BAY 19 Music Review King Biggs
BACKAYARD always seek to give all artistes featured a voice and thus sometimes they themselves like to use their own words to describe the process of recording an EP/album. This is exactly what happened when we caught up with Jamaican rapper King Biggs to discuss his most recent release “XXII” and the inspiration behind it
What was it like to record XXII?
I did 95% writing in December 2013, mostly about things that happened to me while I attended UWI and Upper school at Ardenne. I started with the themes I wanted to mention, then matches the aura of the beats according to the fitting theme. Nothing extravagant, I just jotted most of it down in my 3 yr old blackberry curve and developed it from there. XXII is generally based on major events that happened in my life up to age 22, essentially it’s a set of ‘coming of age’ confessions. It’s equally about my own feelings and a previously unexamined look at ‘life in Jamaica’ in the past 15 years from a 90s baby’s (1991) perspective, uncut. After a series of setbacks, I recorded the songs between May and June 2014 at SOL’s (Sons of Liberty) personal ‘Skybox’ studio and the sessions were supervised by Yannick ‘The Therapist’ Reid. The remaining 5% of the writing was done in January after practicing how I wanted to express things emotionally and in terms of overall delivery. I spent Feb and March getting my voice ready so by summer I knocked the songs out efficiently.
XXII is more of an art project because I treated it more like a film than an album or mixtape. It has a booklet with cinematic photos and the videos will have the same theme as well. Matthew McCarthy and Randy Richards gave me a lot of encouragement and inspiration with the direction when I was worried about the audience’s reception. In Jamaica, art never gets a fair deal so I was worried but they reassured me that I just need to be genuine and package it well. It will inspire who it’s supposed to, because it was more about leaving a cultural mark, slashing stereotypes and making history than ‘getting a buss’. It was a superb adventure.
About Author
