kitty pryde – “okay cupid”

Apr 17, 2012 by Flashlight Tag    12 Comments    Posted under: Features, Interviews, Sounds, Tracks  

Last week I happened to stumble upon this bubble-gum rap track from a teenage girl who makes music under the moniker, kitty pryde (X-men? Right?). Maybe “bubble-gum” rap isn’t the most fit description, but it’s what immediately came to my mind upon first listen. After listening about 50+ times, kitty pryde‘s, “okay cupid”, started to open up into something that was much better (and a lot darker) than what I had originally expected. She laughs and giggles, and raps about ex-boyfriends, drugs, drunk dials, and Frank Ocean over a dense, ambient-leaning instrumental by the Texas-based producer, Beautiful Lou (A$AP Rocky, Lil B).

After about 100+ listens (no but really) I was completely hooked. So I personally reached out to kitty pryde to see if I could find out what she was really all about…

kitty pryde — “okay cupid”

basically, i got a macbook for christmas of 2010 and started messing around with garageband. one night in early early january of 2011 my ex-boyfriend was making me mad so a few of my friends and i started freestyling over nicki minaj beats (badly) about how much we hated him. long story short, we recorded it on garageband just because it was funny. i posted it on my tumblr, which NOBODY really read at the time, and it just became a funny joke among people in my immediate circle of friends. then a random guy that i thought was sooooo cool at the time told me i had “a lot of potential” and that he wanted me to write a rap just as a project to see how it would come out, so i kinda half-assed it in one try on video and put it on youtube. and that’s how the track “charnsuka” came to be. i ended up recording it and kept doing it just for the sake of making my friends laugh, and then one day this kid james (suicideyear.tumblr.com) sent me a message and basically said he thought my songs were actually good and wanted to upload them all together as a “mixtape” and make a cover for it and post it different places online. and i was like, sure dude go ahead nobody is gonna pay attention but if you wanna waste your time then i am flattered. so he did, and basically he was so involved with different online music scenes that i kind of got thrown into this weird world of weird people making weird music that i didn’t know existed. 

i ended up working with beautiful lou completely randomly. we had mutual friends on facebook, and i had posted in a group asking for a soulja boy instrumental that i couldn’t find but wanted to use, and he messaged me telling me he had it. then he said he really liked my music and saw potential for me (of course, i read the message while i was secretly facebooking in class and ended up publicly freaking out over it because holy crap beautiful lou was messaging me). so we talked a little on facebook and twitter, and he sent me some beats and we have been working on stuff ever since! which is crazy exciting for me…i kind of get excited about everything.

kitty pryde is the real name of one of the x-men, shadowcat. i started going by kitty way before i even started the whole rap thing, and then when it came time to start putting my name on things, i just thought it would be a cool reference because the x-men kick ass. most people i talk to think i just made up a fake last name because my real one wasnt cute enough. that’s cool too.

okay cupid is about me following this kid around while he’s doing drugs, and me acting like an immature dork because i’m not into that at all but i still want to impress him. it’s the whole being-into-the-bad-boy thing, and it’s all a true story and actually kind of embarrassing. the guy i wrote it about is definitely a lot cooler than me, and it’s always super obvious when i’m trying to look cool around him. i turn into a huge nerd. i don’t think he minds too much though. he’s really awesome and i’m pretty sure he likes me?????? don’t tell him but i actually did write his name on my binder. whatever.

as for future plans, i don’t have any yet. i don’t have a manager or a promoter or anything to plan things out for me, and i sure as hell don’t know how to do it myself. if this was kitty’s dreamland i would take a leave of absence from my mall job and go on at least an east coast tour, but in that land i would also have a puppy and our building doesn’t allow that. I’m just writing and recording everything myself and freaking out when my favorite rappers follow me on twitter.

Be sure to keep up with kitty pryde via Bandcamp, Facebook, & Tumblr.