Introducing Kil
Wednesday, October 7th, 2009
For this Introducing I spoke to producer Kil (real name Rahaman Kilpatrick). Although he has been grinding for a lot of years chances are you don’t know him by name. That is unless you lived in Baltimore when he was hosting the Strictly Hip Hop show on WEAA 88.9 FM. But if you heard the latest M.O.P. (Mash Out Posse) album Foundation you have heard his work on the track “Rude Bastard”. Turns out in this case the title of the song is kinda appropriate when talking about Lil Fame of M.O.P. They ended up using one of Kil’s beats without giving him credit. The issue ended up getting resolved and everything seems to be good now. Although the first time Kil heard his beat being used by M.O.P. it caught him by surprise.
“I was driving home from work listening to the album…then when I heard the beat drop…I was in disbelief. I was listening to see if they just used the same sample I used which has happened many times, or if it was really MY beat. So after listening for about another 30 seconds I was like “aiight, this is my beat…someone jacked me”. See, my 1st instinct wasn’t even M.O.P. jacked me, I’m thinking someone jacked me and THEY sold the beat to M.O.P. Then I called my man DJ Mills and asked him what the track listing was on the internet and he said it was produced by Fizzy Womack! Then I called my man Esco to tell him and he was like “man, they must have jacked you from the beat CD you gave ‘em at the show” I had totally forgotten I gave them a beat CD at a show they did in B’more because it was over a year ago. So now I’m like “wow, M.O.P. jacked me”.”
M.O.P. “Rude Bastard” (Produced by Kil)
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So after finding this out Kil turned to the internet. He posted his beat (which was called “It’s Hurting Me”) and “Rude Bastard” on a few sites online like Okayplayer.com and KevinNottingham.com. The news spread “I had NO idea that SO many sites would pick up on this story“ says Kil. A few days later he and Lil Fame talked on the phone about it and worked it out. Lif Fame (aka Fizzy Womack) put out a statement saying that he didn’t produce “Rude Bastard” and he gave his manager the credit info for the album and something got messed up and Fame was credited instead of Kil. I asked Kil if would be down to work with M.O.P. again “I’ve got at least 50 beats TAILORED made for them. I sample their vocals for my beats probably more then any other artist. In fact I need to get at Laze (their manager) cause I wanna be on 1st tap when they start working on their new album.”
Kil “Hip Hop (Remember)”
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After dealing with this whole mess I wondered where he stood on giving out beat tapes without watermarks because the rub is if you don’t then anyone can rap over it without you ever knowing but if you do add them then some people won’t listen to your beats at all. “It’s can’t win for losing situation. Like you said some people won’t even listen to it if it’s tagged up but if you don’t tag it you can get jacked. I got torn to pieces in MAD forums because everybody was like “you should’ve tagged you beats”! But about 5 years ago I gave a beat CD to 9th Wonder at a beat society and he actually hit me back the next day to say he liked my beats but my tag was ALL over it so he really couldn’t get into the beats, so I fell back from doing that and just started making each beat about 20 seconds thinking that if a mc liked it, he’d have to get at me for a longer version to actually write to. But with all these programs floating around the internet cats can still take my 20 second beat and just loop it like MOP did. So all my beat CD’s are tagged now and prayerfully cats can get the vibe and decide if they like it and get at me.“
Kil started producing in 1992. “I started on a Tascam 4 track and an 8 second Gemini mixer. Then graduated to the ASR-10 keyboard for about 10 years. And for the last 5 years I’ve been on the MPC2000XL”. While no one person taught Kil how to produce various people played roles. “My man Osei Moreland is the cat who took me into his studio and let me learn the SP1200 free of charge. My man Shadi Luqman and Beezo gave me the idea to always throw choruses to my beats and come up with concepts for the MC (something I STILL us to this day) and my man A Kid Called Roots was just BRUTALLY HONEST but his honesty made me get better. He could’ve been the dude who didn’t want to hurt my feelings and just said everything I did was dope but his honesty MADE me get better. No one showed me how to use the ASR or the MPC, but all those dudes helped me.“
Kil “I’m In Love with You”
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After getting on the M.O.P. record he did set up presence online (see below for links) and has been getting contacted by various people for beats. As far as things in works Kil is busy. He is producing an album for Kyana called I Am Beauty, working on a project with Osei Moreland and some more stuff with Sekani. Sekani was an Unsigned Hype from Source magazine at one point also he wrote all the lyrics to the MTV film Carmen: A Hip-Hopera that starred Mos Def and Beyonce. Kil is also producing the entire album from rapper Lunchboxx called The Discipline. In addition to that Kil mentioned his wife is a singer and they are always working on tracks. “Her R&B is dope cause it’s R&B over hip hop beats. And I don’t mean Mary J. Blige circa ‘91 with her singing over breakbeats I mean her singing over a track that Raekwon and Ghost could be spitting on, so I’m real excited about her project because it’s a breath of fresh air for music.“
It certainly seems like after years of hard work things are paying off for Kil, keep an eye out for him in the future.
Links
