Well, not exactly, but who can argue with a great headline? For those born this century, I'm referencing hip-hop's Afrofuturist extraterrestrial godfather and two common themes in the lyrics of Albany-based, Long Island-raised rapper Blaq Kush: rhymes as punchlines and music as a search. That said, this interview is not so much a dissection of his lyrics. If you're looking for that, most of this site's Blaq Kush coverage consists of me quoting back and dwelling on select lines. Instead, what follows is more an overview of his discography up to this point. If you've never heard Blaq Kush's music, here's a chance to catch up while getting a glimpse behind what's for my money one of the most particular and unchecked viewpoints across all of hip-hop's multi-versal space/time continuums.
As a bit of backstory, Kush first came to my attention around 2015. I was following him on Soundcloud when a guy named Ivan hit me up from what would turn out to be Kush's personal email address to pitch me one of his songs called "Sad Prayer." That track seems to have been scrubbed from the internet, but here's what Ivan said about his friend, which remains as good an introduction as any: "Kush takes ordinary hip-hip cliches and distorts them until they're unrecognizable. In this respect, his music is not too different than the pop art of '60s artists like Andy Warhol. Kush is a good friend of mine and his creativity has inspired me in so many ways. Even though he's not directly preaching positivism, his DIY approach makes me want to do more with my life. I've never seen someone spit so hard yet sound so relaxed at the same time. Hopefully you check him out and appreciate the tunes."
Themes aside, this is two Long Island dudes talking about music and kinda sorta trying to define it, but mostly just harping on enjoying it for its own sake. Hopefully you appreciate the tunes.
I wanted to start with your name. I remember hearing you took the spelling from Queensbridge MC Blaq Poet. I’m curious how you got into him.
Just being a fan of DJ Premier, I got into Blaq Poet from hearing his verses with Screwball. I haven’t listened to Blaq Poet in a minute, but there was a point when I was teenager where Screwball was one of my favorite groups. That was the first time I’d seen somebody spell their name like that.
You’ve rapped about growing up Black in a mostly white neighborhood. How did you see that affecting your musical identity when you were starting out? And looking back, how do you think it influenced your relationship with music?
That’s a deep question. When I first lived on Long Island, I lived in Elmont. I think it was sixth grade I moved to Glen Cove. I was one of two Black people in my entire school. I was going to this Catholic school, which is closed now, called All Saints. I rap about it here and there, but always felt it was corny to make that an identity—the only Black person in a white situation.
I think it made me connect with other outsiders within music, people that had unique backstories or come from towns not necessarily known for rappers. I know how it feels to be the one person that cares about rap in a social setting. Most people when I was going to school were listening to Flo Rida or Pitbull. They would look at me like, “Oh, I know you like rap. Why don’t you like Pitbull?” I was like oh these people don’t get it. But it put me in an interesting situation where it allowed me to listen to whatever I wanted. Before, I was listening to what my friends listened to, and I cared about other people’s opinions. But when I moved to Glen Cove, it was like these people like wack music, so I didn’t care if they liked what I was listening to or making.
When you lived in Elmont, did you have a budding taste in music?
Yeah, I moved at an odd time. The mixtape era was going on, and Lil Wayne was going crazy. So, it was weird because in Elmont people would know about these things, they would talk about it, they would be listening to it, but then in Glen Cove, it’s like no one knows this exists. So, it just made me feel I could listen to whatever.
Do you think that carried over when you started rapping?
I’m conflicted on how I was first approaching music. It was very free-for-all. I didn’t consider the listener too much. I was recording on an iPad. It wasn’t the best recording quality. But I do think I developed a good work ethic during that time. I started rapping sophomore year, but didn’t start recording myself and putting it out there until senior year.
I think you were in college when you were first sending me your music. For people who aren’t familiar with your older stuff, tell us about Outer Galactic Marauder Foundation.
That was a collective I started with my friend from college named Ivan. He’s from San Bernadino, California, and raps as Fourth-Dimensional Hitchhiker, 4DHxH. He calls himself Ivan the Nomad, too. We were obsessed with rap music we heard through the internet. I like more lyrical rap, but we were listening to all types of stuff. We were big fans of Lil B and early Playboi Carti. He used to be part of a collective called Awful Records out of Atlanta, so that was our inspiration.
