Introducing: Kemet Dank the Dank God

Recently, I had the opportunity of interviewing and catching up with long time friend, Kemet Dank the Dank God.

There is an enormous amount to unpack when it comes to the artist, individual, and cultural powerhouse that is Kemet Dank the Dank God. He is pages upon pages of academic analysis worthy. It’s challenging to properly, and concisely, introduce him in a way that appropriately captures the essence of who he is as a person and creative. He has historical importance that stretches beyond the start of so-called “internet rap” movements and the dawn of Soundcloud and into contemporary and emerging future trends of hip hop. Undoubtedly, a human anomaly.

Photo by @Seannpk

I’ve written about Kemet before. I’ve been a fan of his work, and him as a person, for over a decade now. We are yet to meet “irl” but have been in communication since roughly 2017, if I recall correctly, through shared interests and mutual friends in what is known as Based World; the community built out around the following of artist, Lil’ B the Basedgod’s, music and teachings. I was first exposed to the work of Kemet Dank when I was in highschool, like probably for many people, Kemet Dank first consciously came to me through his 2014 song “Show Me Da Pack” with fellow iconic artist of the internet rap era, Ruben Slikk. My friends and I were huge fans of Metro Zu all through the first half of the 2010s, so Kemet hit our radar immediately with the release of “Show Me Da Pack” in collaboration with a member of one of our favorite groups.

We were all jaw dropped. The sound of Kemet Dank was that of a clearly post-Lil’ B, based rap super future that none of us had fully or clearly anticipated in our teens. Even with our deep lurking of the internet and hyper assimilation of any new culture of interest, we had heard very little like it, besides the work of Lil’ B himself. Highly dynamic rapping styles, multiple tracks of layered adlibs, and raunchy, highly witty lyricism. I quickly went down the Kemet Dank rabbit hole after my initial exposure, finding his work with OGOD and SGOD member AGoff, as well as his solo albums, Yung Post Office and It’s Super LIT

Those steeped in the knowledge of early internet rap and the dawn of the highly innovative music platform, Soundcloud, should be more than aware of the importance of the group, Metro Zu. The connection of such an iconic and influential group with an equally iconic artist such as Kemet Dank was nothing short of serendipitous. For Kemet Dank, these sorts of collaborations and connections would never stop occurring, and still continue to occur to this day. Over the course of the 2010s, Kemet would find himself in the midst of nearly all of the most influential underground rap movements and trends of that period. He would collaborate with not only the likes of groups such as SGOD, OGOD, and Metro Zu, but also the likes of GothBoiClique, Goth Money Records, Awful Records, and artists such as Kirb La Goop. Kemet sports a rich pedigree in the history of modern rap music, freakishly so even. In such a phenomenal way that I’m not sure there are any other comparable artists to this day who have managed to be so diversely intertwined in so many different culturally shaping movements. Everybody seems to know Kemet Dank. But then again, many do not know Kemet Dank.

I recently read the book “On Ruben Slikk: A Manifesto on the Purpose of Art and the Value of Transgression” by Caleb True. The book is an analysis of the value of transgression in art during the hyper-capitalist period we all seem to be enduring in our global lives, critically anchored through the artist Ruben Slikk and his career. The book touches on the widely considered innovative and influential, Ruben Slikk’s, apparent imperviousness to mainstream assimilation, despite the fact that often his music carries pop-like sensibilities and other elements that could, in theory, be digestible by wider, less “underground” audiences, not to mention the fact that he has had brushes and collaborated with those who would later find “fame”. Regardless of the exact reason why, Ruben Slikk has widely maintained solely underground hip hop celebrity, never quite breaking through to larger markets or becoming a commodified, easily consumable source of music. A true “artist’s artist”. I bring this anecdote up because, similarly to Ruben Slikk; Kemet Dank the Dank God has so far managed a similar course. Despite being widely known, celebrated, and influential in niche music circles and underground hip hop communities, and despite his connections to more mainstream fame and consumable artistry; for the time being, Kemet Dank is largely still an underground artist.

