The story behind Kilo Kish’s rapidly growing popularity in the music world seems like a simple game of fates. Destiny’s hands swept hither and dither until familiar souls joined together in artistic conceptualization. You take a NYC textile design student—Kish, who happened to move in with a rapper from Atlanta named Smash Simmons and an uptown producer named Mell Masters, and together they form the kooky music collective, the Kool Kats Klub (and yes, the all Black members of the group are well aware their initials spell KKK, I asked). Kish describes the results of her studio work with Smash and Mell in their apartment as “a mix of whatever happens when we’re together, which is always just a mix of stuff that’s really fun or funny, and just like goofing around and stuff like that…” The visuals for KKK’s track “OKKK” seem to perfectly display that sentiment.

Kish’s foray onto the music scene was natural, innocent and mostly unplanned, and yet the experience has led her to a feature on the song “I Want You Still” on Odd Future’s Journey to the Fifth Echelon mixtape; the release of her Homeschool EP; performances in LA and NY at some of the most exclusive venues; and the collaborative backing of OFWGKTA offspring group, the Internet. She details her chance encounter with producer and one-half of the Internet, Matt Martian:

“That was a random occurrence as well…Matt went to high school with Smash and my manager [DJ] Justin [Scott]. So Odd Future was in NY one day and [Matt] ended up having to stay at our house because he lost his wallet. [At the time] I was making songs with Smash like doing the KKK thing, and then I was like ‘Oh you should hear one of the songs.’

And he’s like, ‘Here, I’m gonna give you a beat for Odd Future’s Fifth Echelon tape and you can do whatever you want and send it back to me, and we’ll see how it goes.’ So then I sent it back, he loved it and then he kept it on the tape. Then it ended up being one of people’s favorites on that tape, so he’s like ‘I want to put together an album for you, we should work on something.” So I flew out to LA in the summertime. I met Syd [the Kid, the other member of the Internet] and we kind of worked for like a week on stuff. It was kind of like an organic process that just randomly occurred.”

While it may seem by all appearances to be one well-timed coincidence after another, the talent exemplified by Kish on her new EP is by no means random. It’s more of an intuitive process that she feels her way through. “I actually wrote that song in my ex-boyfriend’s apartment, like sitting on the floor,” she says of her favorite track, “Sick,” and continues. “I don’t really have songs written that I have in my repertoire and I just pull them out when I have a beat that fits. Like I’d go to record and Matt’s just like, ‘Oh here are [the beats],’ [with out] much time to think about it.”

So how does a girl who’s a little more than artistically inclined get to the heart of a record intuitively, while keeping on par with the overall structure necessary for song-making? Sometimes her amplified creative visualization process offers a catch-22. Kish sheds a little insight: “That beat to me is kind of like waves and ambient, and like lush. So I thought of just taking a sick day, and skipping school or work to go do something really cool. So that was the idea behind that song. I think it’s like the most complete song I have. I usually get bored like halfway through a song and don’t ever finish it. [Sometimes] I’m just like ‘Whatever, I don’t feel like writing another verse for this. It’s done.’ So that’s the one I kept thinking of stuff for like, ‘Yay I finally finished this song from like minute 0 to 3 and a half!’”

Though it is clear that there are some strong forces at work behind Kish’s rising star, setting her obvious talent, precocious cool-zen disposition to new heights in the Hip-Hop sphere of influence. A few nights ago at the Boom Boom Room, where she was performing for the first time in front of a mixed, high fashion crowd known for galavanting in NYC’s Meatpacking district, Kish shined. Cute and somber, donning an American flag themed-sequined vest and denim shorts, the young Orlando native strutted atop the bar as she recited her songs with a cocky “I run this town….KK bitch!” attitude.

Follow Kilo on Twitter @KiloKish.
You can also hear Kish’s entire EP on her website and check out her Tumblr HERE.

Zoy Britton is an associate editor at STARK. Follow her on Twitter @ZoyMB.

Chalky blue bits of OxyContin (OC) streak cruddy black down the hard silver of the foil. Dragon-tail smoke vapors whip up the red straw to the rhythmically rapid inhalations of a young man who, for anonymous purposes, we will call “Justin.” Icy blue eyes stare dartingly at me, as he asserts that “There are two types of junkies: OC heads and dopeheads… I like OC for the reasons that it’s FDA approved and its government certified—pure. It doesn’t have any adulterants, non- toxic fillers; heroine can have anything under the kitchen sink in it, it could have poison, you never know.”

