Music Writing

I research, report, and write music-focused essays, reviews, and cultural analysis—then edit and polish each piece to meet high editorial standards. Below is a sampling of my music writing.

Last Place

An essay written about the late rapper, Ka, for my publication, Lean Forward

Kaseem Ryan, the rapper known as “Ka,” gives the final words of his 2022 album, Languish Arts, to a youth from Inglewood, California, who remarks with sober dejection, “Ain’t nobody rich in the ghetto, nobody rich in the ghetto. If we was rich we wouldn’t be here”. In the video from which the sound bite was taken, another youth, perhaps less despondent and sounding more emboldened than the other, states his intentions to not only gain a diploma, but to “master in something,” admitting that such ambition is required for someone like him to transcend the obscurity of his circumstances. 

In this song, titled “Last Place,” Ka echoes the sentiment over his characteristically sparse, subdued production. “This the stuff only suffering makes / This the sound of last place,” he raps. The Brownsville, New York rapper died in October at the age of 52. As I’ve familiarized myself with his career and body of work in the month since his passing, I’ve been humbled by the sage wisdom of an artist who, by anyone’s standard and by his own intention, spent the entirety of his prolific career in near-total obscurity. 

In a 2017 piece for the New York Times, Jody Rosen recounts the topsy-turvy trajectory of Ka’s career. In the 1990s, Ka spent his youth trying to carve out a place for himself in hip-hop. Eventually, he stepped away from music, taking a job as a firefighter with the New York Fire Department. He built an illustrious career, responding to events like the 9/11 terrorist attacks and ultimately achieving the rank of captain. In the early 2010s, at the encouragement of his wife, Ka returned to rapping. It was 2011, and at 35—an age by which most rappers are thought to have passed their prime—Ka approached the craft with humility, calling it a “hobby.” 

What was a hobby for Ka proved to be a lifeline for those in his community. While Ka never achieved far-reaching recognition and certainly never garnered anything nearing mass appeal, he did amass a small but loyal fanbase—perhaps more resembling a band of disciples, encouraged and buoyed by the resilient honesty of his songwriting and his stoic persona, all propped up by his incredibly minimal approach to production. 

Last week, I listened to Ka’s “Last Place” and felt the sting of his resigned refrain: “This the sound of last place.” My mind drifted to Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us”, possibly the song of the summer, and Kendrick’s exuberant death blow to Drake in what may be the music event of the century so far. 

As “Last Place”’s somber ending faded, I immediately played “Not Like Us”. The now-iconic string melody rings triumphantly throughout the four-and-a-half-minute takedown of a pop culture juggernaut. This is the sound of first place, I thought, struck by the stark contrast between the two songs.

I felt a deep sadness. For every one-in-a-million, earth-shattering superstar, there are countless artists like Ka—fighting fires by day and making music by night until they die. What saddens me most about Ka’s story isn’t that he was denied global superstardom—it seems clear that wasn’t his ambition—but that someone as quiet and patient as Kaseem Ryan wasn’t awarded a long life.

Ka once posted a picture of a newspaper clipping to his Twitter account. The clipping told the story of Carmen Herrera, a 101-year-old Cuban American minimalist and abstract painter who spent 70 years trying to gain the critical attention she deserved but would not receive until the final five years of her life (she died in 2022 at 106). Upon the opening of her first solo exhibit at a major museum, Herrera was asked what advice she would give young artists. “Patience dear, patience,” she responded.

What can we learn from these quiet sages, and where must we go to hear their voices? In my experience, these quiet, whispering words of wisdom find their way to us slowly. They are not flashy and do not demand our attention. The onus is on the pupil to voluntarily seek the master’s teaching, and the master is often found in the last place one might think to look.