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.
