K.Flay is a Hip Hop/indie rock star who moved to the Bay Area from the Midwest to get a psych degree at Stanford. During study breaks she started rapping, and taught herself how to program and mix music. She hit the scene with seemingly effortless skill, collaborating with MC Lars, and opening for Snoop Dogg and Ludacris on college tours. Her EP comes out this fall, but for now you can grab free downloads of her single 2 Weak and a mix tape of her conscious lyrics layered over familiar beats. She raps about everything from her family’s old minivan to corporate bailouts. We met up for coffee and discussed women in music, crossword puzzles, and the next book review she’ll be posting on her blog. If you haven’t heard her flow, check the video below.
K.Farr:What are you reading right now?
K.Flay:I’m still reading War and Peace. My brother asked if I wanted to read it with him, he’d just finished law school and had all this downtime. I was about to go on the road, and I kept getting sidetracked with other books. Reading it so slowly has been good in a way because I remember everything. The fact that Tolstoy was able to create this intricate world and make it historically accurate, it’s insane.
Have you always been musically inclined?
I sang, played guitar and messed around a little bit in High School, but nothing concerted. It happened all of a sudden. The Hip Hop stuff was unexpected, but I’m very linguistically oriented. If you look at the lyrics to a rap song, they’re ten times as long as any other type of song. Some of the greatest rock songs ever sung have only two stanzas that repeat. It’s still awesome, but it’s a different style — Radiohead is a great example. It’s a skill to embody or encapsulate something in eight sentences, but I like the opportunities for wordplay. So it was the medium that meshed best with me. I just didn’t know until I got into it.