K Camp continues to set the trends rather than follow them.
The Atlanta-bred rapper recently closed out his Kiss 6 Tour in the city where it all started — a moment he had been anticipating as the tour drew to a close.
“I feel like we always close in Atlanta,” he told Blavity ahead of his final tour stop. “Atlanta always tears the roof off every time, that’s home. I’d rather close it at home. We sold 4,000 tickets at the Coca-Cola Roxy, and I came up in Cobb, like my career started in Cobb County, running through the clubs, open mics, everywhere, all around Cobb. Ain’t no place in Cobb that we hadn’t been. The fact that years later, one of the biggest venues, the Coca-Cola Roxy, I sold out, so that means a lot.”
Eager fans welcomed K Camp back to the city as he plowed through his classics, including “Comfortable,” “Cut Her Off,” “Money Baby,” and a host of others, while also giving the audience new hits from his latest album, Kiss 6, the sixth installment of his infamous Kiss tapes.
At one point, the soulful rapper brought out fellow Atlanta native and rapper YFN Lucci, who performed “Heartless.” The most heartwarming moment of the night was when K Camp’s mother, affectionately referred to as Mama Camp, hit the stage to surprise her son with a proclamation from city officials that Sept. 28 will officially be honored as “K Camp Day” in the city of Atlanta.
“I feel like the project represents the fans, my floaters; they played a major role in why I dropped this project. It’s a big installment in my career,” K Camp said. “I’ve been dropping Kiss projects since 2012, before I was even signed. So the fact that it got here, this big, in this day and age, almost 10-plus years later, it’s the fans. I love making great music. I love putting my heart into my projects, but they’re the ones who carry me over, for real.”
On his viral success
Since his mixtape debut in 2009, K Camp has maintained his relevance in an industry marked by constant change.
In late 2019, his song “Lottery (aka Renegade)” shifted the culture when TikTok creator Jalaiah Harmon created a dance challenge to the track. Today, various content creators continue to help bring notoriety to songs by creating dances to music old and new, and it’s safe to say that K Camp has firsthand experience with this newfound concept. However, it’s not something he was intentionally trying to do.
Additionally, the rapper was ahead of the cryptocurrency wave and managed to hop on the trend before the big players, garnering significant success (and wealth) in the space.
“My ability to always want to learn something, I’m a sponge, I got a lot of smart guys around me that I tap into for advice when I don’t know something,” K Camp said of his instinctual nature that keeps him on trends before they become popular. “I’m not afraid to ask somebody what’s going on, and how I can be a part of something. I think that plays a major role in just my business mindset, my artistry and everything I do.”
What does control and legacy look like for him in the future?
Beyond his work as a rapper and investor, K Camp has recently signed a significant distribution deal with Virgin Music Group, which will enable him to leverage the company’s support while maintaining his independence.
The move represents a significant leap from his origins with Interscope Records, where he was signed for nearly a decade.
“I felt like I was being controlled to a certain extent, you know what I’m saying? That major label system, and I was plotting for like three, four years, of how I was gonna move once I became independent, or whatever it was gonna take for me to become independent,” he explained.
K Camp added, “I’m all about ownership. I’m all about taking control of my life, my legacy, my family, and just taking it to the next level. “That’s the only way you can grow and scale in this business and take control of your business and know what’s going on. A lot of people like to let everybody do things for them, and if that’s how you move, that’s how you move. I’m the type I like to have my hands in it, because I went through that phase of letting everybody do stuff for me. It didn’t work out too well for me, so I told myself that I’ll be hands-on through the remainder of my career when it comes to every single aspect of it. Of course, I got people on my team that assist and help out so that I’m not overwhelmed with too much and I can still be an artist, but at the same time, I know what’s going on.”
K Camp’s Kiss 6 is currently available on all digital streaming platforms.