By Dylan Johnson

I recently got the opportunity to sit down with Houston rapper Keegn and learn a little bit more about his experience making music with an added emphasis on his new single “Lost!”. While Keegn has been writing lyrics since around the age of 14 or 15 he only started releasing his music into the world about a year and a half ago, and believe me, thank god he did. 

Beginning a rap career can be intimidating, it can be terrifying and above all can be incredibly difficult. But Keegn has a clear mission, to influence the world. He has no care for the money — although the money can be nice, — he wants to influence people. This is what he and I believe sets him apart from the rest of the industry. No longer are rappers in the business to present a message — “they are there because they found out they can be quite good at it and are just trying to make some money”. But Keegn is different. Being the product of an always on the move family Keegn got the opportunity to see countless different lives and experiences. This gave him the innate ability to really learn people and how they think, all playing into his love of influence. 

Growing up listening to classic rappers like Big Sean and Eminem he found a deep love for the work that they were producing, and while he may have developed his love of rap from these artists, his music is so much more his than theirs. I honestly don’t hear these artists showing through in his work, and I think that's the true beauty in his music. 

What I really like about Keegn is his process. I haven't gotten the opportunity to interview that many artists and quite frankly never got the creative gene, so I am unaware of how most songs fundamentally get made. Keegn finds a beat and then repetitively freestyles until he finds a line he likes, writes it down and repeats. He does this until he has created verse after verse. I respect this immensely. Rather than sitting down with a notebook and running a song idea through his head over and over, he lets the music do the talking and finds his sound through a truly creative process. 

Developing a melodic and human sound is certainly not the easiest thing to do. Recently rap has become an obsession with hard-hitting beats and overly auto-tuned voices dropping bars with absolutely no meaning. Keegn flips this on its head. He takes rap back to its roots, conveying a message. On his song “Lost!” Keegn aims to present a normal human struggle, anxiety. Most will know what it feels like to wrestle with anxiety and certainly the feeling of being lost in your own thoughts. Having had a relationship with anxiety, he seeks to assist those with their struggle by creating a conversation. Rap flirts with difficulty, but it never got the ability to touch on mental health. But for a genre so focused on lyrics and flow how can it avoid the discussion of what has become so prevalent in society? “Lost!” is honest, it’s human, it’s relatable and most of all it’s good. 

If you haven't heard of Keegn go out and listen to “Lost!” right now. My only complaint with the song is that it isn't longer. While you're at it give the rest of his work a listen — I think you’ll be a fan.  You can keep up with all of Keegn related stuff on his website.

Dylan is a culture writer for La Tonique.