This, in response to my query of whether or not he would have tried heroine before becoming a serious user of OxyContin to which I said, ‘But getting high on either opiate stems from the same desire to escape, no?’

Justin shakes his head. A resolute no… and then he replies, “I just think heroine is dirty. It’s the next level [of addiction].”

A 24-year old student and a close friend of mine for over a decade, Justin comes from an affluent background and has never suffered at the hands of poverty. He has an elitist attitude when it comes to so-called “dirty drugs” and even admits that OC is a “rich kid’s drug.” That if “you are selling 200 OCs a week, then it’s OK to do 20 OCs in that time because you’re covering your habit and making money.” Though he now claims to have decreased his weekly usage to about 300 mg, at the height of his usage Justin was ingesting upwards of 300 mg daily.

Navigating the various obstacles of life requires a clear head and a sheer force of will power to keep pushing forward by any means necessary. Anything to the contrary would be extremely counterproductive. Sure, we’ve all endured that hellish work day with a staggering, near- debilitating hangover, bringing our daily “how alive are you?” percentages down a bit. And we usually make up for it by picking up the slack in other areas—eating the right foods to usurp the toxins we’ve put in just hours before, in essence, setting our inner fixer-upper practices that we’ve come to use to balance our missteps. But imagine taking daily refuge in a hazy cloud of opiates that leave you cotton- mouthed and perpetually “fall- asleep- in- your- cereal- bowl” stoned. Where does reality, will power or the force fit then?

Pharmaceutical companies play pusher’s paradise for everyone from curious kids who want to chop it up and snort it from pill form, to pain-paralyzed surgical patients and soldiers suffering from psychotraumatic disorders who need it to subdue both physical and mental aches. How they become extremely accessible to the public, despite ignorance on everyone’s part (including the pharmaceutical companies, let alone the FDA) of their long-term side-effects has yet to be revealed.

The mind-blowing effects of OC came to a head in 2001, when media outlets flashed segment after segment about a new drug spreading across the US. It was nicknamed “HillBilly Heroine” because of how many young lives it claimed, mostly in small towns before hitting the major cities hard.

But it was in 1995 when Pharma Purdue first released OC onto the market. By 2006, according to a 2008 study by the FDA, over 8% of the American population, aged 12 plus, had used OC non-medically. Even more striking, by that same year, over 5% of America’s 5th graders had used OC recreationally. OC was just easy to get on the street because it was and is the most popular opiate on the pharmaceutical market, which by default spawned black market demand.

Cases of addiction began to rise to staggering numbers. The DEA began its crack down on users and sellers, focusing more specifically on the greedy doctors taking advantage of OC’s high street price (approx. $1/mg according to Justin) through questionable prescription practices. Congressional committees were formed in order to tackle the OC problem, which also gave birth to the National Action Plan (NAP), a united front of enforcement agencies, drug manufacturers and public campaigns used to disengage the hands of OC on the American populus. Yet, their efforts seem paltry as OC continues its addictive onslaught here. Since the drug is so much cheaper and easier to get in bordering countries such as Canada and Mexico, the drug is often smuggled or imported across country lines.

In Toronto and Ontario, Canada, the OC problem has worsened. Canadian officials were forced to remove the drug from the market as opposed to imposing limitations on stores or consumers. And since OC has become extremely accessible on the black market and online in Canada, users from all over are able to secure steep discounts on pharmaceuticals, finding them on specialty sites at about 80% less the cost of the same drug in the US. To counteract this, Canada’s Ministry of Health joined forces with Purdue this past February, to completely phase out OC in favor of a new drug called OxyNEO, effective March 1, 2012. OxyNEO, in contrast to its cousin OxyContin, does of course, host the active ingredient oxycodone but is much more tamper resistant. A press release distributed by Ontario’s Public Drug Programs division earlier this year asserts that OxyNEO is not crushable and if added to water, it will simply gel up. Problem solved, then?

