King Los is known for his ability to deliver lyrical ingenuity with an intricate rhyming technique, though he admits his song-making ability is still evolving.
“I’m still learning how to make songs,” King Los says in an exclusive interview with HipHopDX. “I’ve been in the music industry for two years, that’s it. [Laughs] I had a deal, lost it…even the year that I did have a deal, no one taught me how to make music…I had three minutes of straight bars, no hooks, no nothing. I didn’t understand the concept of what a song meant.”
The Baltimore emcee, who recently released a freestyle to Drake’s “Pound Cake,” went on to to note the difficulties of making songs while maintaining a rhyming skill of a high caliber.
“While you focusing on how to make songs, you forget how to rap your ass off, because you can’t do both at the same time,” he says. “You have to balance putting your energy into something. You can’t just be like, ‘OK, I’m the master at bars and I’m going to make songs better than Drake.’ That’s not realistic. Learn the cadences. Learn the melodies. Learn notes. Learn tones. Learn what people are receptive to in what ways. Learn what is soothing to the ear, what is stimulant. You got to learn so much about this shit. In the midst of learning all those things, your bars and your metaphors still ain’t going to be on point, they just ain’t cause that’s a tool you got to sharpen daily. You’ve got to balance out.”
In a story published last week, King Los questioned the quality of Eminem’s “Rap God” single and the lyrical prowess demonstrated by the Detroit rapper on the cut.
“When I hear ‘Rap God,’ I’m like, ‘You didn’t rap godly, though. You rapped great. Don’t get it fucked up. Your verbal ingenuity, through the roof, but bro, you didn’t rap godly. You didn’t rap godly,’” he said. “I could say, ‘Uh, summa-lumma, dooma-lumma, you assuming I’m a human / What I gotta do to get it through to you? I’m superhuman…’ I’m trying to tell you that’s the same thing Busta [Rhymes] did on Chris Brown’s ‘Look At Me Now.’ You didn’t say nothing.”
Nevertheless, Los’ general consensus on the album was strong. “I’ve seen his growth and I thought The Marshall Mathers LP 2 was very dope.”
Additional Reporting by Justin Hunte