Ka Gave All of Himself at His Pop-Ups
Remembering the late indie rap hero, who was a scarce public presence but always made time for his devout fans.
If you wanted to meet Ka, your best bet was to see him at one of his pop-ups. The Brownsville, Brooklyn rapper-producer and former FDNY captain, who unexpectedly passed away last weekend at 52, mostly shunned the spotlight. His last published interview was with the Fader in 2016, and he hadn’t performed for an audience in nearly a decade. But when he would announce a new project of breathtakingly concise beats and rhymes, you knew a pop-up—where he would connect with fans and sell his art—was coming soon after. Ka was so scarce that when he decided to make himself seen outside of his neighborhood, people from all across the indie-rap community, from across the country and even the world, would show face. These quickly became community-building events—and Ka, who spent years creating, producing, and distributing his music mostly in solitude, was all about community.
The first Ka pop-up I attended was in 2016, the year he released the hauntingly beautiful Honor Killed the Samurai. He was selling vinyl and CDs from his car trunk outside of the location where the legendary hip-hop record store Fat Beats used to be in Manhattan. I went with my friend and former co-worker Max Weinstein, who had put me on to Ka not long before, and the first thing I noticed was how gracious the rapper was to the small crowd of listeners who came out. He didn’t just give dap and say “thanks for coming out”—he engaged in lengthy conversations with people about life and music.
When it was my turn, I told him I was relatively new to his work but my favorite song on Samurai was “$”—where Ka talks about the values of giving back over a shimmering beat—and that I appreciated the samples from the audiobook of Bushido: The Soul of Japan dotted throughout the album. Then we spent a decent amount of time talking about our favorite underground rap records (at the time, he was really feeling Westside Gunn’s FlyGod) and the importance of journalists like Max and myself working to push independent artists. I bought a record. He signed it and told me it was “great building with you.” The interaction lasted maybe 10 minutes, but I already felt like we were old friends.
After that, I attended every pop-up I could. As Ka gained more recognition, the events upgraded from his car trunk to small storefronts. By 2023, the one he threw for the three records he released during the peak of the pandemic—2021’s A Martyr’s Reward and his 2022 double album Languish Arts and Woeful Studies—had a line that stretched up the block and around the corner. Rap fans of all ages waited for their turn to meet Ka and buy exclusive merch—two people in line that day came from Montreal and Colombia just to see him. But the experience still felt like building with that one family friend you only see around the holidays: We would catch up and talk music, and he would encourage me to keep writing. “You super nice with the pen,” he told me once. It’s one of the heaviest co-signs I’ve ever received.
His last pop-up, which took place September 28, for his recent album The Thief Next to Jesus, was no different. When I pulled up to 104 Charlton Street in Manhattan that afternoon, the event had already been going for three hours, yet a sizable amount of Ka fans, fellow artists, journalists, and friends were still waiting in the rain. When we made it inside, it was clear his operation had expanded even further. Two lines snaked through the small, white room, one for merch and another to talk with Ka. T-shirts, socks, and bandanas adorned with lyrics and album covers were being sold by a small team that included Ka’s wife, Mimi Valdés, the former editor-in-chief of Vibe magazine. Collaborators and indie rap figures, like the producers Preservation and August Fanon and the rappers Navy Blue, Brainorchestra, and Theravada, rolled through to pay their respects. Patrons chopped it up among themselves as they waited to meet the man of the moment. I stood in line for close to two hours to buy merch for myself and a small handful of friends who couldn’t make it, and then waited another 90 minutes to reconnect with Ka. Outside of one five-minute break, he never moved from his post, diligently speaking with every soul who came through. Then he’d pose for a picture, have them sign a blackboard in marker, and give them a pound. No one in attendance knew it would be the last time most of us would ever see him.
Ka caught a second wind at age 39 and spent the next 13 years building a modest and staunchly independent career for himself, staving off smear campaigns and changing rap trends to bring audiences and critics into the sepia-toned diorama of his life. He’s been described as a poet, a philosopher, and, according to veteran producer Alchemist, even a “living prophet… delivering his words from the top of a mountain off a stone tablet.” But as acclaimed and skilled as he was, his appeal to me stems from the fact that he was as regular as they come. He would often cast his life against allusions to mythology, religion, and world history—but the everyday hero born Kaseem Ryan, bruised and scarred by the Brownsville streets of the 1970s and ’80s, always shined through in his slang and diction. “The people love me deeply ’cause I speak that ugly elegant/True, what I do is hood intel, intelligent/Ain’t bold enough to hold your gold?/Aye, you out your element,” he rapped on “Argo,” from 2018’s Orpheus vs. the Sirens, as apt a self-examination as any he’d ever written.
The Thief Next to Jesus, which is composed almost entirely of gospel samples, examines shaken faith in the face of racism and poverty. It proved he was only getting more potent with age and, on that rainy day last month, it was edifying seeing a crowd eager to dissect lyrics and tell stories with an artist who had brought them together on his terms. That fact has given me solace this week, as figures in every corner of hip-hop publicly mourned a fallen hero; a week where new fans are also discovering the bars and insights that had already won over countless others. Ka gave all of himself in his music—but he somehow gave even more in person, and we’re all better for it. We love you, Kaseem. Peace akhi.
