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A stone in a river is not remembered for its erosion, but for how it changed the flow of the water. It may weather away over the course of centuries or be swept away altogether by a sudden change in the current. In this latter way the world lost Ka, one of the greatest lyricists in hip-hop history.

Kaseem Ryan’s path was honest and circuitous like the best of lives. Born in 1972, Ka’s first effort in rap was as a member of Natural Elements, an under-the-radar New York group whose style was steeped in Mobb Deep and other hardcore street music of the early 90’s. At the time he was the weak link, recognized himself as such, and gracefully bowed out so the group could experience its modest success. He later resurfaced as one half of Nightbreed with his dear friend Kev, under the monikers of K.A. the Verbal Shogun and Kev as Oddbrawl the Lyrical Juggernaut. They crafted one 12″ record together and didn’t make it any further.

Decades passed, and in this time Ka lived. He rose to become a captain in the New York City Fire Department, was a first responder during 9/11, and started a family. Feeling the call of his creative impulses, he began crafting music again. This time, he spoke from his heart. His vocal delivery hushed and monotone, he bared his soul on record after record, creating an inimitable series of lyrical masterpieces bound in concepts of chess, Bushido code, and Biblical narratives. His subject matter was often the same: his difficult upbringing, the loved ones both taken and left behind, and the lasting scars impressed upon him. Through all of this darkness, his voice never wavered: poems flowed from him in the same steady cadence, garnering a small but riveted audience that included everyone from like-minded mavericks like Roc Marciano to cultural fixtures like GZA.

On August 19, 2024, Ka released what was to be his final studio album, The Thief Next to Jesus. Rooted in gospel samples ranging from hopeful to haunting to hallucinatory, The Thief Next to Jesus presented Ka’s audience with another codex to translate. His lyrics detailed his views of the rap game, the weaponization of the music and of Christianity against the oppressed, and the perpetuation of that selfsame weaponization by the oppressed themselves. And yet, this album shines with an inner light of hope and redemption, mirroring Ka’s own fragile faith that had, despite impossibly long odds, survived to begin healing and dreaming of a brighter future.

Months passed, and in this time Ka died. On October 12, he passed from this world in the presence of his family, survived by his wife, mother, and sister. As I worked on this write-up, my thoughts laid mostly with them, spending this holiday season suffering a loss far more grievous than any of us imagine. Before I turn to this album, I would like to take the opportunity to extend my condolences as a lover of the music. May Ka rest easy with the fair and merciful God he so painstakingly showed to us.

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At its heart, The Thief Next to Jesus is a sermon. Spoken samples likening the tracks to verses of the Gospel are scattered throughout the album, delivered by a pastor long steeped in his unique sagacity. Ka begins his first speech from a place of humility, an entreaty to the audience to bear with him as he articulates his grievances with the current state of the rap game. He reminds us that the music we produce will forever remain for future generations, warning us to “watch what you feed the kids.” What follows is an introduction into the lyrical world of Ka: to put it bluntly, a world that cuts through all the bullshit:

Ever notice it’s never no fix? Only brung ‘em crack

Ain’t write gems, but tight with ends, then they run it back

Now I peep why they call it heat, it’s just a runnin’ track.

Ka argues further that the current culture not only fails to provide progressive measures for a new world, but that this music is ultimately leaching the audience of its memory in an act akin to Alzheimer’s: “That’s how a lame floss ‘til the brain loss from the growin’ plaque.”

Ka’s issues with the culture do not end at the music. He calls out the overt sexualization of women, the coldly transactional nature of sex, and doubts the narratives that these subjects are truly in the service of female empowerment. As always, his mind is on the next generation, warning all other artists with cultural influence that,

This a crazy world, don’t put our baby girls on the fast track

Then it’s gun this, gang that, son, the most profane rap

It’s just a lot of bored noise that got our boys layin’ flat.

“Beautiful” follows as a stunning example of what can occur when independent production meets lyrical excellence. Now leaning deeper into themes of spirituality and humility in the presence of God, Ka enumerates the ways that humanity can make the world a beautiful place for all to live under the guiding light of sound principles. In a haunting refrain, he devoutly hopes, “May you live a nice long life, hope it’s beautiful,” leaving each line to be completed by the sampled choir behind him. It is in this simple device, that of sitting back and allowing the track itself to complete every line, that exemplifies how Ka was at all times in service to the music. He leaves us with his hopes, praying for a world “Free of doubt and tears, leave a thousand years beautiful.”

Ka’s middle age is another theme of The Thief Next to Jesus. While still full to bursting with creative vitality and lyrical ability, his physical body was beginning to deteriorate as an inevitable result of the years. Upon a darkly aspirational bed of gospel vocals, what remains is his “Tested Testimony,” fueled by his faith in his artistic integrity that despite “no money in my safe, took the safest lane/Once carved in they hearts, can’t erase your name.”

