Photo courtesy of Kastaway
Chicago emcee Kastaway created an album that chronicles his real-life recovery from brain surgery called, “The Healing.” The release details the physical and emotional roller coaster that the rapper endures in his quest for normalcy over production that caters toward adult Hip-Hop listeners – it’s unequivocally grown folks music.
The Healing is a 13-track album produced by Krikit Boi, Venuz Beats, Tony Styles, Kitoko Sound, Michael Cooper, and Dominik Giovani. The project features appearances by Dominik Giovani, C-Note, Wrds, Le-Sa J., Pastor M. Jones, Choclett P, Jeremy Clayborn, Rosalba Valdez, Giovany Revelle, Stig Van Eikj, and Mán Cub.
Kastaway spoke to The Real Hip-Hop about his frustration with culture vultures in rap music, how he maintains his mental health, and his new album, The Healing.
TRHH: Why’d you call the new album The Healing?
Kastaway: I named it “The Healing” because I wanted to talk about the journey of life after brain surgery. And that healing is a constant process that I thought was instantaneous, or it doesn’t take as long. I just felt like I just wanted to express that healing is a process — and that’s physically, emotionally, psychologically, and even spiritually. And also, I wanted it to be the opposite of what I was initially going to call the project, which was “Scars.” Scars just came off too dark and too negative and I wanted to do something different. I realized like Scars can also be an example of healing and I’m like, “Oh, that’s it, The Healing!” Healing is a process, so that’s kind of how I came up with it.
TRHH: There is a song called “Take from Me” that reminds me of the Paul Mooney quote from Chappelle’s Show, “Everybody wanna be a nigga, but nobody wanna be a nigga.” Why’d you decide to speak on culture vultures in this song?
Kastaway: Exactly! So, that song actually started from me going on YouTube and learning about this genre called frat rap. I never knew it existed because the fuck I gotta listen to frat rap for, right? I’m black and I’m highly educated, but I ain’t never joined no frat. I’m seeing all these white boys just exploiting our culture and I remember texting Mic Logik in complete anger like, “What the fuck is this? This is making me mad!” He said, “Man, you’re really mad about this,” and that’s my friend but I got mad at him for even saying that! I’m like, “Do you understand why I’m mad? Okay, let me explain why I’m mad!” So, I wrote this song to explain why I was mad so I could put it in words to explain to him why this was pissing me off.
That was like the initial root of the song, and then like you said, it’s cool to be black until black shit happens. I think of being pulled over, they don’t want to go through that. Being followed in the store, they don’t want to go through that. And then I think of people like Justin Timberlake who would make stupid tweets towards this one writer on Twitter back then. I think it was the actor, Jesse Williams, I think that’s his name. He said some powerful speech on the BET Awards and Justin Timberlake said, “Powerful,” and then I thought it was just a regular Twitter user, come to find out he’s actually a journalist and he’s like, “So, you’re gonna stop exploiting black music and you’re gonna apologize to Janet?” And he said, “Oh, buddy, when are you gonna learn that we’re all the same?” or something. And I was like, “Oh, hell naw!” Even though he said this years ago I was just digging into this wormhole of like frat rap, Justin Timberlake and all these people who pissed me off at the time I wrote the song. It just came out of me.
I got the beat and I just went straight with that. I care about us, I care about black people and obviously brown, what we do and what we create. I don’t mind other people taking part in what we create, but don’t exploit it and don’t join it without paying homage. Please pay homage. Let people know where you got this from and if you’re really going to be a part of our culture you gotta ride with us. I come from the school of if I’m riding with you somewhere or we’re going out somewhere and someone starts a fight with you, they started a fight with me too. I’m jumping in. Don’t say, “that’s not my problem.” We was cool, what’s up with that? So, that’s what that song was about. I’ve been holding on to a lot of that rage for a while, so it was finally good to get it out.
TRHH: I like Mic Logik and as much as he is Hip-Hop, and down, and who he is, he’s still a white guy. I think it’s difficult sometimes for people to be in our shoes.
Kastaway: I think with him, and this is the reason why I was I’m able to talk to him about these things, is because not only is he around black and brown people, his family is brown. So, he’s seen and experienced things, which is why I can come to him and talk to him about certain things. So, I think when he was saying, “Why are you so angry?” looking back on it I think what he meant was why are you letting it get to you this much?
TRHH: Oh! Okay.
