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Beatboxer Killa Kela |
Beatboxing clever with Killa Kela
PREVIEW: KILLA KELLA
Koko
IF IT wasn’t for a young illustrator’s cheekiness, world champion beatboxer Killa Kela may never have been.
Kela, who plays Koko on August 28, scored his big break by slipping a demo to record producer client DJ Vadim alongside a delivery of drawings. He was projected into the stratosphere soon after he was invited to the studio the very next day to record with the producer.
His third album, Amplified!, is out on August 31, and –features the likes of Does it Offend You, Yeah? frontman James Rushent, French house maestro Alan Braxe, Bashy, Hadouken!, Lateef, The Cool Kids and Human League producer Martin Rushent.
He’s at home in Tottenham watching himself on YouTube when we speak. “I decided to do the self-harming act of going on YouTube and having a look at comments and reactions,” he says. “I’m happy to celebrate my success but at the same time if you’re going to enjoy the good press you’ve got to take the bad on the chin.
“I want to better myself. You’ve got to make sure you’re entertaining yourself and doing the best you can. When I was 24 I told myself when I’m 25 I’ll be the best beatboxer in the world – not bar none, but the best I could be. I learned pretty quickly you’ve got to keep yourself motivated and learn skills beyond the thing people know you for. You never stop coming up with sounds, what’s not so easy is finding the middle ground that allows you to be distinctive.”
Kela is politely well-spoken, he did grow up in Sussex after all, not your average hip-hop breeding ground, but he’s just as at home with US megastars.
While on the scene, he got to know some big names: “I bumped into Pharell, Justin Timberlake and moved quite quickly away from independent UK hip-hop. I did some touring with Pharell and N.E.R.D. – that was amazing. Every bit of advice I soaked up like a sponge. Those guys are great and when you’re hanging around with greatness it’s hard not to pick up on that.
“It’s the same with Super Furry Animals. I toured with them a lot. When I was working on this album, 50 Cent said, ‘you should be like the conductor of the beatboxing field. You should be the Fat Man Scoop of the beatbox thing’.
“That’s where the track This One’s Dynamite comes from with DJ Craze. Then Pharell said I should be like the new-age Doug E Fresh meets the Beastie Boys. That’s where my aggression and attack on a lot of the tunes comes from.
“Then Super Furry Animals said make the album as musical and diverse as possible – all these little things are seeds that grow in time.”
On life hanging out with the superstars, he said: “I’m not going to fabricate the extent to which I hung out with them. Their whole world is on a higher level. They’re no different to hang out with but people are there to constantly accommodate you. Pharell is an absolute diamond to hang out with but if he turned around and said he wasn’t happy at any stage there would be a whole lot of people saying, ‘I’m not happy’.”
He owes his name to his days as a graffiti artist.
“Kela came from a merge of different graffiti writers where I lived,” he says. “I just took the letters of each of my favourite writers and it’s been a bit of a life name. When I started touring with the Rocksteady Crew they said, ‘Man you kill at every show, we’ll call you Killa Kela’ and it stuck.”
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