K4Z

K4Z is a San Francisco-born artist making the kind of hip-hop he grew up loving — raw drums, samples and descriptive lyrics grounded in a positive perspective. Raised in San Francisco and spending his summers in Tokyo, K4Z grew up between two very different experiences — running around the city, tagging and getting into trouble in SF, then spending summers immersed in Japanese culture and seeing hip-hop through a completely different lens. He came up on Wu-Tang, Nas, Hieroglyphics, Mobb Deep, The Roots and Living Legends, while those summers in Japan showed him how far the culture could travel and take on a life of its own. Now a father of two, music has become a necessary creative outlet. He never stopped writing rhymes, and his music pulls from family, faith, the world around him, and the experiences that shaped the way he sees it. His current work with producer Jacob Carl started almost by accident. Mutual friend Jazzy Le Paz showed Jacob a video of K4Z freestyling. Jacob reached out immediately, and the two began making records together. There’s no character behind K4Z and not much interest in creating one. The music is rooted in the boom-bap tradition, but the point isn’t to recreate the ’90s. It’s simply the language that feels most natural for telling his story now.