With the ever exponentially shifting lens of mainstream culture, and the ever evolving, recent inventions of hyperdrive social media apps such as TikTok and Instagram Reels, that water down most subcultures into commercial assets (regardless of their transgressiveness, subversiveness, or counterculture merit). We must wonder, what does this mean for an underground, revolutionary figure such as Kemet Dank? Is Kemet destined to dwell for eternity as a monolith of underground culture and history? Or has new, uncertain grounds of cultural standards and practices birthed from social media, memes, and short form videos, now paved way for the potential of widespread celebration and consumption of an artist as obscure, experimental, and transgressive as Kemet Dank?

Photo by @Soraboyd

Introduce yourself for those unfamiliar.

Kemet Dank the Dank God: They call me Kemet Dank, aka DankGod aka The Dank God, aka DJ DUDAT, Yung Interesting & a whole lotta other shit. lol. I'm an artist, producer, filmmaker, writer and just this guy from Baltimore.

What got you into rapping? How and when did you start?

Kemet: Just being a fan of rap music and having it be a part of my life for as long as I can remember is really what inspired me to rap. My mom would have an eclectic range of rap sub-genres in rotation when I was kid. From artists like Missy Elliot, Public Enemy, and Lil Kim, super unorthodox rhyme schemes/production, political anti-government music and hyper-sexualized female bravado rap were some of my earliest musical influences, most of which either sonically or topic wise can still be found in my sound today.

I started making music initially in middle school, when I would just record random freestyles with a beat playing in the background on a voice recorder and burn them to CDs for myself and people and school. From there, when I was in my senior year of highschool I bought my first USB Samsung Meteor Mic & started recording in Acoustica Mixcraft and releasing songs on Hulkshare, Datpiff & HotNewHipHop. They were mostly all super lo-fi unmixed songs that are virtually impossible to find today, but some of them I've reuploaded on DSPs.

Where are you based out of and where did you grow up? Do you feel like it's influenced you?

Kemet: I'm from Baltimore born and raised, being here for most of my life it's definitely influenced everything about me, especially the music. The assertive nature of the people, the griminess of the streets, the rampant drug addiction, the women, and even the slang and pronunciations, I portray all of that in my music whether it be subconsciously or consciously, because it's all a part of who I am.   

You're widely considered a "based rapper", do you personally identify as such? If so and if appropriate, please describe your relationship with Lil' B's music and its influence on you.

Kemet: At first I didn't, because I didn't know what Based was lol. The first time I heard of Lil B outside of The Pack was when I was in highschool uploading random freestyle videos on Youtube like everyday, and somebody was like "You're on your Lil B Shit!', and in response to that I was like "Who TF is Lil B?. lol". But in the midst of the random Facebook commenter making that comparison, I was curious enough to do my research on who exactly Lil B was. From there I watched various interviews that he had done on Youtube and felt an instant connection to him, his music and his affinity for internet culture, thinking to myself “He Just Like Me Fr!". And from there I officially became a Lil B fan and later became Based through my own research of what it meant, applying it to my life, and connecting with other members of Basedworld through twitter and even in person.

As far as influence on me specifically, the music was just a fuel to the vehicle of the based lifestyle. From feel-good nonsensical tracks about being a pretty boy and having a bunch of girls, to serious tales of the struggles of inner city life and remaining positive in the midst of poverty, betrayal, and self-doubt - as a teenager in my formative years it was literally the soundtrack to my life. It was like he was speaking on everything that I was going through or had seen people go through, and as such gave me motivation that there was hope to make it out of my circumstances, as I wasn't the only one dealing with them. 

At this point, you're widely considered an og in the game of internet rap and have found yourself at the center of a lot of contemporary hip hop movements of the last decade plus. Can you explain some of the background to that? How did you tie in with groups like Metro Zu, OGOD, GBC, and artists like Slug Christ and Kirb La Goop?