On “Borrowed Time,” the album resounds with one of its many haunting presages of the end of Ka’s life. The man stands defiantly for every listener, speaking with steely calm that “I plan my death before I plan submission/Can’t exchange man condition but one fan sufficient.” Amid the homilies he delivers detailing his hard upbringing on city streets and the devout hope that these tragedies may be coming to an end, he reminds us that borrowed time exists for every human on this earth. What we can do in the limited time we have is live by our faith and dedicatedly work for the future happiness of those who will succeed us.

“Collection Plate” opens with a sample ruminating on the disconnect between professions of faith and material betterment. When the dictated norms of society are themselves designed to keep oppression alive, the only means of true social advancement is a contravention of convention. Or, to put it more simply, “If really wanted to bless me, would’ve left me that collection plate.” This track shows Ka in one of his many areas of excellence: that of a social philosopher with the ability to collapse these knotty concepts into nice, plain imagery that never wavers from the concept at hand.

One of the most common critiques of Christianity is its use as a defense for innumerable atrocities across millennia. While the opening sample on “Broken Rose Window” notes the good that faith has done for some, including protecting runaway slaves along their journey through the Underground Railroad, there still exists “have-nots” that suffer the oppression promulgated by the Church. Ka shatters the rosy promises of Christianity in numerous ways on this track, employing biting irony to portray his tribulations and the effect these trials had on his beliefs, “Praise the Lord, born wretched/Crazy, long-drawn epic/Made the boy a sworn-skeptic/Phrase is poised on record.” Ka rounds out the track by extrapolating his own personal oppression with an address to the systemic issues at hand,

Feel it’s true, they wanna kill a few

And keep the rest blind

Was tough, so jumped on fire trucks

Hoping higher-ups bless mine.

At first blush, “God Undefeated” seems to be a simple expression of faith. With the self-affirming chorus of “Indeed a believer if survive to the finish/God side with the winners,” Ka appears to merely be continuing in the same expressions of faith and fortitude that afforded him the formidable artistry he wielded. However, the second verse reveals a deeper layer: that God may remain undefeated because the victors throughout history utilized religion as a means to assert dominance. Ka then links this idea to his own success in rap, detailing how despite his advanced years are uncommon for hip-hop artists, he is emerging victorious at the forefront of lyrical innovation in the genre:

I came and saw, time to conquer

It’s been proponents of lil’ moments, mines darker

Stuck with pledge, cuttin’ edge, lines sharper

Was written off, years lost, forced to find marker.

The second half of The Thief opens with a reaffirmation of the mission at hand. After allowing himself only a brief boast at the conclusion of the previous track, Ka recollects himself at the pulpit while a sample plays about the nature of gospel music: the point of gospel does not lay in the beat and rhythm, but in the message those beats and rhythms convey. The hook casts Ka as the deliverer of a divine message, preaching from the soul that while “We might be equal, we not the same.” He rejects the idea that his lyrical style is inaccessible, seeing himself more as a connective tissue to bind together his community in the face of adversity, “With pens, I’m pensive, don’t pretend I’m pretentious/See we need bridges, we can build defenses.”

The supplicate beauty of “Lord Have Mercy” is striking. Following another spoken word sample expressing the desire to simply sing a hymn of praise, the track cracks open in a beautiful piano sample that provides Ka with a spiritual respite,

Fought to exhausted, I can’t appear tired

The topic wasn’t my optic when I was near sighted

Found peace in the beast, now can’t sleep if hear quiet.

In the second verse, Ka speaks more directly on the dire conditions of his community and the need for any kind of relief from the continued heat of oppression. He recalls “the wrecks called homes,” the “kids start big heart, chest all bones,” and the lack of help from those that made it out, “None wanted to seat at the table, they only saw thrones.”

When The Thief Next to Jesus first released, it was accompanied by a music video for the tenth track, “Such Devotion.” In the video, Ka shows us his simple process of making his affecting music: coming home after a long day, a bundle of new records under his arm to sample, and a weathered notepad filled with words to feed the next generation. He speaks quietly to the camera, the vast majority of the video centering on his face as strands of white in his beard pop out of the monochrome cinematography. He shows sign of age and of fatigue, but his dedication to his craft remains unquestionable as he presents us with the musical and literary inspirations that made this album a reality.

The second verse of this song is my favorite piece of writing in the entire album. Ka details the origins of him and his dwindling kin, portraying their beginnings of “dark comedy” that was only salvaged by the love of their mothers that “never shook, not a tremor.” Every element of this verse portrays the contrition Ka shows to both the music and to the audience. Here, more than anywhere else on the album, Ka’s gifts as a writer and as an artist at the forefront of what is possible in rap are on display.

