I decided to make this guide because Ka is a rapper I put people on to a lot and he recently announced that he was gonna drop a new album in August. He’s a one in million talent that needs to be heard and living proof that popularity and quality are completely unrelated. I hope this guide will shed some light on who he is and raise some interesting discussions

I. Intro. Who is Kaseem Ryan?

Kaseem “Ka” Ryan is a 48 year-old rapper from Brownsville, Brooklyn. He works full time as a firefighting captain in Brooklyn, devoting his free time to rapping and producing on a part time basis. Ka is married to Mimi Valdes, a producer who worked on the movie “Roxanne Roxanne“, which was promoted by a lot of big artists like Pharrell Williams.

Ka decided to stop touring after performing at a festival and seeing people look sad because his content was, in his words, “too depressing to perform live”. “My music is better listened to cope when you lost someone close to you, or like an uncle that you really loved.” he said in this amazing Redbull interview that is the only real in depth Ka interview we have and that I’m recommending a lot.

Despite being a very lowkey underground rapper. Ka is highly respected among his peers. Ka was selling copies of his Grief Pedigree albums and was praised by Mos Def, Earl Sweatshirt said in an interview that Ka was the best rapper alive currently and that his album “Days with Dr Yen Lo” was far and away the best album of the year, even though Earl dropped “I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside” the same year. Earl also can be seen in the music video for Oedipus alongside Chuck Strangers and Knxwledge. On-the-come-up underground rapper Navy Blue is a huge Ka fan, namedropping him in his songs and having him as a feature in a song.

Ka suffered quite a lot of controversy for his content denouncing police brutality as a firefighter. He was on the frontpage of The New York post and rappers like El-P and Killer Mike from Run The Jewels defended him and shamed the person who wrote the article, calling Ka an NY treasure. El-P’s rant is an absolutely brillant description of Ka’s style and I’m jealous I can’t write something quite as eloquent as this:

Ka’s music isnt artlessly violent. these are songs of pain and stress written somberly by someone who clearly cares deeply about nyc. Before writing a hit piece its good to ask yourself: “has the man im trying to destroy saved more lives than me?”, or “if my piece leads to his termination from the fdny and people die because we’ve lost his expertise is that blood on me or rap?”. Is it possible that the guy who saves lives for a living may have a deeper meaning to his art than your untrained ears can discern?

Ka’s best friend in hip-hop is probably fellow underground legend Roc Marciano. They feature on most of each other’s projects and form the unofficial group Metal Clergy. They announced an album, Piece Be With You, to drop in 2012 and while they haven’t stopped collabing since, this album is pretty much considered Detox status, with Ka and Roc Marci both dropping rumors about the album still being worked on and supposed to drop one day. They made more than 10 songs together so you can get a taste of what their album would sound like by listening to all of their collabs back to back.

II. Early Work.

Ka started rapping in the 90s. The first recording of him is in the group Natural Elements where you can hear a much more agressive Kaseem rapping in this freestyle, or in tracks like I Mean This

In 1995, he forms the group Nightbreed with his best friend Kev who passed away in 2015 due to an accident. The sound is a lot more refined like in Long Time Coming. Ka (second verse) is a lot calmer and already shows signs of his signature style of jam-packed, tightly crafted rhyme schemes almost 20 years before his return to the scene:

Calling for your kin while you fall in

Scalding-hot. Are you all-in or not?

I’m a quick-draw, you’re stalling to pop, finished away

This mold in my sock, I handle mines

You call in the cops, stomach balled in a knot

Many fears and what is the stall in your drop?

Scared some low-life might crawl in your spot

After Nightbreed dropped a couple demos, Ka went radio silent for 13 years until GZA called him to do a song on his album Pro-Tools. The track is called Firehouse and has quite a bit of energy compared to what Ka made later in his career. It has his signature raspy voice which he said in an interview was due to inhaling smoke while working as a firefighter.

