Krizz Kaliko is arguably the most creative artist on Strange Music, which would also make him arguably the most creative artist in hip hop. But could he simply also be the most creative artist in music?

With his album Son of Sam, he certainly makes a compelling argument for the title, but what Krizz also has going for him is the ability to mold his creativity in a way that is familiar and infinitely repeatable. Son of Sam will undoubtedly prove this, with songs like “Scars”, “Why Me?” and “Titties” that already have the Strange Music masses singing along with The Genius of the Snake and Bat.

We had an opportunity to catch Krizz Kaliko in between shows on the Something Else Canadian Tour 2013 to get his perspective on Son of Sam: what he sought out to accomplish and how he was able to stretch his creativity even further than ever before.

Along the way we stumbled on some other topics including: breasts, Krizz writing his own response to Kendrick’s verse on “Control” and why everyone needs to hear Son of Sam.

What did you consciously set out to do with this album? Did you have any specific intentions in mind?

I just always want to reinvent myself with every album and I’m never necessarily sure how to do that, I just do it. I said in “Strange Music Box”: “I’m just playing with music.” Really that’s what I’m doing. With this one, one of the things, about three songs in Travis came to me and said “Man, I think the fans really respond really enormously when you sing and I’d love to hear you do some more singing, as a fan of Krizz Kaliko.” So I just decided to sing on like 60 percent of the album. I’m going to have to say if there was a game plan that would be the only thing you could classify under that.

Who handled the production on this record?

The production was handled by Michael Seven Summers, Youngfyre and J. White.

What did you tell your producers you were looking for when you were asking for material?

With Seven we co-produce a lot of the stuff together. So it’s not as much as me telling him “Hey, I want some beats that sound like this.” I’ll actually call him with the entire idea for the beat a lot of times. Like I said I never have a definitive sound for every album, it just kind of organically takes its own shape throughout the production process.

With Youngfyre, he actually called and said I have this sound that I want to start trying out on you and it’s called “Electro Trap.” He was like “I want to make these trap beats with electronic sounds” and I’m like “Sure!” because I mash up a bunch of stuff together anyways.

With J White he generally has a more trap sounding music but he’s a really dope producer and he can do pretty much everything so he actually gave me a lot. He gave me my first single which is “Girls Like That” he also did “Night Time” and then he ended up doing a couple of others that I gave to Stevie, “Get Out My Face” and “Boomerang”.

All three of these dudes bring three different elements and I like to keep producers to a minimum so I can make sure that it’s all cohesive. To be able to achieve that I don’t get a bunch of different producers.

You refer to your line in “Strange Music Box” about playing with music, from listening to a lot of this album it sounds like you played with music more than you ever have in your entire career.

I think I play with music more than I ever have before on every album. I think every album I try to go far to the left, I try to experiment more with every release. I think I experimented more with the singing side on this one. My brain is just all over the place which is why my albums are like that too. And they’re still cohesive at the same time.

“Schizophrenia”. I love that song but it’s simply out of hand. Did the beat come like that with all of those transitions?

The beat came like that. Yeah man. He sent me that beat. What’s funny about that beat is he sold that beat to somebody else and I made Fyre give the money back to the dude to get me the beat.

Wow.

Yes. He already sold that beat. He gave it to me and I didn’t pick it and then he sold and I was like “Dude I need that beat.” He was like “Krizz, I already sold it.” I’m like “Man, do whatever you gotta do to get that beat.” He’s like “Well let me see if we got that check” and then gave dude his money back to get me that beat.

All the changes in that song, a lot of the songs that we’re hearing you’re doing some other shit. First of all let’s talk about “We All Need Sex”. First of all, why did you write that song?

Well all my songs are just thoughts that I have in my head and that song is true man, we all need sex. We’re animals man. We’re a certain type of animal, we just happen to be the supreme animal on the planet Earth, but all animals need sex man.

Conceptually it started out a very serious song. I was trying to make it a serious song. If priests were allowed to marry – I’m not saying be promiscuous – but if were priests were allowed to marry then I think we wouldn’t have these incidents of having their way with young boys and doing all kinds of sexual deviancies. That’s how I started thinking about the song, like “Man, we all need sex.”

When I go over to Europe, they’re open more sexually over there. The women are topless at the beaches around kids and everybody so it’s not that big of a deal. They have less sex crimes and things like that so I think we created this crazy taboo stuff about sex and it’s detrimental. It started out as a serious song. When I told Seven to make the beat, I explained to him these different components of the beat but by the time he sent it back to me it sounded like a country song. I was like “What? Dude, that wasn’t what I had in mind at all.” Then I played it for Tech and Tech was like “Dude, you should totally do that. You keep talking about doing country, you should still do it!” I’m like “Aight. So here’s what I got for the hook,” and I start singing part of the hook to him. He came up with the second half of the hook. I called Seven back like “You know what? We’re going to do this. Me and Tech just wrote this hook and actually I’m going to put guitar on it.” It still sounds hip hop but it’s like contemporary country hip hop. That song came together like that. Organic, like I said.

It sounds like you lost your mind in the studio, but in the best way. The songs are very catchy, familiar and repeatable but they’re also unlike anything you’ve ever heard – not just in hip hop, but in music.

I know man, I know. That’s I want us to have the biggest push ever because nobody does music like this. Nobody does music like this. I feel like the best kept secret right now.

Let’s move on to the opening song “Titties” real quick. Why? Why “Titties”?

Why not?

Pretty much.