Kastaway: Like, don’t let it get to you to the point where you’re distracted. Because one thing about Mic, he cares about how I respond to things because he knows I could get really bent out of shape. That’s what I think he was trying to communicate. And I just could not put it in words at the time when he asked me why am I so angry without cursing [laughs]. I think I wrote that song to say, “This is why I’m mad, this is why I’m angry.” And if you listen to the lyrics I shouted him out because I wanted him to know there’s a difference between you and this rapper Mike Stud. You actually give a fuck, Mike Stud doesn’t. And maybe there is a part of Mic that may not recognize how I see him because he’s white, but I even want him to see the difference between himself and the work he’s put in around building positive race relationships, versus Mike Stud and why somebody like me would say, “Dawg, look at you. You ain’t that, why he gotta be like that?” So, I think that’s why he was asking that, but either way when he asked that I’m like, “You know what, the best way I can answer that is through this song.” Sometimes I am emotional and in the height of my emotion I can’t clearly express how I feel, so you gotta give me a minute and then I can write it down. So, I think that’s what that was.
Mic is one of the few people who’s seen some things. He’s seen some injustices being in the family he’s in, and that’s why I always have lot of respect for him and could talk to him. Especially around the pandemic time, we was talking about this stuff a lot. I do want him to know clearly, I don’t fuck with them frat rappers. I don’t like them. Because they’re so privileged. They’re so privileged and it’s like, you got everything already, why you gotta come over here fuck with our shit? And then you come over here and you don’t care about the history, you don’t care about the art, you just want to be lit. You just want to be lit and it’s sad because I wrote this song before the Drake and Kendrick battle. I will say Kendrick made me think about some of the things that Drake does, and he does the same shit as these frat rappers! Don’t get it fucked up, I like some of his records, especially when I was an alcoholic [laughs.] That’s the only time you can really listen to that shit, or at least me, when I was drunk. I could never listen to Drake sober now that I think about it.
But it bothers me when people emulate what they think is black culture and what they think is cool about black culture. Most of the time it’s this mainstream stereotype that got us looking like ignorant buffoons and criminals all the time. That shit is frustrating as hell, to be honest. I’m tired of it. I’m really tired of it. I know that’s one of the few songs that don’t really necessarily seem like it’ll go with everything else I’m talking about, but if you knew how long I was holding on to that anger having that song is healing too. Anger can be good. I don’t want to make people with anger feel like they’re not heard, they’re not seen, but if you don’t do the right things with it, it can’t hurt. Going back to Mic Logik, I think he knows that about me — that my anger can hurt me because I got health issues. I got stomach issues that’s connected to my emotions. He knows that about me, so that’s why I think he was like, “Yo, why are you getting so mad?” I think that was his way of saying, “Dominique, chill out. Don’t let this get to you,” but it does, it does.
TRHH: On the title track you speak on the trials in your life and how God’s blessings await you. How were you able to stay on the path of remembering God while going through extreme physical and emotional hardships?
Kastaway: It’s the people I’m surrounded by. My uncle and my godfather are both pastors. The reason why they’re so close to me is because Im’ma be honest, I’m not the most churchy guy. I’m actually traumatized by church, which I have a song coming out later this year that actually talks about that. But these two, they accept me for who I am. They know the good parts of me, and they know the foul mouth parts of me that’s fighting and all this stuff. But I keep them close to me. I’m in a prayer group with them, but they know me. They’re always around and they’re real. I got an uncle named Danny on my Puerto Rican side of the family, to me he’s like a real-life Job where I’ve seen him lose everything but keep his faith and then get it back twice as much. And he’s so real.
He’s not a preacher, he’s a real dude that always keeps God in the picture. I’m always able to go back to him and he’s always reminding me of what it is. And then I’ve also seen God work some prayers in my life, like for real, for real. Because when I look back at everything that I’ve gone through and to see where I’m at now, it’s not just me. There is a spiritual force and I just happen to believe it’s God. So, that’s kind of how I keep going back to him, so even when times get rough it’s like, “Alright, kid. It’ll get better, it’ll get better, just give it some time.” There’s going to be ups and downs, but when you’re in those stages where you’re down just know that it can get better.
TRHH: Along those lines you have a song called “Worth More” that’s about anxiety. I feel like this is important because in the black community we historically have not spoken about mental health. I didn’t know what anxiety was until I was almost 35. Meanwhile, I’ve probably dealt with it my whole life, I just didn’t know what to call the feeling. What did your mental health journey look like?
