Rapper makes own path
Kennett Christiansen stands out in the rap scene. Photos submitted
By Tom Victoria
Kennett Christiansen doesn’t need clarity on what he wants to do. The rapper is carving his own niche in music.
The musician, who goes by the moniker llucidityyy, described his style.
“Definitely unique,” he said. “Definitely in the rap rap genre. I've tried to think about that, but I always just get to unique because there's people who listen to rock or don't really listen to rap, and they checked out my music and said, ‘Wow, that's really good. I don't listen to this type of music, and it's actually really good.’ So it's its own thing.”
Kennett, 18, of Indiana, explained his stage name.
“One of my favorite words was lucidity,” he said. “In middle school, I had a list of random words that for some reason I really liked. And there was this YouTuber named iamLucid. I really liked his messages. I thought they were very powerful, and I like how it was lucid. So I was like, lucidity. People listen to llucidityyy for a state of lucidity or for a certain amount of advice or a certain amount of understanding. The extra letters are just to make it unique.”
Kennett’s newest album is Soil Seeds And Stems.
“Some of the songs are about some women, some are about me rapping, how I rap and what I do with it,” he said. “I talk about elements and meditation, a handful of other things.”
Kennett previously released Revitalize.
“Revitalize was supposed to be more of an EP,” he said. “Revitalize means to revitalize yourself while listening to it and me revitalizing by rapping it. Got a mixture of old songs and original songs in there.”
Kennett recalled when he knew music would be his passion.
“I actually remember in sixth grade, I was walking out to the buses,” he said. “I was asking an old friend, you think I could freestyle? And he was like, no. So I hit a little freestyle, and it was really good. I looked up in the sky and I was like, you know, I feel like I'm really good at this. I would do music to express myself, to change the world, to be who I want to be, all kinds of stuff. I've been working on it slowly ever since then.”
Kennett explained why rap is his genre of choice.
“Whenever I was way younger, I used to listen to a lot of electronic music,” he said. “It's just probably the place where I grew up from. A lot of people listen to rap. I really like the drums. I like the unique melodies.”
Kennett writes his music, but gets help producing it.
“I have a producer now who makes beats for me,” he said. “I go to a professional studio all the way out in Louisville to get it recorded now.”
Kennett said being based in Charlestown adds some wrinkles to launching a rap career.
“It's different,” he said. “I would say it depends on the type of place you grew up at. If it was in Indianapolis, it shouldn't be too hard. Not a lot of people listen to rap that much in Indiana, especially in Charlestown alone. I grew up in Jeffersonville, but in Charlestown, there's a lot of people who don't listen to hip-hop. I have to represent Charlestown now because I feel like I'm the only one who's as serious in the music in Charlestown. So it's a little difficult. I find a way, though. I just need the right equipment. I go out to other places.”
A friend tipped off Kennett to the Lexington studio.
“I had a friend who hit me up on Instagram,” he said. “He said, hey, I saw this ad, check it out. It was to 400 Recording. That's where I'm mostly been going to.”
Kennett plans to keep creating music.
“For the rest of this year to figure out how to build a foundation for me,” he said. “It's always going to be practice. It's always going to be the thing because you could never be completely done. My goal for this year is just to go to the studio, work with my producers, work on the storytelling and themes of my songs, which has been increasing very well. I need to post the music, but mainly just building the foundation.”
Kennett hopes to perform live.
“I would love to go on stage,” he said. “I always visualize myself on stage whenever I'm writing and recording music.”
Kennett typically finds a beat first.
“There would be a song here or there that I was sending my producer and be like, hey, you should make a beat like this,” he said. “And he would send me it and I would have go off of that. But usually, I would have to hear the beat first to see if I like the sound. Usually, I would know immediately. And then I would just start writing usually how it goes. Lately, it's been harder to freestyle.”
A recent recording began the other way for Kennett.
“I recorded a song called Surgeries,” he said. “I've had the beat, but this is a topic that I've been thinking about since I started making music.”
Kennett couldn’t recall the first rapper he took note of as a kid, but he cited some inspirations.
“It just clicked with me,” he said about rap. “But in 2017, my step-brother, he played an artist, Lil Mosey. This song was called Pull Up. I heard that and I really liked it. Right after that, I heard a song by Lil Skies called Welcome to the Rodeo. I fell in love with Lil Skies ever since then. That's who pretty much inspired me through most of my career. I still listen to him now.”
Kennett wants to go as far as he can with his music.
“I would like to be at the very top,” he said. “I understand if I can't be because I know there's a lot of crazy sacrifices I must make or crazy things I would never do. So if I'm not up there, I wouldn't care. My biggest goal is to make connections with certain people, be able to pay for all of my bills. I don't care about being famous. I just understand that being famous can help you gain more connections and get some form of money.”
Dealing with hordes of fans wouldn’t perturb Kennett.