We started the collective and the only two people that took it serious were me and Ivan. The other people would record a song here and there and dip. I felt like we could’ve done more with it. But it’s still going on.
You guys put out some crazy videos, and I remember a very unique visual aesthetic.
We were both going to SUNY Buffalo. Ivan was studying film, so he was shooting all the videos and had his own artistic taste he would put into everything—trippy, very Adult Swim influenced.
How did you first hear Josh Alias? And how did Urbvn Architects become a thing?
Josh used to be in a group called BARS: Beats And Rhymes Stimulate. It was mad people, all from Elmont. I knew about BARS because their producer was a childhood friend of mine. It was a coincidence because I was aware of rap, as was my friend, but none of us thought about rapping or making beats—then I moved and made rap, and my friend was making beats. He hit me up on Facebook one day and said, “Yo, would you be down to do a song with BARS?” That’s “Stress Relief” from Urbvn Architects. That was originally a song by BARS.
Years go by. He went to college. I went to college. Afterward, I linked up with Josh Alias to do a feature, he was telling me about Urbvn Architects, and I was like can I be a part of this? They let me in, and it was a dope experience.
What did you get out of that experience? You guys were together for a while. You did a number of projects. I feel like I can hear some of the influence in your music now, but it’s very different as well, so I’m curious to hear you reflect on that a bit.
I got a lot of things out of Urbvn Architects, an idea of how to record, a lot more experience with professional studios, mixing, and mastering—even though I’m still trying to learn more about that stuff. We’d promote our music. We’d try to go really heard in terms of merch. I definitely learned a lot during that period.
When you were in UA, I first noticed an anime influence on your work, which is now front and center. Have your tastes in visual art tracked with your tastes in music over the years?
I would say so. I was really big into art in general even though I can’t draw at all. I was into comic books when I was young. I didn’t realize what manga was until I was in college and started trying to read it for myself. From there, I got more into anime, though I wouldn’t say I’m an expert. That partly comes from Urbvn Architects, too. We had a lot of anime visuals, but we weren’t making them ourselves. That’s the big difference between then and now: I’m actually making my own anime music videos now.
Tell us how the collaboration with blackchai and August Fanon came about. This is like a movie, right?
Yeah, this is a whole thing—multiple different videos for each song. It’s a bunch of collage videos I made, some of the strongest probably in my entire time doing it.
I reached out to August Fanon 2019 to buy some beats, we started talking on the phone, found we had similar interests, and then we stopped talking for a little bit. I bought some beats from him, and I didn’t use them. And when I started doing There’s Always Hope, he contacted me again and was saying, “Yo, I like some of the videos you’re doing.” Even before he did the album with blackchai, we had a discussion about Edan. August Fanon had put me onto this DVD, Echo Party. It had to be maybe two years before he did the album with blackchai. And August was basically telling me, “Yo, we should do a DVD. That would be dope.”
So, he hit me up when he finally did the album with blackchai, and he wanted me to just do one video. That was for “Dissonant Strains.” A month after the album was out, he asked me to do a video for every song. That project really expanded the way I was editing, because prior to that it was mainly anime. I started mixing in radically different forms of media. I would take stuff from a documentary on the Black Panthers and old African movies and mix that with anime. It’s a unique aesthetic I don’t even have for my own stuff. It really exists for that blackchai album. It’s on August Fanon’s Patreon.
There’s reference to gospel music and church throughout the There’s Always Hope series, notably, from the first track on Vol. 1. Is that you as a child singing “Amazing Grace?”
That’s my little cousin. He’s 15 by now.
Do you have a background in the church?
I went to church. I never was big into singing in church, but I did go to Catholic school.
Have your views on religion and spirituality informed your writing?
There’s a lot of things regarding Christianity that I’m not necessarily the biggest fan of, but at the same time I do see the church as sometimes being a very important institution of culture within the community. It helps expose people to different concepts and ideas. I wasn’t thinking about church when I first made the title There’s Always Hope. But it’s definitely something I think about consistently. Also, with Urbvn Architects, we were very Christian influenced.
