Original image by There Stands the Glass.
Krizz Kaliko summarizes his unusual career in a few bars on "S.O.B.", a dyspeptic song on his new release Legend: Fans don't give a damn if I put fifty on my wrist/All I gotta do is chop/But I don't make the hottest list.../My aesthetics pathetic/I look like I'm pregnant.
The man born Samuel William Christopher Watson IV in 1974 plays second fiddle to Tech N9ne in the Strange Music camp. Yet as I’ve asserted for years, Kaliko is the secret sauce at the Lee’s Summit, Missouri, based empire. In addition to singing, rapping and dancing at a high level, Kaliko is a human hook machine.
As implied by “S.O.B.,” Kaliko’s stockiness doesn’t impede fans’ appreciation of his formidable talent. Legend, Kaliko’s seventh solo album, is engaging partly because he repeatedly references his creative frustration. His grievances are justified. Legend isn’t nearly as good as it could be.
Kaliko is poorly served by the stale production that’s plagued Strange Music for years. He deserves better. Provided the opportunity to rap and sing on the fashionable throwback beats associated with Buffalo’s Griselda crew, the murky flow coming out of Earl Sweatshirt’s collective or the cutting-edge lo-fi soundscapes crafted by Slauson Malone, Kaliko’s name would almost certainly appear on the best-of lists he so clearly covets.