Kastaway: Alright, so I want to say my mental health journey started with my mom. Because my mom was always anxious and I just never knew what it was. She passed that anxiety down with how she raised me because she was always in a constant fight or flight mode. She was always in survival mode. That’s why I say even though my mom loved me she raised me on more of a survival state than a loving state. She’s a nice woman, but she was just always surviving and it just always felt like the end of the world was around the corner. I always had that feeling, and then on the flip side being abandoned a lot gave me depression. I was always going from anxious to depressed and there was no one I could really talk to outside of my sister, Angel, when I was a kid. I had to confess to her like, “I don’t feel good.” I told her when I was younger I wanted to kill myself and I was in like fifth grade. I just held on to it.
I got to high school and I got a social worker like my junior year who tried to help me through the things, but it’s only so much school can do because you gotta go back home. But he recognized I struggled. I was in junior college and I had a psychology teacher, who I’m friends with to this day, who saw that I was struggling. But still there was no words to explain what I was going through until I started having these crazy stomach issues. They were diagnosing me with these general anxiety disorders and I’m like, “What? What is this?” And then they sat down and explained it to me and I’m like, “Oh, that’s really me.” I was around 24-25 when I start figuring out what it was. Once I figured out what it was it took me years, probably up until recently, to figure out how to handle it. And it’s still a struggle for me, it’s still a struggle for me, but I feel like I’ve gotten a lot better than what I was in my 20s.
Literally a week before this album came out I had a car accident and totaled my car. Of course, I panicked a little bit right there, but then once I got over that panic I was cool! I didn’t trip after a while. I still cared, I was still concerned, but I wasn’t like jumping around for days. Normally I’d be tweaking for days. I wasn’t. There’s changes in my job and there’s a lot of anxiety about people losing their jobs, me included, but I’ve been chillin’. I do the best I can and I just pray it works out, but I’m going to sleep, fuck that. And there is this thing where I know if I don’t get it together then it’s gonna continue to impact my bad acid reflux, which is terrible! So, I have to get it together. That’s kind of what my mental health journey has been like. Is it perfect? No, but I’m growing and I’m getting better.
The blessing of going through what I’m going through is I’ve learned to give people empathy. One of my friends, he’s acting funny towards me right now, but I know he’s mentally going through it. So, as much as me and my crew are like, “Man, fuck this nigga!” I can’t do it because I know what he’s going through. So, I’ll check on him every day because I love him and he has no idea that I understand way more than he knows. So, that’s why I ain’t wild on him yet. If this was a year ago I would have had a diss song already, but I’m just praying for him because it’s hard, it’s hard. And when you going through this you usually impact the people that are closest to you. In my case, I blew up a lot on my uncle and my godfather, and sometimes my Puerto Rican pops. He got it too from me, because they’re the closest to me. But now I’m doing a better job – a way better job. And then also, I got better friends.
I got better friends that I can actually talk to. One of the things when you growing up in the hood, at least for me, I struggled with talking to my peers that are my age group about a lot of the stuff that I was feeling inside. And I still can’t do it if they come from the hood. I struggle with it, so when my friends started changing to people who had more experiences outside of the hood they became easier to talk to, and that’s helped me a lot, a whole lot. Some of my friends who I grew up with they came to my album release. For my album release I did like a live therapy session with a therapist on stage. That’s how I premiered a lot of these tracks and one of my friends who I grew up with who I didn’t share a lot of the stuff with was there and it felt so freeing. It felt so freeing. But you gotta get friends who understand, who are empathetic, and who aren’t judgmental.
Unfortunately, we won’t admit it, but some of our hood friends, and some of our hood black friends could be so judgmental that you’re afraid to say certain things to them! I feel like they may not understand. I remember telling certain people I was going to therapy and they’re like, “Therapy? For what? Niggas don’t go to therapy!” and then you feel like shit after that. It’s like, damn! But then I got some other friends who are black and they’re more like within my last five years of building closeness, they’re dope as hell! We talk about this shit at least once a week. Not just my problems, but what we’re feeling. And when we say, “How you doing?” we genuinely mean it. It ain’t just for small talk. We’re like, “Yo, you good? What’s up?” and that’s helped me too.
TRHH: You mentioned your mother and you have a song dedicated to her called “Mom’s Anthem.” Has she heard the song and if so, what was her response?