There’s some really dark shit in the series, to the point where I wonder if the title is tongue and cheek and who you’re saying this to.
Yeah, it’s a little tongue in cheek because I’m not necessarily the most—I don’t know, I’ve never really made extremely positive music. It was from the anime that the cover’s taken. Midori is probably most negative movie ever to exist. I decided to pair it with the title, because even through all of that, there is always hope to some extent.
Honestly, when I first titled it that, I wasn’t thinking about it too much. But people do a lot with the concept of faith, not even knowing whether it’s going to work out or not. And I realized over time just how powerful having faith is, not necessarily a faith in God, just a faith in something positive. I am recording There’s Always Hope Volume 6, and I only got two tracks done so far, but I would say that one’s probably going to be the most positive sounding.
On Vol. 3 you’ve got “Clone from the Future” and “Clones pt.2,” and Vol. 5 has “lost poets pt. 1” and “lost poet pt2 aka illmatic Bible.” Parts 3 and 4 appeared on your last two albums. How did you come up with these series, and what made you want to continue one?
“Lost Poets” really started with the first track. It was just how it sounded. I guess I’m still trying to find out what the series is. I find it not introspective, not really melancholy, just reflective.
Searching?
Yeah, each track feels like that. Even before I started doing “Lost Poets,” I always felt I make songs that had that searching feeling, and that’s just me stamping that. The reason “Lost Poets” continues whereas “Clones from the Future” didn’t is I make songs like “Lost Poets” more often.
What about the clone tracks?
There’s a line on both about clones. In “Clones from the Future” I say, “My ghostwriter’s a clone from the future.” I thought that was fly, and it reminds me of 1980s sci-fi movies.
The Infinite Money Glitch is one of my favorite projects of 2025. Many people have rapped about money before. Several rappers have done albums about it, but I think it’s safe to say nobody has done one like this. Where did the concept come from?
With There’s Always Hope, the title kind of ties everything together, but it’s more free flowing. With Infinite Money Glitch, I wanted to make a concept album where the concept is obvious. When I did the track, “A Dollar Travels,” I was like OK, that’s what this whole thing is about. All those songs are recorded in order. The first one is the first one I recorded, and it all followed through. It was actually really easy to record. It felt natural. Literally, the first beat pack Antonym sent me was the album. He didn’t have to send any beats after that.
One of the things I like most is how it captures the kind of mass hysteria that has to exist around money in order for the system to perpetuate itself. But it does it in this way that’s always funny and never preachy. Did you have that balancing act in mind?
Yeah, I didn’t want to preach to people. I didn’t want to be like money is bad and capitalism is bad, even though that is aspects of it. I wanted to make it an entertaining experience. That’s why the jokes and funny aspects are so important for that album, to keep away from the dark reality of what a lot of those songs are talking about.
Did you do the album cover?
Yeah, I made that on my phone.
Have you ever heard of The Church of the Subgenius?
No, I have not. It sounds crazy.
There was this satirical cult movement in the ‘80s that took the iconography of the 1950s.
I did take that from a ‘50s magazine. It was real simple. I got this app that lets me remove the background of images, so I took these two characters and pasted it across all these different forms of currency. I originally was going to use the ATM cover, but then I made that one when I was in the process of making the album and wanted to use it more.
I think you made the right decision. The ATM would be more literal. This caught the mood of the album better.
Yeah, though the ATM cover is what inspired “A Dollar Travels.”
Which is a standout track for many reasons. The whole concept took off from there?
That’s when I found the title. Well, it didn’t just magically appear. You know Grand Theft Auto? I used to look up cheat codes, and that was one to get you unlimited money.
In a sense, you’ve always been a punchline rapper. With concepts like these, the punches hold a lot more weight. I would guess you’ve made a deliberate choice to continue writing in this style even when you feel like you have more to say.