Kemet: I mean all of that for me just originates from Basedworld, I got hip to Lofty & Metro Zu from us just being Lil B fans and following each other and retweeting each other's tweets about Lil B. lol. Same with Agoff, he was one of the original Based Rappers along with Cartier God and Yung God in Ocean Gang and I met him just in person on some real life shit. GBC, Slug Christ & Kirb, we were all in the same generation of underground music and were also bi-products of Lil B, so the fact that we were all doing something new and each had our own style and sound I feel like brought us together, because there wasn't anybody doing what we were doing at that time.

It's not all about the past though, how have you managed to maintain yourself at the forefront as a pioneer of these kinds of music? For example, you've worked with the likes of new up and comers and folks such as Marjorie Sinclair.

Kemet: I mean I just stay tapped into new music and new artists in general, people creating new sounds and pushing the boundaries of where music is at just inspires me to do the same thing. I be showing love to all the upcoming artists, even people with like 100 followers and shit, it just comes from having a love for the music and showing people that you never know who's watching. A little motivation can go a long way for people, and I just like to play my part. I'm a serial commenter on Youtube and Instagram, sometimes I like to think that I'm a Love Bot lol. Shoutout to Marjorie tho! 

Photo by @Soraboyd

You have addressed a number of taboo topics with your music such as your recent album "Incel Gooning", but this has been a trend in the past with your music as well. What draws you to these topics that are often considered polarizing or controversial?

Kemet: Well with Incel Gooning specifically, the first song that I made was the title track and I was fuckin with it heeeaavy, I felt like I had unlocked some shit both sonically, lyric-wise and from a comedic standpoint it was hilarious to me, God-Tier Meme Rap. But as I dove deeper into the crafting of what I thought would just be an EP, I decided that I wanted to use some samples from one of my favorite Black Incel Youtubers "BarakaTV". I initially discovered him in the midst of looking for promotional material for my "Drink a Corn On The Cob & Snort Soup" album, and posted a few of his rants speaking on his weird fetishes and they were honestly some of the funniest things that I've ever heard in my entire life. But in the search for newer clips to use for the recent album, I found multiple videos of him speaking on how women have hurt him and broken his heart in the past, how he feels as though he's incapable of ever being loved because of his ugliness and autism. Through further research, I found out that he wound up committing suicide a few years before I even initially discovered him, and his last tweet was something to the effect of "No one will ever love me, because I'm ugly as sin" - and at that point what I thought was possibly the funniest situation in the world, was no longer funny.

So I decided to use audio clips of Baraka as narration for the album, starting with his classic weird fetish rants, to him longing for a woman's love and expressing how he doesn't want to wind up like George Sodini, a 2009 incel Pittsburgh shooter. Continuing on to him explaining how he feels that unconditional love only applies to the best-looking people on Earth, and people who like him would never be able to receive such a thing, and finally a cripplingly depressive speech in which he cries about his loneliness, depression, feeling as though God cursed him.

With the utilizing of these speeches, I wanted to show the humanity in people that are demonized and laughed at by a majority of people on a day-to-day basis (Incels & Gooners), with the message being that it's important to empathize with people, especially those that you don't understand, because you never know what somebody's going through in this life. A lot of people are 1 bad day away death, and 1 love speech away from life, so my hope with this project was to give a voice to the voiceless, inspire people to love more and judge less, and finally motivate the people who resonate with it to improve themselves in all aspects of life (mentally, physically, spiritually, and financially) as opposed to fixating on hate, neglect, and rejection from people that don't care about them. How can somebody care about you if you don't care about yourself? It's a beautiful statement on mental health and empathy carefully disguised as a God Tier Meme-Rap album.