Later that year, Ka dropped Iron Works under the label he created of the same name. The album seemed to be pretty heavily Mobb Deep / Lox influenced, to the point that he sounds exactly like Jadakiss on songs like Mr Officer. The production is very rough, and while the album isn’t bad by any means, you can clearly feel that he’s trying to find his footing on some songs and that this style didn’t suit him. Iron Work and Children are two tracks i’d recommend if you want to listen to his music chronologically and not skip the project entirely; but I don’t believe this album really showcases his talent. The album didn’t get a lot of attention/reviews at the time and Ka didn’t manage to capitalize on what the GZA feature could’ve given him traction-wise.

III. Career-Defining Work.

In my opinion this is when Ka’s career really starts because he starts to make the most of style that I think makes Ka the great rapper that he is. I consider Ka to have found his footing between his next two albums, Grief Pedigree and especially The Night’s Gambit. This is the start of his run as one of the most refined pens in hip-hop’s history.

Ka’s style shifts completely : he ditches the grimy Lox / Mobb deep approach for a much colder, slower, minimalist approach. Ka makes his voice and lyrical content the focus of his music by stripping away the drums on his beats. This gives Ka’s production a more cinematic sound and makes it act as a canvas for him to paint on. He strips away the drums for the songs to force the listener to listen to his music for what he’s saying only. He eschews a fast, energetic delivery for a calmer, which is much more fitting to his personality. You can absolutely feel that, between Iron Works and Grief Pedigree, he’s much more comfortable in that style and that he doesn’t pretend to be someone he’s not. He devoted himself completely in that style and abandoned trying to appeal to a mass audience that he felt he wouldn’t be able to reach. Instead, he gave his all into the one thing he was the best at: conveying imagery through vivid punchlines and concepts.

Ka is not very accessible because he stripped his music of a lot of things that are popular in hip-hop. Ka makes pretty sad, downbeat music without drums, hard 808 beats, basslines, or fast flows; but if what you are looking for is lyricism, I don’t think you’ll find a pen as refined as his. The replay value to me is immense because Ka doesn’t put much emphasis on what he says no matter how insanely hard hitting it may be. You could be listening to the same song 10 times and only realizee a mindblowing reference or metaphor on the 10th listen. It may be a niche style and even considered boring by some, but Ka knows he is not confortable doing anything else. He would rather invest his all into being the best depressing lyricist possible, and that investment makes for some fascinating and unique music in my opinion, no one sounds quite like him and that should be praised in hip-hop.

Ka’s subsequent albums follow a similar pattern: use a historical or fictional concept (Edo Samurai Era, Greek Mythology, The Bible, Chess…) as a metaphor for his inner city life. For example, in his latest album Descendants of Cain, he uses the Cain and Abel story to draw a parallels to gun violence and black-on-black (“Brothers killing Brothers”) crimes he witnessed growing up in Brownsville. ‘He manages to make this pattern feel fresh with each release so that it never feels forced or repetitive. Songs like Sirens are just non-stop metaphors, with the music video showing the references from Greek mythology that are in pretty much every line:

Being deprived of the papes made a lot of mistakes in my era

Hard life course you needed white horse to defeat the Chimera

Every morning wake, never caught a break, revealed I was jinxed

To be the man deciphers life’s riddle or get killed by the Sphinx

Quietly spoke volume of my drama, since then I’ve been at war

It’s no bull, my lab was in a labyrinth like the Minotaur

Rose from the pavement unaided, negotiated like the sly fox

I told son, won’t be fooled by no one, like the Cyclops

The more static, the more tatted, you would’ve thought yakuza

Large crops or hard rocks, it’s like we all saw Medusa

Till the roar of the silence, we at war with the tyrants

Blocks of outlaws, but all we watch out for is the Sirens

This track is an extended metaphor comparing the mythical Sirens from The Odyssey, monsters whose beautiful songs baited sailors lost at sea, with police sirens which minorities unfortunately have to avoid due to continuing police brutality.

a is one of the most emotionally vulnerable lyricists I know. His recent output has a humanity to it that I haven’t seen from enough rappers. Instead of bragging about his past in the streets, his emotional lyrics and cold, somber delivery warn people about the horrors of that lifestyle. I don’t think enough rappers are open enough to talk about how bad they use to be, how hurtful it was for him to go unnoticed by his peers, or how low his self-confidence was, here are some examples :

