We caught up with the brilliant and insightful King Lingo a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi King, thanks for joining us today. Do you feel you or your work has ever been misunderstood or mischaracterized? If so, tell us the story and how/why it happened and if there are any interesting learnings or insights you took from the experience?
Yes……Throughout my whole career I’ve watched people overlook my work and creativity. I was raised in a small town known as “Emporia”, which is located in Southern Virginia. Growing up we had very few people go on to succeed with their Careers. We didn’t have a high pro athletic rate, or a big celebrity, or even a professional team. To me, Highschool athletics and the local music scene was our strongpoint. But we never really had that 1 person that officially put the city on the map. Our music scene was very underground, using alot of repetitive prases and melodic techniques. The sound I had in my dreams was different. It consisted of a style that very few eras of Rap/Hiphop experienced. While everyone was doing “One-Takes” and punching in where they need to take a breath or after they mess up a line, I was experimenting with the idea of freestyling my lyrics, but punch in the whole song bar for bar. A style of rap we commonly know today as the DMV sound, I was recording like that at as early as 12 or 13. As the years went by our rap scene had slowly depleted due to incarceration or simply just lack of exposure, and thats when i started to collect a small group of people who felt i had the talent to continue on. But a lot of people misunderstood my music which lead to people who I actually saw as friends make jokes on my passion.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers?
Music has always been my passion. At age 11, I started out making beats because I wanted to understand the development process that goes into the perfect song. After 2 years of practice and developing my sound, I decided that I was ready to start advertising myself as an Artist. By age 13, I started releasing music, and I the one thing I felt made me stand out, was how unique and in tune my rap style was with my beat production. It was a combination of vivid storytelling, and a punchline based narrative. By the time I reached highschool, I was about five years into pursuing music and my fan base was starting to develop. My younger brother “4PF Reke” also took an interest in being an artist at that time, and I did everything i could to shape into becoming even bigger then i could. Once I got to 10th grade I started to learn more of the business side to music, and i pretty took on the task of creating my own label by the name of “Trap Hou$e Ent.” and managing 100% of my business. By 12th grade, I started gaining the attention of bigger artists and people that I idolized, but nothing that officially moved me up in the ranks.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
The most rewarding part of being a artist to me, is when you start to see and hear how you can change a person day or even their life through the work you create.
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
I built my social media following first off by being known in the real world. I attract people everywhere i go. Once I got my music out there, promoting myself, and being in front of a camera was natural to me. I also made sure all my social media pages had the same name. It’s easier for people to find you that way.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @king_lingo_
- Facebook: Trapper Finesser
- Twitter: King__Lingo
- Youtube: King Lingo