Krizz Kaliko: On his way to ‘Genius’
July 8, 2009 12:00:00 am
by jason whitlock
Krizz Kaliko planned to kill his future wife and himself.
His tortured life had unmercifully reached a breaking point when Crystal Matthews, then 19, walked away from their three-year relationship.
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The skin disease vitiligo had scarred his face, hands and upper body with blotches of pink skin since he was 2 years old and did even worse damage to his self-esteem. A criminal stepfather, neighborhood bullies and look-at-the-monster stares from confused adults and children inflicted physical and mental pain.
Cancer took his father when Krizz was 15. In the same year, his sister lay in a coma following a car accident.
His skin disease, the emotional trauma, his insecurity, his inexperience with love and lack of life purpose created a 25-year-old man ready to author a tragic ending.
Ten years ago in the pouring rain, he lightly tapped a window at Crystal’s home, hoping to trigger motion lights and bait her to lift the blinds. Dressed in all black and holding a 380 automatic in his right hand, Krizz steeled himself for a murder-suicide.
“I was just in so much pain,” he said. “She was stringing me along. I just made up my mind that I was going to kill her and me and be over it. And then from out of nowhere I just felt this presence, felt this voice saying, ‘Don’t do it. It’s OK. You’re going to be fine.’
“I ran back to my truck and drove home. It was weird. My mom was standing at the front door waiting for me. She said, ‘Give it here.’ I said, ‘What?’ She said, ‘Give me your gun.’ I don’t even know how she knew I had a gun. I don’t know how she knew I was on the verge of doing something so stupid. I fell into her arms sobbing.”
His mother consoled him with unconditional love, but it was hip hop that next wrapped its arms around Samuel William Christopher Watson and saved him.
Music transformed the near-suicidal assassin into a loving father, husband, son, brother and, perhaps, Kansas City’s long-awaited mainstream rap star.
A decade later, after performing alongside Tech N9ne as his sidekick for more than a thousand shows, singing hooks and rapping on more than a half-dozen Strange Music-produced CDs, the genius has unmasked himself.
On July 14, Krizz will nationally release his 18-track sophomore CD, Genius, which is being hailed as the most commercially viable and artistically eclectic album ever produced in Kansas City.
“This would make Dr. Dre nut on himself,” said legendary local club DJ Sean “Icy Rock” Raspberry after hearing the CD for the first time. “That’s just incredible, the production, the way he put the vocals together.”
Strange Music CEO Travis O’Guin, whose Lee’s Summit-based label manages Krizz’s career, said people within the industry have described Krizz’s album as “what Outkast is trying to do.”
Sean Tyler, the longtime KPRS-FM DJ, agreed.
“It’s the best hip hop I’ve ever heard,” Tyler said. “It’s not really fair to call it hip hop. It’s outstanding music. It’s rap, it’s R&B, it’s reggae, it’s rock and roll.”
It’s Krizz Kaliko, a secular artist raised in the church and influenced by his mother’s gospel and opera singing and love of all music.
Depending on the track, Genius sounds like Jamie Foxx, Gnarls Barkley, Tupac Shakur, Nine Inch Nails, Prince, Bob Marley and Queen.
“It’s impossible to have that much talent in one motherfucker,” said Tech N9ne, describing his musical soul mate.
But Krizz just might be enough talent to push Strange Music, the nation’s No. 1 independent hip-hop music label, further into the mainstream. Unburdened by Tech N9ne’s contentious relationship with the music industry and sometimes difficult-to-digest song content and imagery, Kaliko could easily be positioned as the Susan Boyle of hip hop, a talent so overpowering that his non-Hollywood looks turn into an asset.
At the very least, Genius elevates Krizz Kaliko beyond Tech N9ne hype man.
“We’re Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis,” proclaimed Tech N9ne, comparing himself and Krizz to Janet Jackson’s iconic producers and the original members of the R&B group The Time.
That’s an ambitious description. Tech and Krizz form the underground version of Andre 3000 and Big Boi, the duo who create Outkast’s fit-anywhere sound.
Everyone has heard of Outkast. And followers of Kansas City’s music scene know virtually every detail of Tech N9ne’s sex-drugs-rock-and-roll-gangsta life.
