The phone call was probably annoying anybody hearing the noise. Every word came back as a half second delay, with a static like an old television or maybe an overblown speaker. When I heard back the recording of this, that shit was 36 minutes of the Havana Syndrome, loud variant. Neither of us fixed it, it wasn’t my phone bro, but we just talked through it, okay cool, whatever.
Starting off I wanted to rapid fire some questions at Kai to ease any tension or break through any cool guy character persona act. There wasn’t one.
[interview]
You still in school?
“Nah, I dropped out. I’m not gonna lie to you. I’ve been keeping that shit mysterious, keeping it on the low key.”
Lights up
How you been dealing with all that?
“It’s been crazy, bro. That shit came out of nowhere. I never really hit a thousand monthly listeners type shit. I never would have thought that.”
You get in trouble? In school?
“No, man. It’s just dumb shit, bro. Me skipping school. It wasn’t even like fighting or nothing.”
For anybody not up to speed: o2kai! is in Tampa, been there his whole life. Last December he put up a 12 track EP called Child’s P!ay with Chucky on the cover. No label, no manager, no rollout, no budget, nobody working it. I was on Hammertime before the tape existed. That song and Aw fuck were on repeat the whole weekend I found his music. Then he drops ‘Child’s Play’ and i’m like the project is dope, seriously I thought, what’s next? He said wym
o2kai!: “Hammertime”
Were you working on anything as you were growing up? When did that come into your life?
“It’s really been my life, my whole life. But the start of it, everybody was on the DS. I was probably seven. I don’t know if you know about the old one, the first DS. You put your voice on it, it’s a voice chat type shit. You could edit your voice. I ain’t gonna lie, I was snapping.”
He came back on some of these in writing after the call.
“Bro that shit was on the DSi. I think it was called Sound Bird or something, they popped it with that.”
“I’ve been recording seriously since 2018.”
Seven years old, pitching his voice through a Nintendo DSi mic. Years before anybody was counting plays.
Who handed you the ball first?
“I say myself, bro. I found out about that BandLab shit four years ago. Nobody really passed me the ball. I kind of just found the ball myself, and I picked that bitch up and went on the court.”
“Nobody really passed me the ball.”
So you just grew up on the internet?
“Yeah, literally. But I didn’t know about the internet until ninth grade.”
What would you say is the hardest part about being a man?
“Really a lot of lower type shit. Mental breakdowns. The mental breakdown in me.”
“The hardest part about ME being an artist is the independent struggle. Really putting pain in this shit and promoting the pain, you feel me.”
No She Loved Me, you add that to the December tape?
“It was there before. That’s the lowest [play count]. I ain’t gonna lie, guys love that shit, but that’s not my love.”
o2kai!: “hola!” (Child’s P!ay)
I’m sure you’ve seen love from the distro. SoundCloud, Spotify. How was that?
“This shit is genuinely out the fucking mud. It’s genuinely off the love of the music. But the thing about me, I don’t take it seriously. I never really thought myself of being at this stature of music.”
“This is genuinely out the fucking mud.”
Who you working with on production?
“Svvn is my main prod right now.”
You got any crazy beats you holding back? What’s the shit you holding back right now?
“Right now I’m just staying solo.”
What would you say is the biggest look?
“Rexv2, he commented ‘tuff.’ Never hit the DMs though. S/o rex.”
“I got four accounts, bro. I just be posting daily. That’s how I really ran it up.”
“Guys be seeing me on TikTok like, is this you or is this an audit account? Nah, this is me. I just post. It takes 15 seconds to post. 15 seconds out of my day, four accounts.”
“After I saw my main account and my second account blow up, I was like, might as well get another two more, see how that goes. And then those two got a thousand followers within four months.”
“It takes 15 seconds to post.”
You got any albums coming, projects in the box?
“It’s a lot on the album right now, Baby Snake, that I have to promote. I know that shit has retention value and replay value I can get off of, like songs I had off Child’s P!ay, 5lime, Hammertime.”
“Baby Snake is just on SoundCloud. I don’t know if I’ll drop the project again on all platforms, maybe a different one with a way better rollout for 2027.”
Near the end I brought up a bar off 5lime, the one about his brother.
“It really makes me think. Because I’m like, damn, you slimed me.”
“The collective I’m in is called vrybad, there’s also Blackstar and 7L. I’d like to say I’m stamped.”
o2kai!: “bart” (prod. tales link), UNDERISING exclusive
[more on o2kai!]
o2kai! is an underground rapper from Tampa, Florida, melodic where a lot of his peers sit distorted. He has been recording seriously since 2018 and found production on BandLab about four years ago, with no label, manager, or budget behind any of it.
His December EP Child’s P!ay runs 12 tracks with Chucky on the cover. The doll ran across that whole stretch. Hammertime and Aw fuck carried it too, and that was the aesthetic when the underground found him. Four months later 7 (EP) landed. His latest is bart, produced by tales link, an UNDERISING exclusive.
Stream him on SoundCloud.