It’s a weird journey because I started off a big fan of Lil Wayne and Big L and was mainly focused on the punchline. I’d almost consider the line before it just filler. But I guess I’m evolving in an interesting way, because August Fanon did not look at me as a punchline rapper. He was talking about, “I hate punchline rappers, but that’s why I like your style, because you get to the point.” I didn’t even tell him, but I’m like yeah, I’m kind of a punchline rapper.
Well, that’s the thing. They’re punchlines but they’re saying shit.
They’re all tied to this one theme. I do see the pros and cons of not having underlying concepts. It affects how people interpret what you’re doing, which is fine. It’s always nice for people to have their own interpretation, but sometimes it does create situations where someone has this whole theory about what I’m saying, and it has nothing to do with that.
You’ve shouted out Company Flow before, and you’ve always had a left-of-center appeal, but I feel like Unregistered Kush is your most overtly “alternative” or avant garde release yet. Would you agree with that, and, if so, what drew you in that direction?
I would. Of everything I’ve put out, that’s probably the most experimental. Unregistered User has very off-kilter beats. It was a completely different process than working with Antonym, because Unregistered User had to send me a couple beat packs. Sometimes he would send me a beat, and I’d have no idea how to rhyme on this. It’s dope but I also don’t know what this is. He’s from Chicago, and I think he’s less tied into being a specific kind of producer. He’s the kind of guy who’ll try anything, which made it fun to work with him. I don’t think I’ve ever tried to write to beats like some of the ones that are on that album. There’s one track, “Suspended Animation.” I don’t know why, but when I first heard that beat, it reminded me of Guilty Simpson—music I never thought of making.
How did you link up?
There’s a guy who reviews music named Jerald Powell. He hit me up in 2023 to do a track, and I was not finding a beat, so he hit up Unregistered User. We did a Halloween kind of song. Then Unregistered User hit me up again in 2024, like, “Yo, do you wanna do a whole project?”
What about Antonym?
He’s friends with another rapper named A1 out of Chicago, and he showed Antonym my music. I recorded over one of his beats for the track “Anxiety.” I forgot who hit up who, but we started working on an album right at the beginning of 2025.
So, you put it together relatively quickly then.
To a degree. I work on them like every other day, so I’m working throughout the week to keep the process going.
Is that typical? Do you tend to write or record every other day?
I used to not do that. I used to take my time. Especially when I was only doing There’s Always Hope, I would take months to do projects. I would say last year I sped up my writing process, because I had more stuff I wanted to get done. I actually have two more albums I wanted to drop last year, but I wasn’t working fast enough. At the same time, it is hard, because you’ve got to constantly find inspiration. I don’t like working just to work, but I do try to keep myself productive. I’ve had songs where I started it, and I’m like oh I’ll finish this later and next thing you know, two years go by.
I know you’ve also been making noise under the moniker Processed Data. Have you thought about rapping over any of that stuff?
I don’t know how I would. I’ve always been aware of noise music. I was never really a fan of it until I started making it myself.
How does that start then?
I got a drum machine app on my phone, and it lets you record live. So, I would have these drums going, and I would mess them up, put different vocal effects on it—delay, reverb—and just play around with the tempo to the point where it doesn’t sound like drums. Through that, I was like oh, this is how Merzbow makes his music! I didn’t really think anything of it, but I posted my stuff on a noise music page on Reddit and actually sold three albums off Bandcamp from it, so I was like OK, I guess I’m good at noise.
At the same time, I do think about it, because there are other rappers that have played around with noise, like Moor Mother, and I like her approach because it’s not always just her screaming over the song. If I’m going to do it, I want to do it similar to how I actually rap, and I haven’t figured that out yet.
That’s fair. You could try something and it ends up wack if you don’t have the plan.
Yeah, and as I’m getting deeper into noise music, I’m learning a lot of these guys get the equipment and really make it live. You’re taking hardware and using it to make sounds it’s not supposed to. I’m almost a little embarrassed that I make it on my phone. My main entry point was when I was in high school, getting into freeform jazz, and some of that stuff parallels with noise. As I am getting more into it, I am discovering there are certain aspects I just don’t really like. Some of it is weird almost incel type music. I gravitate to the noise records you wouldn’t expect to be noise records.
