SURRENDER YOUR SOUL BY KILLY
Killy is a Canadian rapper from east-end Toronto. His music style is characterized by energetic flows, autotunes, mumble rap, hard trap beats, crazy adlibs, you get the sounds. His persona can be likened to American trap artists such as Lil Uzi, Playboi Carti and Young Thug. His major influence in music is Kanye West, whose College Dropout album helped him define the difference between real music and mere sound. Killy broke out into mainstream popularity and fame with the release of his first ever music video, the video for his “Killamonjaro” song which gained millions of views and plays on YouTube and SoundCloud. The Killamonjaro video was released in February 2017, then Killy followed up with putting out several other tracks like; “Distance”, “Forecast” and collaborations; “No Romance” with producer 16yrold which premiered on OVO Sound Radio and “No Mistakes” with American rapper Nessly.
Things moved really fast for Killy as he who just started releasing music in 2016 has already acclaimed this much success. He describes this timing as the Killy Season. He also gives an incidental instance of his rapid rise by highlighting the fact that he was previously detained trying to sneak into a Jazz Cartier show and now he recently got brought out at a Jazz Cartier show in Vancouver. It looked like there was really no obstacle in Killy’s way and so he decided to create his first professional musical full-length project, titled Surrender Your Soul.
The Surrender Your Soul project was released on March 6th, 2018. Killy revealed that he worked on most parts of the project in Los Angeles, America and the city definitely had a big influence on the feeling of the album. Killy surprisingly worked with some rather big names in the production of the project like Wondagurl, Boi-1da and Y2K. There were no features on the project although we would have loved to see some collaboration between Killy and other artists he works with.
Apart from Killy’s sound being very dark, mysterious and but adventurous, his songs are also very infectious and catchy, as we’ve seen on earlier released tracks and that was not left out on this project, as most of the songs, on the first listen, were hard not to be replayed. It’s almost like a very hard and scary but enjoyable video game you can’t stop playing. The hardest part of this project is in the production and the inclusion of most especially, the electric guitar in the sounds. This musical genius process definitely brought out Killy’s sound better and made it more beautiful to listen to. The most exceptional tracks on the project are “Killamonjaro”, “No Sad No Bad”, “Doomsday”, “Distance” and “Live Your Last”. I would have loved to see some inclusions in the track list like the earlier released Forecast, No Romance and Very Scary which was the most recent track before the release of the project.
I think, with the release of this project, this is a very good start for Killy but obviously and most surely still has a long way to go. He’s probably not signed any major deal with any record label yet and he’s gone this far. I think with the right tutelage and mentorship, direction and management, Killy could go on to be a real force in the Canadian hip hop scene.
