Brace yourself: Before kei goes to the top of the charts, she’s going “berserk.”
“Anything I do / I kill / I murder,” the Boston artist threatens on her new GIB-DJ-produced single, which dropped last Friday (September 23). Menace comes easy for this high-octane hellraiser, as we’ve already heard in terrible twos, kei’s impressive EP of whiplash-rap from this summer. On “berserk,” her energy level remains unmatched and unhinged — and apparently, it’s been like that since day one.
“I have a big personality, so when I was younger a lot of people thought it was too much — so much that it would fill up whatever rooms I went into,” kei tells Vanyaland. “It would make some people uncomfortable, and I used to get teased for having ‘crackhead energy‘ when in reality, I was just being me and doing what made me happy.”
Decades down the line, kei’s still pulling from that source of stamina, fueling a mixture of attitude and audacity that results in lyrics like “You don’t wanna get fucked with / Spit in your face / No discussion.” (Not transcribed: The convincing sound of hawking spittle in between bars.)
“I feel like it [my energy] comes from keeping my inner child alive,” she adds. “I feel like transferring that energy into my music was therapeutic, and my way of reclaiming all that negativity in a way that served me. Having my music be something people can identify with — I feel like a small piece of me helps keep their inner kid alive, too.”
“berserk” established that kei’s not to be toyed with — unless you’re toying around on a collab in the studio, which you might want to look into before she’s climbing those aforementioned charts.
Go “berserk” with kei below.