Imaga via “Such Devotion” video/YouTube
Julian Brimmers spits ash and molten glass like Eyjafjallajökull.
I am writing this the day that Ka died.
The day that Ka died, I was cycling through the rain listening to his gospel album. I stopped on the sidewalk and sent the album link to a friend, who’s not so much into hip-hop but really likes billy woods.
At night, the rumor started to make the rounds in a friend’s group chat. Multiple people reached out to me to confirm. As if I knew anything. But people knew I had some sort of connection with Ka and a sometimes active channel of communication. On Reddit, screenshotted tweets by Marv Won and Griselda seemed to debunk it. But something was off.
He was “hard to reach by design,” as he rapped on Night’s Gambit, but somehow we’d fallen into a rhythm of catching up over periodic text messages. I wrote him “You good?” I didn’t receive an answer until the post went up on his Instagram, shortly followed by another from his wife, Mimi Valdés.
I didn’t know Ka, but we did meet three times across nine years, always at crucial moments in my life. And so his whole catalog became the single most important musical body of work in my adulthood. At least.
Like a lot of people, I first heard of Ka in 2012, when Grief Pedigree dropped. I was in a grim spot, and listening to his bodiless, anonymous voice layering up to speak the realest shit ever did something to me. In the beginning, he had more of a haunting presence, which evolved into a more well-meaning but authoritative narrative voice. His artistic journey through the decade of Ka was amazing to witness.
In 2015, when the early hype had grown into something resembling a solid underground career, I reached out to Ka while in New York. He agreed to do an interview and suggested we meet at the Brooklyn Museum. The day was cloudy and unbearably humid, because of some tropical storm closing in on the city. We tried to speak outside on the steps but quickly had to go inside for the AC. We did the interview in the lobby, surrounded by suffering Rodin sculptures. Jeff Weiss, who published the piece on this platform, titled it with a pull quote: “I’m inspired by pain.”
The conversation was candid and exhaustive. I could tell he still was perplexed by the idea that a chalk-white 20-something from Europe would have not only heard but examined his music. My former editor at Juice Magazin had told me how he had previously requested a promo CD from what he thought was Ka’s label. Ka responded himself, something along the lines of “sure, I can burn you a CD, where in the city are you?” “I’m… in Berlin?”
I was proud of the conversation Ka and I had, and of publishing it on one of my favorite platforms. The raw Q&A seemed to resonate with people and I was happy to have spoken to Ka in this particular period in his life. He finally seemed to fully embrace his artistic self, while gaining enough outside recognition to keep him going.
Now, narcissistic tendencies always play a role when projecting one’s own world and experiences onto someone’s art. And if you somehow find yourself in the vicinity of greatness—or: great catastrophe—one secretly tends to think “I played a role here!” I’m fully aware, and I swear none of this is why I’m writing this down. But I do viscerally remember the knot in my stomach when I learned about how the New York Post, less than a year after our interview, ran a cover story that showed Ka underneath the headline “Flamethrower! FDNY Captain moonlights as anti-cop rapper”. In this clear-as-day hit piece, in which the writer for whatever reason disclosed Ka’s salary and living situation, they were quoting directly from our POW interview. I know it probably didn’t make much of a difference, but I did feel a sense of guilt, having talked to him about his day job and artistic life.
Again, I’m projecting, but I do think that after this run in with the gutter press (NY Post, not me), he stopped talking for the most part. I tried throughout the years, and he always said no in the most friendly way. The art should speak for itself.
He did however make one truly great exception, in 2016, right after the Post fiasco. Some colleagues and I at Red Bull Music Academy tried hard to get him over to RBMA Montréal, to give an interview (“Lecture”) for the participants that would also be filmed. Chairman Jefferson Mao would conduct the talk. Ka declined more than once, until Jeff called him directly and convinced him. On the couch, he was visibly nervous but in good spirits, and the aspiring musicians around us clearly appreciated his stories of resilience and growing up in Brownsville during the crack era. Mimi sat a bit further on the same bench as I and you could tell it was an emotional moment for her to see her husband out of his comfort zone, but low-key enjoying the admiration of strangers. At one point, Ka broke down while listening to the voice of his deceased friend Kev on a Nightbreed track. The whole room helped make him feel comfortable in his emotions. At the very end, he got a standing ovation.
I’m not sure if he ever spoke publicly after that.
Through our early encounter and a bit of a maniacal habit of talking about his music to strangers, some artists I crossed paths with knew about my direct line to the Brownsville mystic. The first person to ask me for a link up for a potential feature was a seminal UK producer, who had become a legend in a different genre. It made sense. It would have been a perfect fit and may have introduced Ka, who himself had a musical interest that went way beyond hip-hop, to a new audience.
He was flattered, humbly thanked me for offering an intro. And then declined. He could only ever make music with people that he vibed with on the regular. In person. Fair enough.
The next person who asked me to introduce them was a West Coast rap prodigy, one of the most groundbreaking lyricists of his generation. It was the perfect request. Triple win for everyone, especially the listeners who likely would have loved to hear these two fan favorites interact, or maybe even jump on a track together. Their style would’ve matched perfectly. Again, same thing: Ka told me he’s a huge fan, but had to decline.
The hubris of thinking I could do something for a grown man, who is so well-connected, so revered as an artist—a fucking FDNY captain by day—it’s ridiculous. I stopped sending him requests like that. Instead I sat down with his music and learned, each time a little more and something a little different. Although I did still invite him to at least consider performing at a festival in the Netherlands, which I work with. You can guess by now how that went.
The day that Ka died, my friend called me up.
We had discovered his music together and we actually got to see Ka in the flesh in 2022, when he was rolling through Europe with Alchemist and Roc Marciano. It was meaningful to me to reconnect with him after six years, and I know it meant a lot to my friend as well. It’s weird how sometimes you just wanna shake a hand and say thank you. Someone dropped me a line that he thought he saw Brownsville Ka in the crowd the day before in Hamburg. I texted him, and indeed he had tagged along to finally see Europe and go on an extended digging trip with his friends. In Cologne’s venue we hung out at and chatted by the bar before and during Roc Marci’s set. Marci played tracks with Ka features on them, but Ka didn’t flinch when the few people who recognized him expected him to go up on stage. He still had to figure some things out in his life, before he could consider performing, he said.
But: it did feel like he might be really giving it some thought this time. He had grown a beard because he was now retired from his job. Maybe another decade of Ka performing his music in the same idiosyncratic way he recorded and released them in, playing unorthodox venues and finding a worthy live setting for his introspective music was ahead?
On the phone, my friend and I exchanged recollections of that night, and spoke about what his music meant to us.
After we hung up, I went through my text messages with Ka from about ten days before. We had been in contact about what would be his final album, The Thief Next to Jesus. Before the release, he had sent me the files and asked for feedback. We discussed the themes and the gospel angle a bit. I told him how much I loved the sparse “Collection Plate” and its powerful line in the hook.
It is tempting to think of an album full of gospel samples as him pulling a David Bowie trick. Speculations about his passing are inherently despicable, goes without saying. But from a fan perspective, there is a silent notion that wants to attribute some agency to him in his final days. If he knew what he was doing, he left us with a complex meditation on faith and Christianity, and a final track that consists of nothing but looped screaming. “Don’t go easy into that good night,” I guess. But do, by any means, rest easy.
It was raining, the day that Ka died.
We rely on your support to keep POW alive. Please take a second to donate on Patreon!
