the insider: kilo kilos

Despite what you've heard about Kish Robinson, who goes by her stage name Kilo Kish, she's everything but a female rapper—in fact, she doesn't like to be called that. She is, however, all of these things: A vocalist, a songwriter, a visual artist, a painter, a model, an actress, and she recently earned her degree in textile design at FIT.

This list makes it seem like she may have some sort of identity crisis or that she's just really good at everything. After spending an hour with her, we have no doubts about it being the latter.

GETTING STARTED:

I'm happy now at first it was kind of crazy because I had no idea what i was doing the more that I practiced and took vocal lessons and actually took it seriously as a job, it's weird to not have any one to work for. I spent my whole four years in NY working at restaurants and interning.

NOT JUST MUSIC:

I'm lucky that people focus on other things that I'm working on. People always ask me which musicians I looked up to when I was growing up, but I never had any dreams to be a musician. I dreamed of art and design. I love all of the patterns that Stella McCartney puts out. I did an inspiration design collection in my final year at FIT based on her last resort collection. I love French painters like Cezanne and the Austrian painter, Egon Schiele. One of my favorite artists right now is Tom Sachs. I like the way he puts together his installations. I enjoy going to museums more than I enjoy going to concerts.

FASHION AND HIP HOP:

I'm definitely into design and style, but as far as knowing about every change in fashion, I don't. I can appreciate it from an art standpoint, but I don't really know if I really want to be a part of that world. I feel like rappers just try to find new brands to exploit—I'm sorry—but they do that! Like, "Oh, nobody is talking about this one, I'm going to put this on." Fashion and music have such a bridge between. They're both cool things and they both have a style. Of course, if Stella McCartney wanted to dress me, I would love it. But I wouldn't rap about it every two seconds.

STAYING TRUE:

With me, nothing changed overnight. As far as I'm concerned, I'm still rolling up the hill. The internet is insane, but at the same time it births people like me and artists that wouldn't first exist outside of the internet. My music was first put on the internet. It wasn't like I was doing shows and then somebody found me and was like "this girl's cool." It was through the internet, so I can't really be mad at it. Now I can take my own pace with it. I don't feel like I have to compete with anyone. I just want to keep the same chilled out, laid-back vibe that I've had all along. That's my personality. There's no reason to shove myself down people's throats. The point at which I started spending more time on music than anything else was when I started having to do phone interviews, or I had to stop going to work because I had a show, or I had to meet somebody, or do a photoshoot. Doing music full-time slowly happened on it's own. Then the Village Voice cover came out in May and that was a turning point because I couldn't hid the fact that I was doing music anymore. My teachers saw it. It was funny. Before the Village Voice, only some people know that I did music. Now the cat's out of the bag and I'm doing this.

STANDING PROUD:

When I look back at my first show at Santos I was so uncomfortable. Now that I've toured and performed with Childish Gambino at Bowery Ballroom and other larger venues I feel so much more comfortable than I did at other venues. Also, my best friend, Kitty Cash, is my DJ. We met at FIT. She has a fashion background too. Having her on stage with me rather than random DJs is so much better because you can actually curate and have your set be what you want it to be. Then if feels like it's your show rather than whatever the DJ of the night is, because then you have to hand them your songs and hope that they get what you're trying to do. It's good to have someone fun on stage with me so we can laugh.

FAVORITISM:

I'm obsessed with Tom Vocals. He does covers of well-known songs like Rhianna Unfaithful, but changes the lovey dovey lyrics to be about shooting people. I think Twigs is doing good. I really  like her stuff. Of course, Azalea Banks is cool. Grimes is cool. Those are the other girls that I like listening to.

I have a uniform of things that I wear all of the time. I'm always in Frye boots or little Dr. Marten boots. I wear Rag & Bone jeans everyday. My favorite TV show is The First 48. It's a crime show about them trying to solve murders in the first 48 hours of it happening.

WHAT'S NEXT:

I'm definitely still working with my producer friends in Odd Future and I'm branching out to work with more members of Odd Future. I'm working on a tape right now that will be a collaborative project because my last tape was just me, by myself, singing nine little songs about random stuff. I've been learning a lot, so this next one will sound a lot more developed than the last tape. I actually kind of get it more now! I hate hyping stuff up. I want it to be a surprise, but I can say that it should be out before the end of the year. It's good to take time with things. Just because everyone is paying attention to me, doesn't mean I should just throw stuff out there. I should still take the time that I would take to do anything else design-wise or art-wise.

Then she was off to eat vegan food with her manager Justin Scott (who is also A$AP Rocky's DJ) which obviously led a brief moment of Chief Keef spurred debate between us all over whether or not we're "bout that life." The "vegetary with the brown rice" life, that is.

We already gave you the exclusive to Kish's new video for her single "Navy" and Kish has photos showing at the Adidas Originals' 10th anniversary party, so check back tomorrow to see those.