“I wouldn't care if I got mobs,” he said. “I would see it as really, really cool. Way in the future, I would have security guards and cameras around me. I think of being on stage in front of thousands of people, even kids, so a lot of songs I'm making now are actually clean. Most of my songs on my newest album are actually clean because I think about being around kids. I want to help inspire other people to be the best person they can be.”
Kennett isn’t necessarily drawn to the gritty side of rap.
“My style is so unique,” he said. “I don't rap about really being in the hood or being any way like that. There's just a few things I bring up, but it's just not who I am. There's certain stuff that I want to rap about. But before I push myself out that type of way, I want to build myself first. I'm a very spiritual type of person, but if I want to keep talking about spiritual stuff, I gotta be spiritual. But I'm not all the way there just yet.”
Kennett’s appearance is a mix of personal taste and image.
“My hair, because it used to be really long, it was cut just for me, but the color and the bleach was for the music,” he said. “Now, my gauges, these are for myself. I just thought they looked really cool. I didn't think too much of them. It's just to represent myself in a way. My tattoos right here, I got three on my face. The two ones represent the two ls and lucidity, and the three represents the three ys. I'm going to have tattoos about being a rapper, and I'm also going to have tattoos about a very spiritual person. I recently really started on that journey.”
Kennett would be careful about not tattooing something that he wouldn’t want for a lifetime.
“I know putting a specific date, putting a specific person or image of somebody is considered bad luck in a way,” he said. “I've actually put that in one of my songs I think could be released. So I'm not going to do that unless it's somebody who's already dead.”
Kennett’s current inspiration is one of his original ones.
“Hands down, without thinking, Lil Skies,” he said. “I have downloaded songs from every single one of his albums. I've been listening to him since 2017. I went to one of his concerts. I have him on one of my shirts. I love him. He's my biggest influence for sure.”
Kennett said there’s such a wide variety of rap now that it’s difficult to discount any as invalid.
“Nowadays, it's really hard to categorize so much,” he said. “Somebody could call themselves this, somebody could call themselves that. But even within that genre, they're very unique in their own way. For example, like me or for another example, Lil Darkie. People would consider him rap, but he has a very edgy type of rap. There's a beat that I plan on barely rapping. It’s like an intro for the album. I don't know yet, but just a little bit of talking, just a little bit of messing around. But I think it's hard to categorize that.”
Kennett pointed out the possibilities with rap are endless.
“There's slow,” he said. “R&B is its own genre. There's R&B and rap mixed together. So there's a lot of different influences inside of a lot of different people.”
Kennett doesn’t listen exclusively to rap.
“Only a little bit,” he said about other types of music. “I've pretty much fried my brain with rap, so that's pretty much all I listen to. But I've started getting into different styles, like old school, Mac Miller. I like Logic, but there's some underrated artists that I really like. If it's not rap at all, I like metalcore or deathcore. I like those crazy drums. I like the screaming, but I like some piano inside of there and some singing inside of there. The bands that I do listen to are Make Them Suffer, Shadow of Intent. That's pretty much it. I don't listen to it very often.”
When Kennett isn’t making music, he works at a factory to pay the bills.
“I'm really spending a lot of money, mostly on music, tattoos, getting rides out to certain places,” he said. “That's pretty much it, though. I got to spend a third of all my money on bills and stuff, too. There's a lot of stuff that I spend money on, like printer and QR code subscriptions because I have a business card where it has a QR code on it.”
Kennett stays motivated to make music.
“If a song is completely finished, written out, and I know the beat is not going to cost too much, I'm definitely going to the studio to record it,” he said. “Music is a huge coping mechanism for me. Listening to other people's music, making music, it helps me because I actually write almost all of my music now. I like working with other people. I have really big dreams. I know if I want to be where I want to be, I got to keep grinding all day, even if it's for five minutes or two hours. I gotta work on the music. There have been times where I've exhausted myself. I actually made a whole song called Time for Myself.”
Kennett doesn’t have much time for hobbies.
“The biggest thing about that is me working,” he said. “I wake up, go to work, come home, wind down. I need to wind down for an hour to go to sleep. I have to crush most of the stuff between breaks at work and at home. I don't really have any other hobbies. I usually just like to make music. I'll always be writing music, but I find myself not even having a lot of time for that. I like to go outside. I like to go on walks. I like to touch the grass. I like to research. I like to learn. So that's some stuff I'd be doing.”
Kennett offered advice to aspiring rappers.
“If somebody wants to become a musician, especially a rapper, the first thing they have to do is ask themselves, why? Why am I doing the music? When can I do the music? How you do the music? All of those affect so many different things,” he said. “The most important thing about making music is consistency. When you are building your foundation, posting the music and getting everything done correctly, always research. I'm still in the process of researching a lot of different stuff because I'm independent right now.”
Kennett’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/11ucidityyy/
Kennett’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@llucidityyy