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.”
Posted in Tampa, Florida - o2kai! has been organically putting numbers on the board and his music made his way to my Spotify algo just last December. Soon after discovery, he dropped his tape Child’s P!ay and I noticed the sheer independence of the whole rollout, I wanted to accuse ‘plant’ but I was like ‘nahh’ - So I said wassup. No label, no rollout, no budget, just Kai! and a chuckydoll. “What’s next?,” I asked. He replied, “wym?“
o2kai!: “Hammertime”
Were you working on anything, other than, as you were growing up?
“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.”
“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.”
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?
“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.”
o2kai!: “hola!” (Child’s P!ay)
I’m sure you’ve received love from the distros?
“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.”
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.”
Moving forward what’s the plan?
“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.”
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 algo began pushing him. Four months later 7 (EP) landed. His latest is bart, produced by tales link, an UNDERISING exclusive.
Stream him on SoundCloud.
