Name: Kat St. John
Age: 7 years
Occupation: Singer, Songwriter
How did you get started as a singer and songwriter?
I started out as a singer and I read a couple of stories on Missy Elliott, Neyo and Keri Hilson who furthered their music careers by writing for other artists. I would always get asked to write for other artists or they would ask to use my hooks on their songs but I would say no because I was emotionally attached to my record. Eventually, there was a young lady who was signed to Cash Money and she contacted me first then her lawyer contacted me about listening to one of my records. I reached out to the producer that I was working with at the time and we reviewed the music that I already had to see what would work best for the artist. I had a record called “Slumber Party” that I was going to push as my next single but I wasn’t in that position so I decided to let her take it and a month later the single was on the Billboard charts.
Did you have difficulties deciding to shift from artist to songwriter?
I knew I could write but I didn’t want to write for anyone else because I was selfish about what I was writing. Everything that I wrote was based on my life and my stories. I was very selfish-minded when it came to my writing. Even after I made the deal with “Slumber Party,” I wasn’t a writer for anyone else. I had to train myself to become a writer for other people and to let loose and let go of those words and those stories and realize that I had thousands of them inside of me.
How were you able to climb to number six on the national indie Billboard charts so quickly?
I actually recorded “Get Shot” three years ago but I was told that it sounded like it should only be pushed on the East Coast or the West Coast. I heard greatness in the record and I knew it was going to be big so I took the album back in the studio and I brought in another deejay by the name of Hood Hefna to set the record off and make it pop for the club. Although I can rap, I am not a rapper but we decided to rap in the beginning of the song to give it more momentum and it added club appeal. I started hitting up three to four clubs every night to try and get the deejays to play my record. Each club cost about twenty dollars to get in so I started getting there early so I wouldn’t have to pay. Eventually I was staying out so much that my relationships with my man and my friends even started to suffer but I knew that this short term sacrifice would have a long-term result in the end. Just when everything seemed to be falling apart, the record blew up in the streets and 97.9 The Box, which is one of the largest Radio One stations in Texas, picked it up. I did a show two weeks after they put it on the radio and everybody in Houston knew the words.
What is the meaning behind the title “Get Shot”?
Growing up in a household with ten siblings made for a lot of issues with my mother, my siblings and later in my relationships with men. After talking with friends and acquaintances, I found out that they had those same relationships with their family members, friends and boyfriends. The emotional side of the song came from those conversations but the actual wording came from the experiences of heart break and retaliation that my friends and I have gone through. “Get Shot” doesn’t have to mean the physical form of a gun — “get shot” can mean, “I might bleach your clothes tomorrow”, “I might scratch your car,”or “I might shame you in front of all of your friends at the club.” It’s a metaphor for “I’m going to pop off!” It says that if you mess with me I’m going to pop off and you might get shot or in other words get hurt.
What’s next?
I have two albums ready right now but I’ve decided that since I don’t have a label behind me, my team and I are going to get together with other music professionals and have a listening session. From there we will collectively choose what will go on the album. I also have some shows coming up in Las Vegas, West Virginia and San Francisco but the main goal is to reach number one on the charts and get ready for the album to take the nation by storm.