While in the rest of the world the effects of OC are not as well-documented as they are in North America, it appears that until the drug is completely phased out, it will never stop birthing abusers everywhere; even those who feel entitled to it because they are prescribed the drug, like Justin’s friend “Al,” who is also a habitual OC user.

Al admits to lying to his doctor about the effectiveness of his prescribed dosage in order to get stronger meds. “Oh yeah, you start out with two Percocets and then tell the doctor it’s not working, so you get four and it goes up and up.” It’s rather disturbing to hear Al talk about how easy it was to dupe his doctor, yet it is clearly not a new way of life for him. Al began his opiate journey after a car accident dislocated some of his spinal discs when he was just 15. Now he’s 24 and has been using prescribed opiates for what will soon be half his life. He also began selling to support his habit, but admits that he started selling drugs long before he became a habitual OC user. While he does stick to his dosage, his depressed demeanor complete with mumbled musings and heavy eyes indicate some level of abuse.

It’s incredibly heart-breaking to consider stories like these and others, like those of young soldiers, who, upon returning home from war are forever mentally and emotionally scared by battle or some other heavy experience; seek out help in the form of love, understanding and/or therapeutic healing, but are instead heavily seduced into a world of opiates and anti-depressants.

Though I’ve experimented with drugs like marijuana and mushrooms, I was never one for the heavier drugs. I often opted out of the 96-hour acid binges my adolescent friends endured because frankly, tripping balls while skating the line of insanity for an extended amount of time sounded more like a ball of hellfire than good times, to me. Jimi Hendrix would have to rise from the dead before I’d go camping in unlit woods while tripping on ‘shrooms. But I always wondered why and how my friends could find such fun and solace in being absolutely off their rockers when the idea positively terrified me: 1) no control of your emotions or your physical being while trapped in this, sometimes magnificent and other times horrifying, rambling stream of consciousness; 2) Or worse yet, to be held at the addictive mercy of a costly substance that holds no mercy for the weak.

Despite efforts to create non-abusable forms of the pill and phasing out all dosages of OC save for the 30 mg pills, levels of addiction have reached dizzying heights and only continue to spread beyond the US to Canada. Though the pharmaceutical companies should be praised for their efforts these days to cut down abuse by modifying the manufacturing practices of the pills, it seems that the reality of addiction is left in the tracks of political appeasement as these solutions are not really stopping OC usage, as indicated by the continued (and in some cases, rising) abuse of it here in North America.

Zoy Britton is STARK’s associate editor and a regular contributor. You can find her on Twitter @ZoyMB.

Original Soul brotha Bob Marley, née Robert Nesta Marley, was a fated one; destined to endow the people of Jamaica with his stupefying brand of Reggae that, when performed by the Trench Town prince—accompanied by his Wailers or flying solo—would send a shit storm of funk through the veins and out the soles of the people. Only Bob could make us gyrate despite our disappointments and the misgivings of a concrete jungle left destitute at the hands of political ineptitude and gang violence. Marley was an artist’s artist and knew no musical bounds. With Jah by his side and Jamaica on his back, Marley’s portion was to supersede being born by a slave and as a biracial seed, by blurring all color lines to unite people across borders and to live by one mantra only until death: “I no take white side, I no take black side… me only take Jah side.”

What distinguished Bob Marley from other artists back then, and even many more today was that his love for making music was his sole reason for making music. But no conversation about Bob is complete without waving the ganja banner way high. Just a few days ago on April 20th, notoriously celebrated by weed heads across the globe as 4/20 or better, annual Weed Day, was made holy by a new documentary about the Rastafarian king that debuted on the holiday, simply titled: Marley.

Upon watching the film, you will learn firsthand what kind of performer Bob Marley truly was. His charge: to change lives and not as a guitar-playing, Rastafarian hippie as some might have assumed early on in his career. He was like a harmonious wind that collided beautifully with the drum, and with bass as a steadying backbone as Bob spewed conscious lyrics that went straight to the heart, together with his band he summoned Funk, Blues, Rock, Reggae, Jazz and turned the world on its axis.

Marley symbolized change. A change for the people and a change in music. Marley didn’t sell records at first; especially in the genesis of his career as a solo artist, but he was a phenomenon on stage. His ability to interact with and entertain the swooning (and growing) massive was particularly critical for him as a musician who didn’t see large returns on sales. Parallel to the plight of artists today, albeit today the dilemma is directly attributable to the saturation of pirated music as opposed to just the recession, this film is a guidebook of sorts, schooling today’s emcees and sirens on the true artist’s way to success via the conduit of song and stage performance.

