Kocky
Swedish artist Kocky, real name David Åström, was born and raised in the small town of Boden located slightly south of the Arctic circle in Sweden. But Kocky, a child of the generation for whom taste and popcultural context always meant more than geographical location. David started making music on his computer during his High School years in Boden. He called himself Soul Supreme and quickly got attention world wide for his traditional hip hop-productions full of those speed-up soul samples that producers like Kanye West and Just Blaze later would become worldfamous for.
During his first post-teen years David produced a variety of artists in the U.S like hip hoplegends
Big Daddy Kane, Pete Rock, O.C and KRS-One. He got a big hit with Swedish superstar Petter and he also earned a French gold record for his work with Paris group 113, songs that was part of the music to the 2005 Paris riots.
The early 2000’s was a very special time for popular music and also for David Åström. The Internet made everything accessible for everyone and the genres moved closer to each other and an endless number of new genres and styles were created. In London David saw dance music like garage and drum n’ bass transform with hip hop into the style called grime. In London, David got more and more tempted to broaden his musical perspective and move away from the conservative hip hop formula that he previously had in mind when he made his music.
Soon David met La Vida Locash (the musicmovement behind electropop band Lo-Fi-Fnk) who took David under his wings. To mark his new musical direction David took the name Kocky and he and La Vida Locash started a work that first led to two free mixtapes (Crown Us and Wear The Crown) that made Internet go nuts. Today over 14 000 people have download it and it also got attention as far as The New York Times. This was the pre-parties that resulted in Kingdom Came, David’s debut album under the name Kocky.
On Kingdom Came’s eleven tracks Kocky gets vocal help from a bunch of guest artists. Ranging from Swedish teen superstar Rosie Munter (former member of teen pop sensation Play), French electrodisco crooner Play Paul (who is the younger brother of Guy-Manuel de Homem Christo from Daft Punk) to Hey Willpower (the solo project from Will Schwartz, normally in the San Francisco indie rockers Imperial Teen). Swedish rookies like crazy Mapei, rapper Henok and r’n’b star Daniel Dermes also contributes to the record.
Kocky puts everything he likes into the mix, he unites dance music with hip-hop, electro blends with house and RnB meets pop, and thus Kingdom Come has something for everyone. From the Ciara/Cassie-inspired electro RnB on Tricks, the nursery rhymes goes hip hop-banger (in the vein of recent hits like DJ Webstar’s Chicken noodle soup and Jibbs Chain hang low) ”My Grandma”.”Be part of it all” - a tributesong to the late disco pioneer Arthur Russell with international indie superstar Jens Lekman on vocals. The song ”Get that dough” featuring Timbuktu, Scandinavia’s best-selling rapper, and his long-time side-kick Chords, that introduces (and upgrades) the early 90’s hip house-sound to a new generation. Kingdom Came was released symbolic all over Sweden on the independence day,
the 9th May 2007.
Kocky and La Vida Locash mission is to break all the boundaries that still exist in modern dance music today. Between pop music and electro. Between r’n’b and techno . Between the classic and the new. Between the present and the future. And the biggest of them all, between contemporary hip hop beats and the thing we call dance music. Kocky himself calls this groundbreaking mix of styles rapclash. Rapclash isn’t a soundtrack to a specific geographical place, all the featured artists on Kingdom Came comes from different locations and backgrounds. But rapclash is indeed a soundtrack, a soundtrack to the time’s we live in right now and a soundtrack to the future.
Let the rapclash movement begin!
