Rap and Poetry - Love, Loss, and Loud Drums
KATA
KATA builds worlds out of words, layering raw emotion over drums that hit like thunder. Coming straight out of Raleigh, North Carolina, the rapper, lyricist, and producer has spent the last five years sharpening his craft, blending storytelling with beats that refuse to be ignored. As a core member of 47 Eyes on Me based in North Carolina, a collective of artists, visionaries, and sonic architects, he’s not just here to rap—he’s here to shift the culture.
From J. Cole to Boom Bap to Something Entirely New
The blueprint was set early: Lil Wayne, Kendrick Lamar, J. Cole—icons who didn’t just rap but reshaped the genre. KATA grew up locked into the classics, dissecting beats, and figuring out what made them hit harder, feel deeper, stay longer.
“It was the storytelling. Kendrick’s Good Kid, M.A.A.D City wasn’t just an album—it was a cinematic experience. It made me realize that rap could be more than just music—it could be a mirror, a movement, a moment in time. It is poetry.”
That mentality bleeds into the tracks he touches. KATA isn’t afraid to sit in an emotion, let it breathe, and turn it into something real. Whether it’s love, struggle, the state of the world, or the energy of a fleeting moment, his music doesn’t just tell a story—it pulls you into one.
“Some days, it starts with a drum loop that catches me off guard. Other times, I’ll stretch and flip a sample, making it something unrecognizable, something that forces me to write different, think different, feel different.”
And then there are the days where it’s just a melody in his head, looping until the words come out.
“You ever get stuck on a thought?” he asks. “Like, it just sits with you? That’s what a lot of my music is. I latch onto a memory, a feeling, and I don’t let go until I’ve turned it into something that makes sense. It’s not dwelling—it’s dissecting.”
That depth makes KATA’s music hit harder than most. It’s not just words over a beat—it’s a moment captured, a memory stitched together with bass and hi-hats.
Rap as Poetry, Love as a Muse, & Finding Beauty in Chaos
Lately, KATA has found himself writing a lot about love. Not the Instagram-filtered kind, but the real, raw, sometimes reckless kind—love that changes you, that lingers in the spaces between the lyrics.
“I think I just love the world too much sometimes,” he admits with a laugh. “I fall in love with the smallest things—a moment, a person, a night that feels like it’ll never end. There is so much going on in the world world, but at the same time… people are beautiful, y’know? I think I try to capture that in my music.” That balance—the weight of the world mixed with the weightlessness of love, the tension between hope and reality—is what makes KATA’s music magnetic.
On one hand, he’s writing about intimacy, connection, and human fragility. On the other, he’s spitting verses about political unrest, disillusionment, and a world that feels like it’s constantly on fire. His recent feature on "No Faith" with Joey Zen dives deep into that tension—a commentary on global chaos without losing sight of personal truths. He says it for what it is, his first line “I lost faith in society when bullets hitting hits” sets the tone of the song. “Sometimes, the weight of what you say and the passion behind the tones is what hits the hardest.”
With a new single dropping next Friday, February the 14th 2025, this is a rapper on the come-up flying like a comet, and an artist attempting to build something timeless.
@kata.global