But we know very little about The Choir Boy, the creative force who entered Tech’s life at the beginning of the decade, who served as the backbone to almost every important Strange Music song, and who is now poised to establish his own reputation.
Until now, Krizz was looked at as just another local rapper Tech partnered with in the past 20 years. But his past is much different from the typical sold-drugs, joined-a-gang rap stories of Kutt Calhoun, Big Scoob, Bakari, Txx Will, Short Nitty, Grant Rice, Skatterman and Snug Brim.
“The truth is,” O’Guin said, “Krizz is the most fucked up of all of them.”
•••
The beatings started in kindergarten when kids at South City View started calling their chubby, skin-discolored classmate “zebra.”
Vitiligo, a relatively common skin disorder, turned Krizz into irresistible playground prey. When he had enough and talked back, he said another boy smashed a chair across his face.
“He busted my two front teeth out,” Krizz said. “I had to go to the dentist and get what was left of my teeth pulled out.”
So he packed socks with batteries, concealed knives, and took his mom’s gun to elementary school for protection.
Krizz said his educated and dedicated parents did everything possible to raise him in a nurturing and positive environment. His mom, a choir director at St. Stephen Baptist Church, required Krizz and his sister to sing in the church choir. His parents used a trip to Disneyland as a disguise to take 5-year-old Krizz to see a vitiligo expert in Los Angeles. Samuel and Barbara Watson paid for expensive treatments in hopes of repairing Krizz’s skin.
His father insisted on moving the family to Linden Hills when it was still considered an upper-middle-class suburb in the Bannister Mall area.
“My dad wanted me in good schools,” Krizz said.
Good schools can’t control bad kids. The bus ride home from Red Bridge Elementary was a daily Russian roulette for Krizz. Would he bite his clever, acidic tongue when the barbs about his appearance flew?
“No,” he said. “They would say something about my face, and I would say something very real about them. Stuff like, ‘You know the maintenance man is boning your mama, right?’ They would wait for me on the sides of the bus.
“I’d punch the first dude as I was getting off the bus, and then I’d take off running as fast as I could to my house. Me and my sister would pass each other as I was running in the door. She’d be coming out the door with a bat, a knife or a gun and running them away.”
Krizz and his sister, April Watson, grew extremely close. She was four years older, light-skinned and attractive, and protected her little brother.
“I beat up a lot of kids for my brother,” she said. “Kids are cruel. I can remember kids spitting on him.”
Life can be equally cruel. Their parents divorced, and Barbara remarried a man who Krizz and April said made their home life extremely difficult and occasionally dangerous. Krizz vividly remembers visiting his stepfather in prison.
“He was 6-foot-2, 230 pounds and yoked up like a linebacker,” Krizz said. “The sound of his voice would literally send chills all over my body.”
Krizz’s mother ended the relationship, but, once again, his big sister stepped in when she said he showed up at their house. April convinced him to leave by pointing a revolver at his head.
“I told him I would blow his head off if he didn’t leave,” she said.
“My sister is fearless,” Krizz said.
•••
Krizz said a psychiatrist told him it’s a miracle he’s not strung out on drugs or alcohol given the trauma in his youth.
The drama certainly manifests itself in other ways, such as Krizz’s anxiety concerning death and his physical and mental health. You can hear it in his music.
On his first CD, titled Vitiligo, he recorded “If I Ever Go,” a tune detailing what he wants his loved ones to do when he dies, and “Anxiety,” a song about his uncontrolled paranoia.
On Genius, Krizz takes it a step further, rapping and singing about his bipolar disorder on the Prince-sounding track “Bipolar.”
He talks nonchalantly about regular visits with a therapist and using anti-anxiety medications such as Lexapro and Xanax.
He acknowledges he’s in a persistent battle for emotional and mental stability. In 2008, he and O’Guin constantly clashed over Krizz’s emergency trips to the hospital that almost ruined the Strictly Strange Tour.
“Krizz is a hypochondriac,” O’Guin said. “He took so many antibiotics on that tour that he contracted MRSA (a contagious staph infection). We spent weeks on a tour bus with a guy with MRSA. It was crazy.”
O’Guin attributed Krizz’s health issues to his obesity and said he told him what Krizz didn’t want to hear: that he was fat. Krizz is about 5-foot-8, and his weight ballooned to nearly 400 pounds.
