A full decade before he started making major noise as an artist on the rise, Atlanta rapper BRS Kash made a promise to himself. He didn’t just speak his desires into the universe, either. He actually sat down and wrote them out in the form of a contract.
“I practice the laws of attraction and meditation,” he says. “I’m really heavy into it. [But] what [people] don’t even know is 10 years ago — 2010 — I put my hand on the Bible [and] … I made a fake contract with Interscope, and I put it inside of a book. I still got the contract, and 10 years later to the date, I’m signed to Interscope.”
Now known primarily for his viral smash hit “Throat Baby,” BRS Kash may appear to have blown up overnight. In some respects, more than 50 million YouTube streams can lead to that kind of assumption. However, his road to success was all a part of the plan.
Born Kenneth Duncan Jr. and raised in a musical household with his mother, a former rapper who went by the name TKTKT, BRS Kash was understandably encouraged to study the craft. More than what he heard on the radio or saw on MTV, Mama Kash insisted on grooming her son into a well-rounded artist.
“She just exposed me to different genres of music,” he recalls. “She always put me on to certain stuff. She would tell me, ‘You should listen to this and incorporate this with your music.'”
While the ultimate goal of becoming an artist was always on the table, Kash’s mother also thought modeling would open industry doors that were otherwise unavailable. And while his stock rose as a result of those new connections, the music lessons continued at home.
“She used to always like play music like Elton John, Creed, things of that nature,” Kash shares. “What that showed me was you can never be stuck inside of one box. She would say, ‘Rap is cool, but if you can reach other platforms, like pop and other genres of music, you can be way bigger than some of the folks that’s rappin’ right now.’ Even though I grew up in the hood environment, she was like, ‘You don’t have to rap about shooting. You don’t gotta do all of that. There are things in life much bigger than that.'”
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