Born and raised in a small hut at the top of a lush hill in the village of Nine Mile, Marley flourished into a stellar soul who made music the same way he made love: boundless, with no rules and in accordance with the most high.

Get to know the Rastafarian luminary a little better by screening Marley in theatres, on demand or on Facebook.

Designers Flora Gill and Alexa Adams of Ohne Titel, which means “untitled” in German, made a hard left from their bright and colorful spring collection for fall/winter 2012. Still culturally cool and super hybrid (read: classic and forward-thinking simultaneously), Ohne Titel’s approaching seasonal looks stay on trend with signature knits, leather accents, fur and sporty color-blocked suits, but in sharp colors like electric blue, purple, black, white and grey. The fashion duo even took inspiration from American textile artist Sheila Hicks, who celebrated her 50-year career as master weaver with a retrospective at ICA Pennsyvlania last year, by incorporating fledging newspaper print onto some of the garments.

What we love? Flora and Alexa use their wicked knitting skills to create stunning graphic jacquard textures for their outerwear. The unique approach lends for timeless edgy winter jackets that will remain in your wardrobe for a lifetime. Pleated skirts, sleek tailoring, leather and fox fur add a bit of luxury to the very structured, streamlined feel of the collection. And while we’re not really fans of the silk dresses (they’re just not made with everyone in mind…), overall Ohne Titel’s F/W 2012 collection is a fave.

Visit Ohne Titel’s site, HERE.

Morris’ sound has always felt a bit Rock-n-Roll soul, even in the earlier stages of her career when she played with her now disbanded girl group Pinktricity back in 2003. The Morris of Pinktricity rocked stages in black, graphic tees and a shaggy haircut. Today, Morris has evolved into an ethereal, red-haired dynamo. Having spent nearly nearly a decade in NYC now, Morris has been building her musical name as a singer, from her humble beginnings recording on a karaoke cassette player as a child to collaborations with some of today’s biggest musical names including DJ Premier, who remixed her popular track “Concrete Waves.”

Your single “Concrete Waves” has really gained you a lot of popularity but I find myself connecting much more to “If You Didn’t Go,” which seems to be about a romantic journey coinciding with a journey of the self. Tell me a little more about the background of that song.

I wrote “If You Didn’t Go” this past summer. One day in the studio my partner Jeremy Page started playing these chords he had thrown together and I immediately connected with them. The first thing that popped into my head was the melody for the chorus, it was almost instantaneous. I remember yelling, “Hold it! I’ve got something!” Then I ran into the vocal booth and started humming the melody I was hearing and forming fragments of the sentence, “If you didn’t go away….” I knew right away that I wanted this song to be as close to me as possible, so I then tried to daydream back into the nostalgic experiences of my first love. I tried digging up memories of being back in Florida with this guy, really the innocence and hope of it all and then found myself wondering what he’s up to now. It’s a strange thing how you can share so much with a person, talk to them everyday, have these moments with someone and then they’re just gone. Poof. Just a coffee stain left.

Sonically, I wanted to take my vocals to that 1970s AM radio feel. I’ve always loved the way that kids sound when they sing in unison. There is something so pure to their sweet, high-pitched voices and the way they give almost an urgency to a phrase, so we did a lot of layering on my vocals in the chorus to give it same sort of that feel. I think of it as my special place song because that’s really where I had to go to in order to dig it up.

Your sound in Pinktricity is much more Joan Jett, more of a rocker sound than your current tracks, what was the reason for that evolution? Did you find that the Ambient sound jived much better with you?

Pinktricity was the first project I had ever started on my own. In a lot of ways I was still discovering myself both as a singer and a writer. I just remember being fed up with always being in other people’s projects and wanting to be the leader of my own for the first time. I could barely play a guitar, but knew that if I just picked one up and started somewhere it would lead me in the right direction. All of us could barely play our instruments when we first started out but everyone in the band was so determined to succeed, that I think the fact that we were just trying to write songs and each of us brought such separate influences that it ended up with the sound that it did. I have always been hugely influenced by Soul music and you can hear that even in these early recordings, as my voice was developing.