Krizz has since dropped down to about 280. Last month, he completed the 55-city Sickology 101 Tour without a single trip to the hospital.
But his sister believes Krizz’s social anxiety and other mental-health issues can be traced to the death of their father in 1989.
“I was very angry when my parents divorced,” April said. “Krizz embraced my dad even more. Our dad was the only person who treated Krizz like he was normal. My mom and I were overly protective. My dad treated Krizz like he didn’t have vitiligo.
“His death was a turning point in Krizz’s life that he’s never been able to recover from. He loved our dad so much. He’s only been to the cemetery where our dad is buried one time. That was the day of the funeral. When someone in our family dies, Krizz doesn’t go to the funeral. Death is a plague for Krizz. It haunts him.”
In early June, Krizz took a bold step, following through with a plan of shooting his first music video inside a funeral parlor. He turned his snappy, Gnarls Barkley-esque first Genius single, “Misunderstood,” into a dark comedy about a funeral director and his dysfunctional relationship with his wife.
Krizz spent two days nervously complaining about being “creeped out.”
“I’m still not over it,” he said two weeks after the shoot.
Neither is he over a car wreck that left April, his childhood bodyguard, in a coma for nearly two weeks.
Just months after his father died, a drunken driver slammed into April’s parked car along U.S. 71. Lamar Kingyon and Bertha Kingyon — passengers in April’s car — died within days. A third passenger died years later from complications due to the wreck. April and the drunken driver survived.
After coming out of a coma, April had to relearn to walk and talk.
Krizz had to learn to ignore the nightmares and become his own man, his own protector.
“My dad told me on his deathbed that it was all up to me,” Krizz said. “When April had her accident, I really had no choice.”
Krizz thanks God his sister’s boyfriend took pity on the funny-faced, fat kid and decided to befriend him and teach him the responsibilities of manhood.
“He taught me how to dress, how to talk to women, how to find and keep a job,” Krizz said. “He wasn’t much older than me, but he taught me how to be a man.”
Krizz took on the role of family provider when he was 16.
He used a portion of the money left to him by his father, pooled it with money his sister received from the accident and bought a $120,000 home for himself, his mom and sister in the Huxtable-like 63rd-and-Troost neighborhood known as The Citadel.
As a sophomore at Center High School, Krizz began referring to himself as “Daddy,” dressing flamboyantly and whipping the kids foolish enough to ridicule his appearance.
By his junior year, he had his first serious girlfriend, a beautiful teenager from Kansas City, Kan. His charismatic personality won her over. His vitiligo was a nonissue. They dated for four years.
And then, when he was 22, he and his best friend cruised Troost Avenue in a tricked-out Geo Tracker. Crystal Matthews and her best friend drove past the guys in a Nissan Maxima. After flirting, the cars rendezvoused at 63rd and Troost.
Crystal and Krizz had a love of music in common. They both fancied themselves as future entertainers.
By the time Krizz said he discovered Crystal was just 16 and still in high school, he was already hooked.
“We had several conversations and age never came up,” he said. “Then I was like, ‘Man, this is illegal. I can’t date this girl.’ But I was already really into her, so I let it ride.
“My mom told me not to do it,” Krizz said. “She said Crystal was underage and that when she gets older and becomes a woman she’s going to leave you.”
Krizz ignored the advice and pursued Crystal passionately. He picked her up from high school in his flossy Monte Carlo. He dressed in colorful silk suits and alligator shoes, had finger waves in his hair and wore lots of jewelry.
“I looked like a pimp,” he said.
As his mother predicted, Crystal’s infatuation petered once high school graduation approached. She dumped Krizz for her freedom, the chance to move away for college, and the opportunity to date other boys
Crystal was one of the star players on the Center High girl’s basketball team and thought she was going to get a scholarship to St. Louis University. When the scholarship didn’t materialize, she enrolled at Penn Valley Community College and eventually transferred to Rockhurst University, where she graduated with a degree in psychology.
“I was too young to be in a serious relationship,” she said. “I was mentally unable to compete with Krizz. We would have disagreements and long discussions, and I was unable to go where he could mentally. I was mature for my age. I always worked, had a car and carried myself like a woman. But he had so much more life experience.
“He couldn’t see it at the time, but the breakup was a blessing.”