With “Cross You Bear,” Ka points the finger squarely at the white church and its complicity in slavery, segregation, lynching, and all manner of atrocities that continue to today. When up against such opponents as the whole of systemic racism and oppression in modern society, Ka’s response is a profound expression of faith and brotherhood: “When every fighter’s a black knight, this ain’t the day I lose.” He prays for the success of his community, but remains sober and clear-eyed about the many obstacles that still must be overcome,

Hope the sacrifice match the vice

Speak thoughts sincere to spare the soul

I pray every cross you bear is gold.

It is only natural that in the face of so much fear and pain, even Ka’s faith would be shaken. “Fragile Faith” is what Ka holds onto, a kind of belief that may be resilient, but not always unwavering. His convictions may suffer at the hands of oppression just as easily as they suffer at the sight of inaction, as he jabs his contemporaries, “Their sound bring you down, I want you on top of this/If it ain’t move the needle to inoculate, you just innocuous.” Ka also pays respects back to Mobb Deep and the very first music that inspired the entirety of his journey, intoning on the chorus that “Ain’t nothing shook about me but my faith/Couple hundred years asking, nothing kept us safe.”

One of the best double entendres Ka delivers on this entire project is not in the lyrics: it is in the title of “Hymn and I.” On this track, Ka dissects not only his relationship with God, but his relationship with the act of prayer. To Ka, prayer is “a shield to really deal with the next tragic event.” As he has grown older and wiser, Ka realized that for him, prayer was less useful as a way to commune with God and make his desires known to a divine presence and more effective as a proactive coping mechanism for the manifold traumas he expected to continue experiencing. And yet, Ka cannot escape the fact that he is blessed and made it out of the same life he mines for subject matter in his music. In an acknowledgement both tragic and affecting in his dedication to his art, Ka ruminates on the success he’s encountered and his uncertain future,

Then thought I’d met my end violent in the street

Changed lifestyle

How I’m living right now? I’ma die in my sleep

What I want to earn from this journey is to arrive at my peak

Assess more goals for myself, like surviving is weak.

Ka’s final album dies screaming. Ka assures us that “I’m here for you, sweat, bled, and shed a tear for you,” all over a chilling instrumental built on the screams of an unidentified woman. He gives us dire warnings for the future, flatly rhyming to “Stay floored through it, in the crack, I spilt true/It’s about to take, if can’t exploit or subjugate, they kill you.” Ka reminds us that the fight for a better world is always a struggle, that the stakes are higher than ever and that one slip in focus will allow the system to overwhelm and crush us. The tangled web of Christianity’s use and misuse over the centuries is only one strand in this vicious tapestry, and the work to untangle it all is a continuous process both for the world and for Ka himself, “Might not have been dying from mine, if one equates, would’ve been starch/Hair turning grey, still trying to learn away all the grim parts.”

At the end of this monumental project, one last spoken sample comes in:

We get broadcast on the radio, but this is the reward

We’re not asking for glory, we’re not asking for publicity and fame

But to see our own boys and girls be able to stay in school and make something good

That within itself is enough reward.

Even here, in the final seconds of his last artistic utterance on this earth, Ka keeps the focus on the future. Despite the screams of the oppressed lingering behind every word he spoke Ka’s most devout faith was not in God, but in the children of today building the fair and merciful world of tomorrow.

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Favorite Lyrics:

For me, it ain’t just where I’m at, it’s where I’m from

Grew old, still uphold some things since I was young

Every fellow plan from ghetto stand on how it’s rung

Put moms first, ‘cause Earth can’t live with a dying son.

– “Tested Testimony”

This is mastery, almost at capacity

Take God’s name in vain, don’t blame if they can’t blast for me

Of course, them thugs are who I love and never ask a fee

Must admit it’s some vicious pictures in this tapestry.

– “Borrowed Time”

Is it patience or time wasting?

I’m truthful, all they used to is libation

Dark at the start line, mind racing

Few great moves since the migration.

– “Soul and Spirit”

The load that is on these shoulders is much to bear

From a city with battalions of stallions its always been “Fuck the mayor”

As a knave evade a few close shaves, they ain’t touch a hair

Trust I can hush the bluster, only a sucker duck a fair

Had to shed endless before I ascended to this upper tier

I did enough for all of us, hope you never suffer dear

Admit, never cared where you from, it was rougher here

Guess them dirty jeans in early teens gave me another gear.

– “Such Devotion”

Made a pax, all I spoke is dope, but no tracks could harm

While the fools choose illusion, top hat, magic wand

Oppressed, the press only address how the blacks respond

Here the deceivers can’t believe in their Jesus, that’s a blonde.

– “Cross You Bear”

One mistake and son, it’s mate, it’s that drastic

Too many systematic dangers to be aimless and haphazard

The mass came for the fast lane, some sat in traffic

Don’t act hard, then when asked to spar, back to flaccid.

– “Hymn and I”