Before your albums with Antonym and Unregistered User dropped, at the end of Volume 5, you teased an album with another producer, 3rdRev. What’s the status of that project?
That is literally done. We just need to do interludes. It’s going to be a long project, 17 or 18 tracks. I was recording that when I was doing There’s Always Hope Vol. 3, and the tracks I wouldn’t use for Vol. 3 I used for the project with 3rdRevolution. That’s more left field, probably in the similar path of Unregistered Kush, very experimental at times but more jazzy. Unregistered User’s beats were more electronic. 3rdRevolution is into jazz fusion, so there’s a lot of that. It’s not a concept album, but more around consumerism as well as pop culture.
Since you moved to Albany, how do you find their suburbs differ from ours?
Oh, it’s really different. It’s almost like living in the South. There’s a lot of open land, random big houses. I would say it’s a lot slower. I did find one dope artist out here named SOO DO KOO who’s a producer and rapper. SOO DO KOO produced “Lost Poet 2.”
You mentioned to me that you do come back down to Long Island to record pretty regularly. The studio that you use is down here.
Yeah, and I have family on Long Island, so I’m always going back down there regardless. I do have one new studio I’m trying out in Brooklyn, but I drive down like every other week.
Do you have favorite food spots, record stores, or other places that you make sure to hit while you’re on Long Island?
I always go to Golden Krust. That is one big difference. The pizza upstate is not as good as downstate. I don’t know what they’re doing. They just throw cheese and sauce on it and call it a day. In terms of record stores, I don’t visit too many. But there is a store called Mr. Cheapo’s Records. The video for “Def Jam Records,” that’s where we shot that.
You’ve got a project from 2021 called Ghosts of Jazz Musicians. If you could collaborate with the ghost of one jazz musician, whose would it be and why?
That’s a difficult question because so many names come to mind. I feel like the easiest collab for me would be Sun Ra. I naturally do Sun Ra-esque things, so he might get what I’m doing. I feel like we’re on a similar wavelength.
That makes sense: some of the science-fiction influence, the mythology, time.
But I would also say John Coltrane, one of my favorite jazz artists.
Before we go, any other new projects you want to talk about?
I’m working on a bunch of stuff. I’ll just go through the stuff that is almost finished. I have one project I’m working on with a guy from Japan named QLATE. That’s going to be a very Company Flow-type project—real raw, abstract hip-hop.
Also, before I do There’s Always Hope Vol. 6, I’m going to do a little mixtape called Vol. 5.5, and that’s going to be long. I’m throwing a lot of different ideas out there, some I’ve never done before. I have a love song on there about a relationship and a breakup. Then I have another song on there where I sampled punk rock, looped it up for four bars, and rapped over it.
You produced it?
Yeah, I have beats on here, two so far on this project. I’m interested in how people are going to perceive it, but at the same time I’m not too worried if people don’t like it, because I’ve got the stuff with QLATE, which people are going to like if they like my older stuff.
I always thought of the There’s Always Hope series as mixtapes, and then this is like a mixtape within a mixtape series.
They’re almost like my sketches. If I was a painter, whereas Infinite Money Glitch or Unregistered Kush is like a finished painting, I look at There’s Always Hope as my sketchbook. I’ve got stuff on there where I’m branching out experimenting. Then there are tracks on there where it’s just some of the best verses I’ve done.
When can we look forward to that?
Probably late March or April. I’ve got over 10 songs on it to get mixed and mastered. I would say earlier, but I don’t know how long the process is going to take.
Anything else you want to add?
Thank you for doing this interview. This was dope. I forgot to mention this, but me and August Fanon are making a remix album with some of the tracks from the There’s Always Hope series. I don’t have a specific date, but that’s definitely going to drop this year also.
Selected Discography
Kushen Sundaze 1720, Outer Galactic Marauder Faction, 2018
Urbvn Architects - Mutual Understandings 2, Focus Ahead, 2020
Ghosts of Jazz Musicians, 2021
There's Always Hope 1-5, 2022-2024
The Infinite Money Glitch, 2025
Unregistered Kush, 2026
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