Local rapper Citizen Kay has just today dropped his brand new mini album Demokracy. Having released his debut single YES! at the start of 2013.

He followed up with two more standout singles, Raise A Glass and the soulful Manage. After releasing singles, touring and reaching audiences around Australia as well as hooking up with the likes of Wiz Khalifa, Danny Brown and Public Enemy for tours, Citizen Kay took time out to finish writing some tracks and record them afresh.

Originally born in Ghana, then moving to the Capital of Australia while still very young, Citizen Kay has grown up with an ambition to make his way into the music scene. Beginning as an aspiring songwriter with a love of hip-hop, he began rapping under the name ‘Kay’.

Music has been a big part in the life of Kay. Before becoming engrossed in hip-hop he was known as a guitarist and multi instrumentalist. At the age of 14 his music teachers and peers recognised his potential as a musician, however hip-hop came into play in a big way and his love of rap and the recording of it took centre stage.

In celebration of the EP, Kay gave us a track by track run down of the impressive mini LP.

YES!

“‘YES!’, the first official release under the CK project started off as a track on a free mix-tape that I’d began working on. I remember really liking it from the get go but it just wasn’t quite right and being so new to making beats I really wasn’t too sure what it needed to take it to that next level but the lyrics were exactly what I wanted and the general feel was there so I’d basically decided “Yep. Good enough!”

It was basically that main hook/riff you hear over and over again through-out the whole song and the drums were a lot more subtle and pulled back. I remember my managers taking a listen and having the same thoughts as me – it had the general vibe but was quite there yet so we decided to send to a guy in Sydney, Adam S, who seemed to know exactly what the track needed almost straight away – DRUMS! Beefy, in-your-face drums! When he sent me the first draft of the new drums over the song (as well as chopping up the riff during the verses) I was sold straight away; pretty sure at that moment my grin was at maximum capacity. So from that, the drums were refined and made bigger and better to become what people hear now and I remember just being so hyped on it and thinking “damn! This is my song!”

Raise A Glass ft Brass Knuckle Brass Band

“This track actually began as a song by BKBB off an EP that they’d just released and I’d happened to stumble on (the beauty of internet). First thing I did was hunt down their Facebook page and send them a message to tell them how much I was into their vibes, what they were doing and would love to someday get something going with them. The message I got back was hella cool for me ’cause they actually knew who I was and had been planning to potentially hit me up in the future which was perfect! Anyway, I had their EP going and this song came on; now I do this a lot to any song but I started rapping along to their song as it played and next thing I knew I was half-way through a written verse so I hit them back up and asked if it was cool for me to rap on the track and change it up a little bit and they were real cool about that so basically that’s how the song came about.”

Manage

Now the thing about ‘Manage’ is that it was actually written just over four years before it was released. It was a song I’d whipped up after one of my friends had broken up with his girl and I’d happened to have also just gone through the same thing with mine but somehow the drama stuck around (you know how it is)…it was more or less a combination of our stories in the one song.

SO anyway 3 years later I’m going through a bunch of old beats/projects just kind of reminiscing and laughing at myself for some of the ridiculous songs I’d written years back and BAM, I stumble on this project, ‘Manage’. So I open it and the first thing I’m greeted with is a really simple, stock sine-piano thing with my scratch vocals of a chorus blaring. I knew I wanted to salvage the song and potentially use it so I started working on it again – re-recorded the vocals, re-wrote some of the lyrics and fine- tuned the beat a little.

Freedoom

‘Freedoom’ is another song I’d actually written around the same time as ‘Manage’ but was so, so different to anything else I’d ever written around that time because it was inspired so differently to any other track I’d written. I was searching the net pointlessly one day, watching news reports around the world and random videos etc when I clicked on a news story from America about some gang on gang/ black on black shootings that had happened in a local area and how they’d escalated to the point where innocent people were being shot and killed simply because they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now being someone that’s lived in Australia for most of my life I’ve always found these things almost un-believable. As I was watching this news documentary there was one guy in particular being interviewed about his thoughts on everything and how the community could better itself and absolutely everything he talked about he used the word “we”.

After a bit the reporter picked up on it and asked why he kept saying “we” and if it implied that he had any part of it and he responded with something along the lines of “Yeah, I have a part in it…you have a part in it and everyone on the planet has a part in it”. He went on to explain that these things will never stop until “we” make the true and conscious effort to strive for peace.

Chosen ft Benjamin Joseph

Another love song for the suckers out there. Once again one I’d written a while back – about 3 years ago after a breakup (the song ‘Manage’), I met another girl, as you do, and I guess at the time basically 99% of my life/problems in one way or another revolved around girls (Jay-Z clearly the opposite back in the day) so at the time most of my music was about ‘love’ and heartbreak and crushes and all that jazz that happens to most teens. Basically long story short: I met a girl, was really keen on her but she wasn’t all that fond of me.

As I am, when I’m determined to achieve something I’ll do everything in my power to prove myself, turned up my charm dial over the space of a couple months to show I really wasn’t that bad of a guy, wrote ‘Chosen’ and basically got to be with this incredible little lady.

Slow Down

‘Slow Down’ was inspired by a friend of mine who was working his ass off at a workplace he wasn’t even hyped on! He barely saw any of his friends, never had the time to just kick back and a lot of the time when he was meant to have the day off he always somehow ended up back at work to the point where one day he just blew up and had a bit of a panic attack and just had to quit to give himself time to gather himself again – it was crazy hearing how much he worked at a place he almost despised and I guess out of all that I was inspired to jot some lyrics down which turned into a song!

Nice &

This was one of those tracks that from the start I knew I wanted to be minimalistic and simple. The beat was sent to me by a young producer from Sydney called ‘Domba’ and I fell in love with it straight away (as I do with most of his beats). The chorus was something that came to me within the first listen of the beat and I just worked around that. Honestly I had no idea what I was really writing about until half way through the second verse and at that point I thought I was writing about general encouragement of other rappers to keep at it no matter what fall-backs you get from people or the industry but it wasn’t till I’d actually finished the song and recorded the demo that I realized it was actually a song completely about me and almost as if I’d written it to myself.

Ashes

The first time I heard the original version of this track I fell in love! It was this dark, mysterious saxophone-based production made by a few of the students at the institution I was studying at and all I wanted to do the entire time was have the stems so I could flip it and slam some raps over it…which is exactly what I ended up doing. This song is a huge representation of my love, hate relationship with the music industry. It was all about how after beginning to make my way in the scene I began to learn it was really not all roses and that there a lot of people out there who will try to take advantage of you and try to con you into doing things.

Conclusion

This mini LP is everything I first talked about in a lot of my early interviews; wanting to be versatile with my music. It’s a glimpse into my mind and my life because honestly no one wakes up every single day of their life feeling happy, or angry, or excited or whatever. Every day, things happen which alter your thoughts, mood and actions and ‘DEMOKRACY’ is exactly that. Brief moments of my life of how I felt on any particular day – from waking up feeling like the king of rap in ‘YES!’, being aware of the tragedies happening far from me with ‘Freedoom’, to simply being frustrated with music itself and all its surroundings with ‘Ashes’ or ‘Nice and’. This is still the beginning for me and it’s a beginning worth taking note of.