I asked a lot of artists, DJ's, and people in general to be a part of the album and they all declined without even listening to it or wanting to hear what it's about, just off of the words "Incel" & "Gooning". I've never had this much pushback or resistance to a release in my entire career of making music, which let me know I was onto something. Without resistance there can be no progress, and with no progress comes death. Also, the topics that I speak on just come from a spiritual calling, they usually find me. It usually starts as a joke, but as I get deeper into it I find the deeper meaning as to why I'm actually doing this and how it can help someone in some way. I'm rarely ever trying to be purposefully controversial, I just like speaking on things that people haven't or won't, that's the key to innovation to me and what makes creating art fun and fresh, pushing boundaries!

Do you feel that the kind of music you make is possibly too transgressive, challenging, or ahead of the curve for the mainstream audiences that have later come to accept, celebrate, and celebritize past collaborators of yours?

Kemet: Earlier in my career I would have to agree with this statement, but now with the rise of Tiktok, various distorted sounds in the underground and punchline/ meme-rap culture being at an all time high, I feel like now more than ever the type of music that I make has the potential to thrive, which I'm very excited about!

Do you anticipate having your "blow up" moment as musical trends gradually start to accept or catch up to the kind of work you make and have made? Or do you consider yourself a sort of true underground artist? An artist's artist, perhaps?

Kemet: Just to piggyback off of my previous statement, I definitely see that coming just through the style of music that I've been making my whole career slowly starting to leak into the mainstream. I love being an artist's artist or "your favorite rapper's favorite rapper" as Gleesh would say, but I honestly feel that at this point in my career, I'm one 15 second Tiktok video away from being mainstream, even recently some of my older songs from like 2017 have been blowing up in Russia and Ukraine (Over 20,000% increase in streams) so even things like that show me that my back catalogue still has the potential to bring new eyes to me and what I'm doing currently.

What's your writing and recording process like? How do you find producers? Is there a style you go for?

Kemet: My recording process varies depending on what I've got going on in my life. Sometimes I'll record for 2 months straight and then won't record for a month or two, and other times I just won't record for months at a time. Usually when I'm recording for a few months straight though, I've found a new sound or idea for a project, and over the span of those 2 months I'll build on the sound and fine tune the forming the album. As far as producers, it's mostly just fans of my music either DMing me for my email or just sending stuff, or people that I've been working with for years sending stuff periodically. Producers I work with frequently know though not to press me about getting on their beats though, I might hit a beat you sent me 6 months ago or 2 years ago randomly, just depends how I'm feeling and what I'm looking for. The same logic goes for styles too, it's either based on how I'm feeling at the time or what style I'm looking for to add to the sonics of whatever project I may be working on.

You run (or ran) the label DAFHU x WITCHSQUAD Records. Is this still active? Can you tell us a little about it and its intent or mission?

Kemet: I'm currently rebranding the label with a name I don't care to share right now. The initial intent was to empower the homies and a group of women that I felt like all had their own song and great potential, but a lot of the people who were originally under the umbrella have either stopped making music, passed away or are doing their own thing, but it's all love for everybody!

You had an art show you were a part of in NYC not too long ago. How did that come about? Has art in that sense always been a part of your life? Should we anticipate more formal art from you?

Kemet: The art show was actually in Baltimore not New York, at the American Visionary Art Museum. I'm part of a group called the Baltimore Psychedelic Society, and they're the ones who facilitated it, so they reached out and asked if I wanted to have an exhibit there and I humbly obliged. Visual art has always been a big part of my life whether it be drawing, painting and most recently graphic design, I've always viewed it as another medium to express myself, another form of therapy. This particular art show was my first time working with sculptures though, which was very exciting for me because it transformed my idea of what a sculpture could be. Definitely more formal art coming from me in the future, I'm about to get back into paintings again soon, the sculpture spirits possessed me for awhile. lol 

What's next for you? What is the future of Kemet Dank the Dank God and your ever expanding brand, narrative, and universe?

Kemet: What's next for me, is more consistent music, got a lot of releases this year I'm very excited for. At least 4 projects coming this year, and I've already dropped 2. lol. Working on finalizing this film project for the fall I'm very excited about, my first book's coming this winter, and Blunt Buddy V2!. That's it for this year, as of right now.