Kastaway: She hasn’t heard it yet. My mom don’t really listen to my music like that, because when I was younger I was revealing too much, so she kind of stayed away. But I do want her to hear that song, I just haven’t got around to playing it for her, plus I’m weird at playing my music in front of people because of what I’m saying. I get to cringing like, “Ohh, maybe I shouldn’t have said that?” But what I would like for my nieces, or my sister, or one of my cousins is to say to them, “Yo, you heard this? You should listen to this!” and then she get back to me. But I always wanted to dedicate a song to my mom because my mom is a good, good, good person. She may not understand me completely, but that woman has a heart of gold! She will give her last to anybody in need. And she struggled a lot.
Her brother just came home from jail. He did like 20 something years and me and him didn’t have the greatest relationship, but we started repairing our relationship. Believe it or not, he’s somebody I went to and I actually broke down crying to him because I was holding on to all this anger from past harm with him. Me and him built a relationship and he started telling me things about my mom that she was going through with my biological dad that I didn’t know. I knew it was bad, but I didn’t know it was that bad. I was like, “Wow, my mom’s a strong person and she’s been traumatized, so of course she’s going to raise me the way she raised me. Look what she’s been through!” But my mom, she’s stronger and she’s doper than she knows and I really wanted that song to express it because I don’t say it as much as I should.
TRHH: The Healing is not it for you in 2025, what other projects do you have coming this year?
Kastaway: I have “Black Mozart” with RP and then I have “Circa 01” with Backpack Beatz. Both those projects are done. We’re waiting on the final master for Circa 01. Both of them still got some content on there, but they’re to me easier listens than The Healing because The Healing was just straight up therapy for me. These next projects are actually fun because the beats are banging! I’m rapping better than I ever rapped on both projects. RP made me a better rapper, easily. Working with him has made me such a better rapper because one thing about RP, even though we don’t technically do the same type of music, I admire his rhyming ability. This man could rhyme every syllable and I don’t think he gets enough credit for his actual skill as a rapper. So, being next to him made me want to say, “Alright, I may not be as ‘rhymey’ if that’s the word, as you, but I’m going to give it my best.” I get in there and I just start wilding! So, he’s made me a better emcee as far as technically.
I can’t wait to show everybody. On The Healing, of course I can rap, but it wasn’t about being the most technically sound. So, the next two is balancing technically sound, with songwriting, with fun, and still having concepts. I got those coming out and I’m excited, I’m super excited. As far as Circa 01, the production reminds me of when I really got into Hip-Hop, which was 2001. My sister is a big Hip-Hop head and I used to listen to Bone, I still listen to Bone, but I was like Bone Thugs-N-Harmony only! I remember she was like, “Nah, you need to listen to Nas, Common, Jay-Z, Wu-Tang, Talib Kweli,” like all this stuff. But I wouldn’t listen. One day she was dropping me off at school, and I don’t even know why she was dropping me off at school, we only lived a block away, but she dropped me off at school and she was playing “The Takeover” from The Blueprint. I’m like, “Oh, this is messy!
And then there’s Beanie Sigel dissing Jadakiss and all this stuff, and I’m like “Let me borrow this CD.” She let me borrow The Blueprint and it was so much more than diss records and I’m like, “Ohhhhh.” So, from there I started just going back and back and back, and then also I was getting all the diss records on bootleg CD’s and I would play them on the porch. I would have like all of the diss records and I’ll just play them on the porch for everybody. I thought I was a little DJ. I’m really basing that album, at least the feeling, out of that feeling. And again, because RP has helped me improve my skill as a rapper on the Black Mozart project, it kind of moved its way over to Circa 01. So, yeah man I’m excited, I’m excited. I’m super excited about this year. This year is going to be my most active year.
TRHH: For people out there that need healing; what can The Healing provide to them?
Kastaway: Well, I can say that my album The Healing can provide to them a safe space where they can feel like they ain’t alone, and it can provide them encouragement, and it can let them know they don’t have to be ashamed of what they’re going through and what they feel, despite what weird cultural boundaries we might place on ourselves around this idea of mental health. It’s a story of someone who’s putting it all out there and is going to continue to put it out there for them to see my journey and let them know there’s going to be some potholes in this whole thing, but not every pothole is going to damage your wheel. So, it may feel a little bumpy, but you can keep going, you can keep riding. That’s what The Healing is for them. It’s almost like me sitting next to them and just saying, “Yo, let’s go through this together.” Yeah, that’s what it is.
Purchase: Kastaway – The Healing