Last of the craftsmen, to the masses I’m a has been

Committed the most crass sin

Dazzling, as the barrel of the mag spin

Need a super future, my past grim

[…]

I felt at times worthless

Pulled shifts with shifty crime merchants

Stained hearts, brainwashed by mind serpents

The fact I’m still here, it’s clear it’s divine purpose

Dr Yen Lo, Day 912, Days with Dr Yen Lo

As much as I heal, I had to deal that my scars are here to stay

Ka, Patron Saints, Descendants of Cain

Dug a lot of work when I was broke and inoperative

Felt a lot of hurt before I spoke this provocative

Ka, Ours, Honor Killed The Samurai

Picked me up when I was at my lowest

Used to hardly could spell, now I’m held with the poets

That was all your doin’

Was filthy, you built me when I was all ruin

How you soaked me with compliments really helped out

Boasted all confidence in my self-doubt

[…]

None observed, but was on the verge of crackin’

‘Til you said I had a gift when you heard me rappin’

With your warm responses, I was taken aback

Former partners had me feelin’ like what I was makin’ was wack

Ka, I love, Descendants of Cain

When you raised ’round rage and vengeance you can change

But in the veins remains major remnants

Dr Yen Lo, Day 811, Days with Dr. Yen Lo

What sets Ka apart too is how he depicts the crimes he used to commit without glorifying them, none of it sounds cool while not trivializing how terrible those actions were, he calmly explains how, growing up in Brooklyn, he had to follow a code to survive in that environnement, and that’s mainly why his most acclaimed album, Honor Killed The Samurai, uses the known “Death before dishonour” Samurai trope that is also used. That duality between having to be a criminal and being a good person and feed your family is most prevalent in Honor’s intro, Conflicted :

Mommy told me be a good boy

Need you alive, please survive, you my hood joy

Pops told me stay strapped son

You need the shotty, be a body or catch one

He also, on multiple occasions, reminded people that any criminal is still someone’s son, someone’s lover, someone’s relative, and that we aren’t more or less humane than those people :

You named them hustlers, killers, fiends, ex-cons

I called them cousins, aunts, pops, moms

To you? Hoodlums, crackheads, gunmens

To me? Just neighbors, classmates, young friends

Dr Yen Lo, To Hull and Back, Days with Dr Yen Lo

Everybody called it the slum, but we know it as home

Ka, I Love, Descendants of Cain

In the Redbull interview I mentionned before, he said that when he raps, he uses his past life for his content and hardly ever raps about his current life, since he is so far removed for drug dealings and crime altogether, he uses it as a coping mechanism to heal from those traumatic experiences. Ka takes the role as the product of an environnement that still made it out and encourages people to get out of it, one of the most career-defining line he has is “Play bad cards bad? Can’t be mad whoever dealt ’em”. To him, drug dealing was the only exit from the streets and a way to feed his family, not a way to become rich and promote a life style which so few made it out of alive, he also talks about how some people in his family became addicts and made drug dealers rich:

I don’t wanna do it, gotta do it

They gotta use it

Go get the powder, move it

[…]

Used to feel bad, but then in short time was like

“Fuck your family, someone got rich off mine”

That’s the truth, dinner was instant soups

Those under my roof put dudes in expensive coupes

I was bitter as the ripest lime

And saw that only niggas living lived a life of crime

30 Keys

Ka’s style is based around huge rhyme schemes that aren’t here just for the sake of sounding cool, they are packed with content and he has made some of the most perfectly crafted rhyme patterns I’ve ever seen in hip-hop, especially in Honor Killed The Samurai, he doesn’t waste a single word:

Crooked in the town with a crew of raw people

That’ll put you in the ground for the root of all evil

Ka, That Cold and Lonely, Honor Killed The Samurai

The routes I scored I doubt the Lord ever condone

Steps was reckless, reppin’ for precious metals and stone

But now knowledge power, this assemblance evidence shown

Walk with ghosts of close family and friends, I’m never alone

Ka, Ours, Honor Killed The Samurai

IV. Recommendations

Since Ka is very concept-based, I would always recommend to dive into his albums from front to back to really be immersed in whatever picture Ka is setting. I understand that Ka can be very daunting because his music is not-only an acquired taste, but has a different way of being digested and appreciated because you won’t really find any hard beats or upbeat tracks and you need to be in the mood for his style of music, which I completely understand is not for everyone.

