Philaflava.com ::

drizzle wrote:I'd be curious to hear Block's perspective as a producer here. I feel like Ka's beats have stepped up on this album, but has he actually improved in a technical sense as a producer or is he just picking really awesome samples to use.

A Brooklyn-based FDNY captain leads a double life as a hip-hop artist whose songs are peppered with the N-word, drugs, violence and anti-cop lyrics.

“F- -k them cops and swats with night vision,” he raps under the stage name Ka in a 2013 song. “I see your traps and your plots to dead us, y’all rolling with Kojaks, n- - -a, I got Berettas.”

In his other life, the gravelly voiced rapper is Kaseem Ryan, 44, a veteran firefighter who commands Engine Co. 235 in Bedford-Stuyvesant.
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Capt. Kaseem Ryan, far right, sitting with FDNY comrades.Photo: Facebook

But Ka, who has rapped with the Wu Tang Clan’s GZA and whose 2013 album, “The Night’s Gambit,” made The Village Voice’s year-end list of best records, has tried to hide that career for years.

“I’m living two lives, man. I’m trying to be who I am in the day and then trying to feed my soul at night with being the artist that I want to be,” Ka said in a 2015 interview, without revealing his FDNY job.

The rapper is on Twitter as @BrownsvilleKa, projecting street cred and an anti-cop image.

In 2012, he tweeted: “Name 5 different slang words we refer to police in hip hop.” Responses included: jakes, pigs, swine, fuzz and them bitches. Ka “liked” them all.

Some NYPD members were disgusted that a fellow first responder could utter such language.

“The biases he portrays through his music are indicative of what he believes or feels,” said Ed Mullins, president of the Sergeants Benevolent Association.

“As a New York City firefighter, he should be trying to bring people together rather than fracture relationships, especially in communities of color.”

Reached at his firehouse, Ryan hung up the phone.

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Ka’s lyrics describe ghetto life, a world of guns, dope and despair.

“You named them hustlers, killers, fiends, ex-cons. I called them cousins, aunts, pops, moms,” he raps on 2014’s “To Hull and Back.”

The song “Mr. Officer” bemoans police brutality against black youths. “Why do you wanna see me in a coffin, sir?” he asks.

Ka says he grew up poor, with 17 people crowded into his grandparents’ Brownsville house. His current life is far less gritty.

He made $148,558 as a fire captain last year, while selling rec­ords, CDs and T-shirts on his Web site. He and his wife, Michelle Valdez, chief creative officer for an entertainment firm founded by Pharrell Williams, own a $1.25 million brownstone in Park Slope.

Few fellow FDNYers know Ryan as a rapper. “I had no idea he was doing that on the side,” one said. “He’s really not a bad guy. But he shouldn’t be bad-mouthing cops.”

drizzle wrote: am tone deaf to boot

ardamus wrote:yeah Susan Edelman did him dirty in that article. fuck her and the NY Post for that.

You know, a job is a job. That’s what I do to eat. I don’t make music that I can afford to eat off. That’s what it is. I have to work to do music that I love. If the two ever meet, the two meet. But I’ll be retiring, I’m fortunate enough that I can retire soon and I can continue to do the music. Maybe the two will never meet. My job will end some day, but the music will not.

He made $148,558 as a fire captain last year, while selling rec­ords, CDs and T-shirts on his Web site. He and his wife, Michelle Valdez, chief creative officer for an entertainment firm founded by Pharrell Williams, own a $1.25 million brownstone in Park Slope.

CarlosDelgothoes wrote:best pub he's had in years.

drizzle wrote: yes something that could potentially loose you a job you had for decades as well as the pension that goes with it is great publicity.

drizzle wrote: the fact that his music was routinely favorably covered by the same outlets now defending him was all peanuts compared to getting his name smeared by a race-baiting tabloid.

CarlosDelgothoes wrote:

drizzle wrote: yes something that could potentially loose you a job you had for decades as well as the pension that goes with it is great publicity.

hi there, I'm a union.

drizzle wrote: the fact that his music was routinely favorably covered by the same outlets now defending him was all peanuts compared to getting his name smeared by a race-baiting tabloid.

pg 67 review by dat wigga Chaz Kangas versus front cover underneath Johnny Depp

EMCEE DARTH MALEK wrote:In reddit hiphopheads people are calling ka the GOAT

EMCEE DARTH MALEK wrote:In reddit hiphopheads people are calling kaNYE the GOAT

Blockhead wrote:I was talking to a friend about that the other day. He was like "can you think of another artist who's had a four album run like KA?"
Obviously, personal taste is gonna dictate how ridiculous you think that claim is but , regardless, his last 4 albums have all been pretty fantastic.
I didn't really agree with his GOAT status cause it's a different era, a relatively short time period and his sound , as original and great as it is, is pretty one dimensional. But his consistency is pretty undeniable.

Philaflava wrote:Your boy Spekt is having a nice run tho too. Marci had it if you factor in Marcberg + Ice Cream Man + Reloaded, but 4 is hard to top.

Blockhead wrote:I was talking to a friend about that the other day. He was like "can you think of another artist who's had a four album run like KA?"
Obviously, personal taste is gonna dictate how ridiculous you think that claim is but , regardless, his last 4 albums have all been pretty fantastic.
I didn't really agree with his GOAT status cause it's a different era, a relatively short time period and his sound , as original and great as it is, is pretty one dimensional. But his consistency is pretty undeniable.

Versive wrote:Yeah, I was going to say Marciano too. But I don't know that Pimpire and Marci Beaucoup will be perceived as borderline classics in the way that all the DOOM and Ka projects from their respective runs are. Then again, I'd probably take Pimpire over Night's Gambit.

Spekt is in his own lane really. Shit drops sporadically years after being announced; there's a classic EP that he purposely took down from the Internet with no intention of re-posting; his latest is one of the best albums of the year, but on the day of its release he also dropped an unmixed collaboration with a DOOM associate who sounds drunk on every track. It's a different discussion altogether.

EMCEE DARTH MALEK wrote:Ka is just a shitty version of roc marci