There’s no mistaking Lah-Kid’s voice. The Milwaukee rapper rhymes in a phlegmy, amphibious croak that breaks and changes pitches at random.
“Growing up I could tell my voice was always going to sound different,” Lah-Kid recalls. “I sounded like I was in puberty all the time, even when I was 16 or 17.”
And as he feared, his voice never steadied with age.
“I thought it was going to keep me from rapping,” Lah-Kid says. “I used to go over to my cousin’s house, and he had all the studio equipment in the world. I’d ask if they would ever let me get on a track, but they wouldn’t take me seriously, because I was a little guy and I sounded so crazy. They’d say, ‘he’s alright, but he sounds like Lil Wayne.’ People were always comparing me to Wayne, so I tried to cool out my voice, tried to tone it down, but you could still hear it.”
It was the Milwaukee producer Reason, one of the local rap scene’s more distinguished beat-makers, who helped him embrace his voice's eccentricities.
“He saw that I have all these different tones, so we played with that,” Lah-Kid says. “He taught me how to play with it, how to know when to go high or low, and he helped me really bring out the raspier side of my voice.”
Reason executive produced Lah-Kid’s debut album, Lamborghini Dreams, composing 10 of its 17 tracks.
“It about trying to make it out of the ghetto, having big dreams and wanting the fast life,” Lah-Kid says of the album. “It’s basically street music, but we’ve got our own sound. A lot of people are making uptempo club or snap music, but I don’t think anybody’s making beats like Reason. He’s going a whole other direction with it.”
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Lamborghini Dreams is available through Lahkidstore.biz. Posted below are a trailer for the album (which comes with a DVD) and a video for the album's most club-targeted song, "Can She Do It."