Ka’s bread and butter track he has on almost every album is a slow, depressing guitar-sampled ballad and most of the time is one of the highlights of the project and serves as its culminating point. If you liked APIDTA from Jay Electronica’s last album, just know that I really was expecting Ka to hop in on the track because that’s exactly the world he shines in. The first tracks from that series are Jungle and 30 Pieces of Silver which are both on the same album. Then I Wish, the loosie Grapes of Wrath from the two track EP that contains 30 Keys that I can’t recommend enough, Punishment of Sisyphus and finally Solitude of Enoch

As a very shy and introverted individual, Ka said that he hardly does feature with people he doesn’t know personnally, so you can’t expect him to appear as a feature on other rappers projets that aren’t his friends. Ka has been appearing more and more as features lately though, like on Chuck Strangers’s Family dollar which might be my favorite feature of his period or in A Cure For The Common with producer Preservation which he made the Still Heir EP with. He also appeared on Navy Blue’s Ada Irin project who I mentionned before, on the track Good Hands. He said he was good friends with Alchemist and seems to be close with Earl Sweatshirt so his features might become less rare as time goes by.

Can’t name Ka features without talking about his group-mate Roc Marciano who he shares the most amount of collabs. Sins of the father is their most recent collab on Ka’s latest album which has one of the best Roc Marciano’s verse in his entire career. Marksmen also is a Metal Clergy collab with Roc Marci having an insane performance, Ka seems to bring the best out of him. This goes both way with tracks like Iron Age and especially Ephesians which contains top notch Ka verses. The most evenly matched Metal Clergy track might be Day 81 where both of them have standout performances.

Days with Dr Yen Lo isn’t as conceptual as his other recent efforts and the tracks can be taken out of the album, I already quoted a lot from that project earlier but i’m still recommending anyone to listen to Day 912, and my favorite I haven’t mentionned yet, Day 13 which is a guitar lick away from being mentionned in the Ka’s list of amazing ballads tracks.

If you thought the concept for Headstones by Flatbush Zombies was cool, Ka dropped a similar track in a vinyl shop, showing every tape he’s referencing on Off The Record in 2013.

I’m going to list other great Ka tracks I couldn’t manage to put in that write-up even though they clearly deserves a spot. Every Now and Then is an amazing intro to Descendants of Cain, and I Love being an Ode for his wife, mother and best friend Kev he was in Nightbreed with which passed away, this is probably his most beautiful and vulnerable track period. [Argo] has one of my favorite lines from Ka:

Ain’t bold enough to hold your gold? Then hey, you (AU) out your element

$ has a spot for both the hardest track to find when you search in online, and one of the best short-verses ever :

I need money, not to bling, self-boast or greed reasons

But to bring health to the most diseased regions

In God We Trust could bring silver lining to ill environment

I’m finding if you really grindin’, that’s the real assignment

I don’t know about you man, but I’m here tryin’ it

I need money

Not a track but i’m recommending this interview where he talks about his love for hip-hop and lyric crafting is very insightful and portrays Ka’s passionate and vulnerable character perfectly.

V. Talking points

• Where do you stand in the debate that popularity = quality, or that underground rappers wouldn’t be underground if they were good?

• How do you feel about Ka’s artistic decision to devote himself to being the best at a niche and abandonning musical choices that would make him more mass appealing?

• If you heard Ka before this write-up and couldn’t get into him, does this write-up makes you want to give you another chance? Does the context in which Ka make those artistic decisions matter ?

• Do you think you can considered one of the best rappers of all time without commercial success and with a small, cult-following audience ?

• Do you think an artist NEEDS to have a good flow/production and be judged in the same way than artist that do even if they purposely choose to strip themselves away from those barriers ?

• What’s your favorite Ka song, line, project I may have missed?

I hope you liked this, this took a pretty long amount of time, on Ka.

credits for /u/Anirban_The_Great for helping me proofreading this post. This may be subject to some edits if I happened to miss some errors.