Kai Fortyfive - Dinner at Lonely's

The sun is an 865,000-mile ball of gas 93 million miles away from the Earth. The moon is a 2,159.2-mile ball of rocks 238,900 miles away from the Earth. It just so happens that our moon is one 400th of the size of the sun and one 400th as far away from us. This is essentially the definition of a cosmic coincidence, true for no other no other planet's moon(s) across the solar system. Try telling all that to the average human walking the Earth 400 years ago. In 2024, doomsday prophecy still makes for an easier sell than math and science. As for me, I'm just thinking back on Stop 20 solo visits—late night burgers and early morning Benedicts, with only the Criterion Channel for companionship.

Kai Fortyfive - If I Must I Will

I'm not a religious man, but listen attentively enough to SLUGSMOKE & MIRRORS, peer beyond the 'fog of war' spoken of in its presser, and you just may catch wind of something divine-like. Kai Fortyfive's latest masterpiece, If I Must I Will, lifts that fog like sunrise over a swamp. Here, the rapper/producer pushes his songwriting "into some exciting new territory, damn near spoken word/gospel," as I told him on first hearing the album. The result is timeless yet immediate, not only in how Kai addresses recent tragedies but also in the overall urgency of his themes and delivery. There should be more music like this, but there isn't ... at least, not yet. Kai issues the call and answers it boldly, If I Must I Will.  

Kai Fortyfive will be performing live at 117 Grattan Street in Brooklyn, September 11 (tickets available here). Also, a super limited quantity of SLUGSMOKE cassettes is now available exclusively at the Record Stop in Patchogue. Get yours before they're gone for good.

Kai Fortyfive - Silky Joints, Vol. 2

Commercially, Long Island Rap Records' 2021 was all about Kai Fortyfive. It's fitting then that I cap the year with a post on his latest, Silky Joints, Vol. 2, the sequel to the EP that put me onto Kai's music to begin with. Truthfully one of the things that hit me hardest about SLUGSMOKE & MIRRORS when I first heard it was how different it was than Silky, that a rapper/producer who made that could also make this. I'm not saying I like one style more than the other {adlib: not at all}. Quite the opposite: I most appreciate that Kai does both so adeptly it breaks down boundaries in a way that recalls the Duke Ellington quote, "There are simply two kinds of music, good and bad." As for Vol. 2, it's every bit as sophisticated as the comma in its title. Play it for your lover as the ball drops. (And hit Kai on IG for CDs.)

Kai Fortyfive Live in Brooklyn Friday, July 9

Kai Fortyfive, the rapper/producer behind Long Island Rap Records' latest release, performs live at The Living Gallery in Brooklyn (1094 Broadway) Friday, July 9. Also in the house will be Kai's Lowcaste LXRD$ ensemble. Tickets are $8 in advance via Eventbrite or $12 at the door. Merch will be sold at the show, including the newly released SLUGSMOKE & MIRRORS cassettes. Speaking of which, these arrived from the plant looking and sounding lovely. Check them out and order yours via the Long Island Rap Records Store or Long Island Rap Bandcamp.

Kai Fortyfive - SLUGSMOKE & MIRRORS (LIRR03) Deluxe Edition Cassettes Now Available for Pre-Order

There are few poetic flourishes among SLUGSMOKE & MIRRORS’ breathing details of New York street life, no glitz, glamor, glory, or even grit, just survival or death. In a place where yesterday’s foreign car could be tomorrow’s only home, futures are built on regrets or not at all. With this in mind, Kai Fortyfive speaks plainly and bares souls.

“SLUGSMOKE is really just a compilation of stories/memories from not only my life but the lives of my friends,” says the rapper/producer from Elmont, New York. “It was type hard to write this album because mentally I had to go back to a lot of shit I’ve been through. It’s tough to recollect on pain and trauma, but I feel like in order to deliver the album the way I needed to, I had to go back and relive those stories. All in all, this is definitely my most important work I’ve ever done and I’m glad people are in tuned for real.”

Call these criminology bars or worse, reality raps, and severely miss the point. There’s little space here for distinguishing between shadows and ghosts, let alone musical classifications. The rhymes are dope, the beats are hard, and Kai Fortyfive does them all. The only guests are family, Lowcaste LXRD$. The only style the painful truth flickering through fogs of war.

SLUGSMOKE & MIRRORS is Kai Fortyfive’s fourth release and first on cassette. This deluxe edition, limited to just 25 copies, includes the album instrumentals on the-b-side. Tapes are expected to ship in late June 2021. Preview the album below and pre-order now via the LIRR Store (no fees, $ goes direct to LIRR and Kai) or Bandcamp (cards accepted).

Kai Fortyfive - Silky Joints

There's a dearth of love songs on this site. It's not you. It's me.

Kai Fortyfive's Silky Joints isn't posted here as a corrective measure, but it is that. It's music to hold your lover close by, that shelter from the storm, that Quiet Storm set spliced and assigned to the pads.

On "Knockin' Timbs," Kai says, "Every king need a queen and every queen need a king / Everybody need somebody, everything is everything," and it's just the coda. How that's not already the chorus of a classic soul song our mothers and fathers sing each other on special occasions is beyond me.