Rapper King ISO recently spoke with rolling out and shared the inspirational story of how he overcame his battles with mental health and transformed into the successful musician he is today. The story behind the name is sure to inspire.
Can you give me a rundown first of who you are and how you got started?
My alias is King ISO, I am a recording artist currently signed with Strange Music, which is spearheaded by Tech N9ne. I’m from Omaha, Nebraska, and my target audience is everybody that’s been through or currently going things, like my whole thing has always been about mental health. I grew up battling and I was in and out of mental institutions since my youth . I was able to come out of a lot of that and actually do something positive like getting put on a big platform like Strange Music and touching a lot of lives with what I do musically.
You said you were in and out of mental institutions? How did you really pull yourself out of that darkness?
I was homeless, I was going through a lot of legal troubles, and I was an addict back then. I was going through a really rough patch. I got to a point where I got committed under the board of mental health, and they didn’t let me go home because it was court-ordered. I did all of my group therapy, I did my safety packets and all that other stuff. They believed that I was ready to go home. It was tough because I had pending charges from living out of a stolen truck right before I was admitted and put under the board of mental health. Upon getting released from the mental hospital, I was walking out and there were sheriff’s waiting with shackles and cuffs for me.
What was that experience like?
I wasn’t able to be in general population. They ended up putting me in an isolation chamber, which was solitary confinement for three or four months on 23-hour lockdown. The name of the chamber was ISO, they didn’t call it solitary confinement. Every time they took me to court, they would knock on my door like “ISO, let’s go.” The three letters were on the door. I started doing mental exercises because I needed to have positive reinforcement. I needed to change this experience into something that I viewed in a different perspective, otherwise, I’m going to go back down into a dark hole. So I started saying, I shall overcome every time I’ve seen those letters. I could look at them and say I’m going to overcome this. When I got out, I took the name with me. I shall overcome anything, any bit of adversity, any obstacle, anything bad. And then I’ll put King in front of it. And that’s how my name was born, King ISO.