Who doesn’t like titties man? Heterosexual women like to look at titties. Everybody likes titties. Titties is the first life source we get ahold of when we get out of the womb. We get immediately fed with titties. We have a fondness for titties from the beginning. Not to sound creepy. but really we do. It’s our first life source. We grew up seeing these things, we grow up being programmed even more and more and more all the time like “Titties Titty Titties Titties TITTIES.” C’mon man. It’s not to say that small titties are bad. I said “Itty bitty titty committee can even kick it with me.” We like all titties, but let’s be real, everyone likes a big nice set of titties. And like I said, even heterosexual woman are like “Oh my God your breasts are so beautiful!” They even admire beautiful breasts.

I suppose they really are worldly-renowned and respected.

Yes sir.

Is one of the perks of your job all the titties you’re able to see?

Of course. Of course it is. That’s one of the perks every night when we do “Areola”. I will say now that I’m in Canada that the US flashes way more than other countries. We’re in Canada, we might get one girl, maybe two. In the US we get a minimum of five. It could be five to one hundred different sets of titties at any given time. Yes, a perk, yeah.

This could be good competition for “Areola” as the Strange Music titty anthem. I’m sure that wasn’t your intention butare you going to play this at your show?

We do play this at the show.

How is the response?

Great. Everybody joined in. How could you not join in when by just chanting “titties”? We were already doing that anyway. We were already chanting it. We were going “Tittiiiiiies.” We just made a song out of it and it’s familiar. People suddenly join right in.

There’s not many features on this album but tell me about the ones that you put on.

I didn’t do a lot of features on this album man. Son of Sam really means me. I am the Son of Sam and I want people to concentrate on me and what I do and really feel me. We can play the political game and put features on there and maybe we’ll do that on another album but I didn’t feel that on this. I got Bizzy on “Girls Like That”, CES Cru on “Reckless” and then I got Tech on two songs and that’s it. The funny thing is, the songs with CES and Bizzy were supposed to be extras. It was just supposed to be exclusive for the digital download of my album but I liked them so much that I ended up putting them on the album. I originally just wanted Tech N9ne on my album and that’s it. I really liked them so I put them on though. Bizzy, I didn’t even know him that well, I’m just a fan of his music. He’s a regional rapper from Topeka and not a lot of people know him yet but I like what he does.

Yeah, he’s dope for sure. HIs verse on “Sex To The Beat” was great. Tell us about CES Cru and why did you decide to put them on the track?

“Reckless” is retarded. It’s just about us saying “We don’t care what you talking about.” I didn’t even name names. It was kind of like the Kendrick Lamar joint where I’m like “Nigga, I talk reckless on you cats on these albums.” Not reckless like starting beef but like out rapping niggas, and I could call y’all out but I didn’t do it. I could call everybody out but that starts beef and I’m not trying to do that to sell records. I just do me. So it was like “Yeah, I talk reckless on these records and there ain’t nothing y’all can do because y’all can’t handle us lyrically.” It was just on some emcee type stuff.

Did you dig what Kendrick did?

Yeah, I did. I actually wrote a response verse too but I just didn’t put it out. My response verse wasn’t against him either. My response verse was like “That’s my homie.” And he should blast on you niggas. He should dump on y’all because – some of them he named are actually good actually, but he said “I’m trying to kill y’all!” Why wouldn’t he? Hell, I’m trying to kill you! I’m the Son of Sam! That means the .44 caliber killer! You know what I”m saying?

But in the end this spirit makes the music better.

It does. I should release my verse.

Back to the album, do you have any favorite songs on it?

I never really have a favorite song. There’s some that I favor a little bit more than others, but I never really have A favorite song because all of those songs are my creation and I don’t half step on nothing. I don’t go “Ah, I just wrote that real quick. That don’t mean nothing.” Everything is like a really seriously taken creation of mine. But I’d have to say the one I like to listen to the most is “Send Your Love” with Icy Roc on the talkbox.

Expand on that.

I’m a huge fan of old funk music and the talkbox, period. I’ve always wanted to do that in a song and I never have. I’m a big fan of all of the music and all of the dudes that used talkboxes: Roger Troutman, Peter Frampton, even Bon Jovi when he used it in “Livin’ On A Prayer”. You know? I’ve always wanted to do it and I’ve always had that idea to do that and put my girl Kortney Leveringston on it and she’s got a beautiful voice, plus my wife Crystal and the lineage family was singing background. It’s just got that old 80s R&B feel to it.

How would you compare this album to your other albums?

I don’t think you can. If you have to, you can’t say better or worse it’s just different. It’s the continuing saga of the reinvention of Krizz Kaliko.

What are your expectations for this album?

Man I need the world to hear it man. That’s my plan, for the world to hear it. That’s why I’m in Travis’s ear and all of these people’s ear just everyday about what they’re doing promotion/wise because we have to make this thing as big as possible. Everybody needs to go balls to the walls and do what they do to get this music to everybody. Everybody needs to hear Krizz Kaliko man. EVERYBODY needs to hear Krizz Kaliko. That’s not an arrogant statement. It’s a true thing and it’s my opinion. You can put this CD in and let it play. This music is enjoyment, it’s help, it’s life. It’s everybody’s life on one album.

CLICK HERE TO PRE-ORDER ‘SON OF SAM’

• How do you feel about titties?
• Do you want to hear Krizz Kaliko’s verse over the “Control” beat?
• Do you think Krizz Kaliko should be heard worldwide?

Leave your thoughts in the comments section below.