At the height of his breakup depression, Krizz’s mother told him to write his feelings down. His friends told him to redirect his passion to another area. He turned to music.
•••
Until the early ’90s, Krizz was reluctant to showcase the depth of his musical gift, even in the church choir.
But now he was lonely and depressed, and asked Icy Rock to teach him how to turn the letters and poems he wrote about Crystal into songs. Krizz threw all of his energy into writing and recording songs primarily about the girl who broke his heart.
It was at “The Rock Pit” — the makeshift basement studio that served as the hub of Kansas City’s hip-hop and R&B music scene — that Krizz formed a bond with his musical mentor-turned-partner, rapper Tech N9ne.
“He paid me $500 to do a couple of verses on a song about losing his wife,” Tech N9ne said. “It was a long-ass six-minute song dissing this girl. It was called ‘Deception and Lies.’ ”
In that song and other Crystal-inspired tunes, Krizz found an outlet. While some saw a disfigured, too-soft-for-hip-hop choir boy, Tech N9ne recognized a genius in need of fertilization and sunlight.
Tech was impressed enough with Krizz’s harmonizing that he asked his new friend to sing on the hook to “Who You Came to See,” a single on Tech’s 2001 CD, Anghellic. At the time, Tech recorded and performed onstage with rapper Kutt Calhoun and hype men Grant Rice and Txx Will. No one sang.
Tech asked Krizz to help them construct Tech’s CD Absolute Power. Krizz sings or raps on nearly every song on the album, including the CD’s signature hit, “I’m a Playa.”
Absolute Power cemented the bond between Tech and Krizz and foreshadowed a chemistry that formed the foundation of Strange Music’s ascent.
“When we hear a beat, we think of the same song,” Tech N9ne said about working with Krizz. “There’s a song on Sickology 101 called “Far Away,” and when I heard the beat, I said ‘far away,’ and he said, ‘go away.’
“I can’t say I’ve ever worked with anyone as creative as Krizz.”
But Krizz first had to learn the basics: How to rhyme for 16 bars, how to sing in a studio, how to perform onstage. Most important, he needed to be lifted out of his depression before Tech could mine all of his talents.
Icy Rock handled the singing and rhyming. Tech gave Krizz the confidence to perform and explore creatively, and Tech introduced Krizz to a rock ’n’ roll lifestyle that bandaged the pain of Crystal’s departure.
Tech hooked up Krizz with the owner of Satin Dolls, a now-closed gentleman’s club off Interstate 70. Krizz became the host/DJ of the club four nights a week. He cracked jokes, reminded patrons to tip the dancers and waitresses and interviewed the infamous local hustlers and rappers who frequented the joint.
Satin Dolls was Tech’s and Krizz’s second home. They shared a house on South Benton Avenue in KC’s inner city. They rented rooms from Manzilla “Makzilla” Queen, the brains behind many of the comedy skits on Tech’s albums.
Their home served as the unofficial afterparty for Satin Dolls.
“I would literally come home from work and step over naked people passed out lying (on) the floor,” Makzilla said. “Man, it was wild.”
It was the beginning of the new millennium. Tech was still in an Ecstasy- and weed-fueled haze during those days. Krizz’s drug of choice was “Thunder and Lightning,” 151 Bacardi and Rumple Minze.
“Thunder and Lightening would take you there quick,” Krizz said. “I tried Ecstasy once and didn’t like it. I’m too paranoid for drugs.”
He wasn’t too paranoid to avoid indulging in the sex-and-party lifestyle that his jobs at Satin Dolls and onstage with Tech N9ne provided.
Crystal was Krizz’s second girlfriend. His time away from her broadened his perspective and songwriting material. It also, ironically, strengthened his resolve to win her back.
“We vibed on such a deep level,” he said. “She is/was my partner in everything.”
Krizz Kaliko — named after the multicolored calico cat — is a character who makes music. Samuel Watson is a well-mannered kid from the suburbs who wants to love and be loved by one woman.
Crystal and her sister went to the 2002 Spirit Festival and watched Krizz perform with Tech N9ne. Three months later, after three years of separation, Krizz flew Crystal to a Tech N9ne concert in Las Vegas and asked her to commit to a monogamous relationship. She agreed.