As I evolved more as an artist, especially after the band that really pushed me in my crucial beginning stages disbanded, I discovered more about how much I loved the way a voice could smoothly glide across a palette of notes or how emotion can be found in the way a harmony embraces a melody. I bought an 8-track and this time instead of relying on other band members to help me carry an idea out, I decided to rely only on my own inner workings. I started to tinker around more and more with ideas ingrained in me about singing and songwriting since early childhood while incorporating my strongest influence, Soul music.

You said that “all good singers can cast a spell like a banshee.” In your song “Banshee” it definitely sounds like you’re talking about the spell of love or lust. Have you conceptualized a video for it? I would love to see how you could intertwine those two ideas visually….

Banshees have been seen in Irish folklore as these wailing demons or fairy-esque creatures who would use their voices to perceive the death of someone nearby. I have always been curious about the legend of the banshee thanks to discovering the movie Darby O’Gil and the Little People as a child. And so when I sat down and penned the song, I wanted to describe how I envision a banshee and what they translate to me in the form of a narrative. It metaphorically compares the story of a banshee coming for your soul to the spell lust can cast upon a person and steal your soul in the same sort of way. On the other side of the spectrum, I imagine singers to be spell-casters in the way they will use their voices [to] captivate you as listener and transport you to another mood, time, feeling.

…Doing a video for “Banshee” I think could be pretty epic. I would love to incorporate my love for B horror films as inspiration into a treatment at some point.

Follow Morris on Twitter, @KendraMorris

To hear Morris’ latest tunes visit her website, HERE.

What happened with your Paris show [Zebra Square Hotel in January]? Why didn’t they fly you out there? They weren’t showing you love?

I had a passport issue last minute.

You couldn’t get your hands on one?

Nah, man. I had one for a minute, but it expires soon. They told me if I’m traveling to another country it has to be good for three months after the expiration date. I had two months left. I’m like, “How the fuck am I supposed to know that? My shit is good; it’s not expired or anything like that. The process was going to take 2-3 weeks and it was a couple days until the show. So, I suggested I do the show on Skype.

How did that decision turn out?

I saw the set up of the gallery and all the people that showed up. It was kinda weird [Laughs]. You don’t want that as an artist. People probably were like, “Where’s this dude at? What’s in the background?” I’m in my room and shit, just waking up [Laughs]. It was too personal. Folks looking in my house and stuff. Afterwards it was pretty cool like I just fucking did a show in Paris from my room, yo, in my pajamas, dog. The day before my people told me I had to be on Skype at 1:00 pm, your time because it’s going to be later in France. I’m like, fucking one, yo? You know when I be waking up son. I turn the computer on and folks are like, why aren’t you here, man? [Laughs]

But it’s dope, though. You’re a digital artist and you did a digital show.

That’s how we twisted it. Exactly.

How did the show do, other than that?

It went well. They extended it and I sold a couple pieces. Some of the pieces are on loan in other places in Paris like the Coca-Cola/Vitamin Water Headquarters until April. Then it’ll be transferred to the London HQ. There’s going to be artwork by Warhol and Walt Disney there too, which is pretty amazing.

You came a long way from where you were a couple years ago. From banging out art and posting on FB and your Tumblr page.

Yeah, but I had to start slowing that down [Laughs]. Muthafuckas started to bootleg my shit, sen. That’s why now there are watermarks on my new shit.

That’s the problem with the Internet. People can friend you on FB and take all of your work.

True, but I’m not sweating it. If I do another show, I’m going to do all new work anyway, so that early stuff was to just keep the shit going and create some hype. My manager is like; “You can’t just be putting stuff out at that rate.” But, I’m like, yo, that’s how I live. We’re going to have to do something with that. My management is like, “Just stop.” I was like; I can’t just stop, yo. I put all that work out there like that because I know people’s attention spans are short and they’ll forget quickly.

How did you come up with this style?

I don’t know, dude. Somebody showed me how Adobe works and I just sat there and played around with it. Not the CS versions, just the old Adobe Illustrator. It’s just the pencil tool and filling in the outlines with the colors. People try to call it tracing, but there’s nobody that can do it the way I’m doing it. I trace the picture I’m using, but everything else on top of it is all me.

