singer. Just because he couldn’t hit the notes he used to be able to, doesn’t mean you can’t hear the emotion in his voice which is the most important thing.
It’s definitely the most important part, because without the emotion, it doesn’t feel real, people wont enjoy it, and I mean we’ve all heard a song that feels contrived. We’ve all heard a song where you can tell it’s put together and you don’t feel it.
Yeah, you can definitely tell when there’s too many writers on a track. When I listen to you sing on this record, I got the character, and I got the vibe. I have to say, since you mentioned never singing on a track before, you sounded really comfortable on those tracks, same with your rapping. Is that something you’ve grown into as well?
Well I say yes, it’s something I’ve grown into because in the beginning I was never really confident in the things i was saying. I would hear the song recording and it would make me hate my voice because I thought it didn’t sound good. Then I realized that was only because i hadn’t become confident in what i was saying. Now it takes me a few tries to get there but I definitely know that what counts is saying what you want to say and believing in it more than anything else. As far as singing goes, I sing all the time I just don’t want people to hear it. So it’s definitely something I wasn’t afraid to do, I’m just afraid to let people hear it. If that makes sense?
No, I think that makes sense because every hip hop fan, and myself included, will write some raps but never want to record it. It’s just an expression. The way I think about it, you have to wonder what was going through Danny Brown’s head the first time he heard himself recorded.
And he uses different voices, different flows, and I think that’s cool
Yeah it’s cool to see an artist not putting on all this vocal makeup on the music, let your voice be you and it will come off really dope.
And also, I’m not even going to lie, I’ve had multiple conversations with the people I work with, saying I was a little nervous about the signing and how people are going to take it. My co producer and manager would say that what I’m doing is honest at the end of the day, and it’s a starting point so I can only get better from here. Like I’m not vocally trained, I don’t even warm up my voice half the time I go to sing, I just sing. But in the future I do want to take it more seriously and get better.
In terms of the record’s theme, is it centric to what you’ve been going through living in LA?
I mean it’s not even a conceptual album like that, and people can make it whatever they want it to be, but to me being Lost in Los Angeles isn’t even literally about being lost in LA, I was just lost in this moment of my life where I was questioning myself because of social media and my musical peers who are doing more than me. I was questioning myself and seeing the world in a different light. Because Los Angeles is totally different from where I grew up. When I lived in Atlanta I was close enough to where if I wanted to I could turn around and go home but in LA I was kind of forced to be there because I couldn’t take a plane home every weekend. It was me being in this moment of being lost and questioning love, relationships, and me being a woman. Which, and I know this is crazy to say but, I’ve never thought about me being a woman or me growing up. I’m still very much so a kid and I’m almost 24. Now I’m realizing I’m a woman and I need to take care of myself and the people around me
Do you want to talk about being a woman in Hip Hop?
Like, this is a weird question for me, because normally I’d say I’m a woman that’s I’m making music and that doesn’t really matter. While I’m not necessarily resentful to men in Hip Hop, there’s so many different people making Hip Hop for different guys and I feel like women don’t have that kind of representation where there’s Hip Hop for every kind of woman in the genre. I’m glad that the spectrum is opening up for women, not even just for myself. We’re all different, there’s so many different sides to us especially as black women, and these sides aren’t being represented in mainstream music. But this year there are so many different women in the genre, and I’m glad about that. I’m glad I’m not alone in this.
I definitely agree, some of my favorite rappers like Rapsody and Jean Grae will never get that spotlight I want them to because they don’t fit the bill of, and this is nothing against her it’s just what’s popular, a Nicki Minaj model.
The thing is, it’s definitely opening up right now. You have artists like Dreezy who’s coming with so many bars from Chicago, and like Junglepussy. There are so many independent artists that are doing stuff right now and they have so many sides to them and I appreciate that. Like you said, we have Nicki, and I’m never going to knock her because that’s who I wanted to be growing up, but I’m just glad there are so many variations of how people look, how people sound, and where they come from. I’m just glad because I’m so tired with this stuff and like sometimes I think I’m the only one that’s bored and wants stuff to change, then someone else says they’re tired and I feel good not to be alone in that.
You can Preorder Lost En Los Angeles (April 8th) here:
You can get tickets to Kari’s New York show here:
art by your homie, Arthur Banach
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