His friends initially objected.
“This was the same girl we heard him write all these songs about,” Tech said.
“I thought he was crazy for getting back with her,” O’Guin said.
April was irate.
“I saw the pain and the anguish she put him through,” she said. “I didn’t ever want to see him go through that again.”
In 2005, Krizz and Crystal married. By then, everyone was onboard with the reconciliation except April. She refused to sing or be a bridesmaid in the wedding. She reluctantly attended the ceremony.
“I have to admit that Crystal has really been there for Krizz,” April said. “She truly cares about him as a person. We get along much better now.”
•••
Six years ago, without medical treatment, the vitiligo started disappearing on Krizz’s face, replaced by natural dark skin. Now there are just specs of it on his bottom lip, across his eyelids and the bottom of his eyes. New fans unaware of his background speculate Krizz wears makeup to appeal to Strange Music’s juggalo-heavy fan base and/or more closely identify with Tech, who wears face paint during live performances. The truth is, as Strange Music’s music has become organically better, more attention-grabbing, Tech and Krizz’s appearances have independently become more normal. Tech quit dying his hair red. Krizz’s pink skin turned chocolate.
The focus is on the music. It speaks loudly.
Killer, Tech’s double CD released last summer, crashed the Billboard Top 20, debuted at No. 12 and sold close to 150,000 units to date. On it, you can hear the eclectic sound that explodes on Genius. On Killer, Tech harmonizes beautifully on the single “One Good Time.” Krizz croons spectacularly on a silly ballad, “The Sexorcist.”
It’s all taken to another level on Genius. Tech N9ne — who started two decades ago as a hardcore gangsta rapper, evolved into a rapper/rocker and then revealed himself as an artist on Killer — exposes yet another dimension on Genius: He can be a Jamie Foxx-like balladeer.
“Get Off,” Genius’ sixth track, demonstrates the student’s (Krizz’s) ability to influence the teacher (Tech). Tech matches Krizz R&B note for R&B note. It’s shocking to hear. Imagine Lil Wayne singing alongside John Legend.
It would be unfair to label “Get Off” as Genius’ highlight moment. The album is a highlight reel, packed with something for every kind of music fan.
“When Tech first heard it, he told me Krizz might be too big for Strange Music,” O’Guin said. “The album is worthy of going quadruple platinum.”
O’Guin, Tech and Krizz debated up-streaming the CD to a major record label, but Krizz could end up making more money by staying with Strange.
There is considerable risk in handing a project and artist over to a major record company. Some artists who get signed don’t ever have their CDs released. An artist could lose control of the content and marketing. And there’s zero guarantee the artist would see a dime from the sale of the CDs because the money a major label spends to make a song or artist popular across the country gets charged back to the artist.
“I was more convinced to stay independent by some record executives, such as Violet Brown (a music-industry heavyweight),” Krizz said. “I could go to a major label and be shelved for years. With Strange I know I can continue to grow the entity of Krizz Kaliko and grow it the way I want to.
“When I gave Travis this album, I told him I wanted a voice in every single move we make in regards to this album. And he’s respected that. I’ve been involved in every decision.”
Strange’s plan for Genius is to push it with close to the same economic force it pushes a Tech N9ne release. “Misunderstood” is not the only song that will be supported with a video. There are billboards promoting the CD along I-70.
There’s a budget set aside and employees hired specifically to fish for national radio airplay. O’Guin is leaning on iTunes to give Genius front-page play when it is released, the same play Tech’s Killer received. Strange Music street teams will plaster Kansas City, Denver, Los Angeles, Seattle, Oakland, Calif., and other Tech N9ne strongholds with posters and flyers.
If things go really well, Genius will sell 10,000 units its first week and 60,000 units in a year.
If Krizz gets lucky and MTV falls in love with his video interpretation of “Misunderstood,” and radio stations, especially KPRS, support a song or two off the album, then Genius will have a shot at serious commercial success, and the sky is the limit for Krizz and everyone at Strange Music.
Krizz Kaliko could become the mainstream superstar Tech N9ne was predicted to become at the beginning of this decade.
“Oh, my God, I’d love it,” Tech N9ne laughed. “I’d be right there with him. I’d be his motherfucking hype man. I can’t wait. Him making it, that’s me making it.”