Like a tattoo artist?

Word. I’ve been thinking about that lately because people have been trying to come at me and saying I’m tracing. So, am I copying people’s pictures? Well, I guess I am, but that’s not how I view it. It doesn’t weigh in like that. I’m freaking the pictures. I grew up with that way of thinking. You’re tracing? You’re not a real artist, b. But look at cats like Shepard Fairey. They sued him for that Obama picture. That picture was dope. Is that not art? People have to get past that. Tracing something, or copying someone, being inspired is a bigger part of being an artist. If I’m not moved by a photo, I don’t give it the Technodrome treatment. I’m going to be switching the style up, though. Really get on some different shit.

That’s why you do iconic pictures mostly?

Yeah and there’s a reason why the people are iconic. But it’s really because I like that picture or person. There’s no game plan. I might be watching Netflix or something and just start going in.

That Jordan piece is crazy.

I don’t like to say that certain pieces are my favorite, but that shit is crack, yo. I remember when I finished making it, I was like, “Yeah, I hit the Internet with this shit right here, cats might not know what to do with it [Laughs]. When this hits my tumblr, it might be a problem for cats.” I automatically knew it was one of the best pieces I’ve ever done. It’s definitely one of my most reblogged joints.

And you went to the School of Visual Arts right?

Yeah, but I hated that place. I almost failed out of art school, yo [Laughs]. When I transferred from Pratt in Brooklyn, I knew I made a mistake. SVA was mad wack, all subjective. I’ll do a piece and if the teacher didn’t like it, they’ll fail me. Like what the fuck? Pratt was smaller and way chiller. The teachers over there concentrated on the kids. You can’t pay someone to make you into an artist; you have to already have it in you. That’s the problem with schools like SVA.

So what’s next?

I’m working on an official site for selling my pieces. Should be coming real soon.

To see more of Technodrome1′s work, visit him on his Tumblr page HERE.

Follow Technodrome1 on Twitter, @Technodrome1

We’ve all been there, trapped in the dreadful, lackluster days of adolescence, full of melancholy and endless queries about our futures. It’s a transitional phase that everyone must pass through, a struggle of youth that comes immersed within a kaleidoscope of both mental challenges and physical surprises. All of which are brought upon us to force us to delve deeper into ourselves to get to know who we really are. And though the end often seems much closer than any positive possibility (real or imagined) in those formative years, the world never ends. It just continues and sometimes in ways that one could never put into words. Zoo (Zoológico) director Rodrigo Marin certainly explores this shared notion in his latest tale, a skater and a future journalist turn into bitter and ungrateful savages as they accept fate as it comes.

Camilo, Aníbal and Belé are 11th graders in a high school (or as divided in Chilean education, secondary school/level three) set in the prosperous sector of Santiago de Chile. Having spent years living in the States, Camilo tries to cope within his new dynamic: his new family, tackling his distate for the new society and culture he’s been forced to reside in. Meanwhile, the very emo Aníbal, who has a passion for skateboarding becomes frustrated after learning that he’s failed his aptitude exams, while Belé—the main female character, chases her journalistic dreams by setting her sites on entering a television casting.

Nonetheless, the fellow schoolmates attend their last day of school before the winter break commences. Their professor opens a conversation asking the students about their futures, while urging them to create their strategic blueprint for those plans—a request that helps to unravel the lives of our three teens. While the movie depicts Camilo, Aníbal and Belé leading totally separate lives, never crossing each other’s paths outside of academia, all three weave a common thread, aside from the glaring onset of uncertain futures. It becomes obvious that what most links the trio (who couldn’t be anymore different) is that they each have been influenced by American culture in a way that is affecting their everyday worlds.

Though the movie finishes before their stories actually end, I would guess that Camilo, Belé and Aníbal go on to live the rest of their teenage years. Ironically, Zoo ends at the zoo; Camilo visits it the day he receives his new bike. The closing scene shows a polar bear lying on its stomach and gated by metal bars, in stark contrast to the seemingly liberated Camilo who has the option to walk away.

Zoo was recently unveiled at the Miami International Film Festival last month. If you’re in Utrecht, Holland, view Zoo at the Latin American Film Festival happening now through April 27th. For ticket pricing visit HERE.