Meet The Fiery And Versatile Talent…Keynes Woods

Keynes Woods is a rising talent that’s expertly making his own lane in hip-hop. Growing up in a musical household, the emerging talent was exposed to an array of artists and genres. From listening to Soukous & Kwassa Kwassa to absorbing the early 2000’s sounds of Nelly and 50 Cent, there was no limit to his music consumption. After a few years of finding his unique sound, he soon began to create his own music – writing bars at the age of 16. Fast forward to 2020, and the talented rapper has created a signature style that combines the soothing tones of R&B with the intense energy of EDM and hip hop. With his brand new EP, ‘Kongo Kane’, showcasing his boundless creativity, we can’t help but be excited to see what else the rising artist has planned.

We got to chat with Keynes Woods about everything from when he first fell in love with hip hop, his secret talent, where he hopes to be in five years and more…

When did you fall in love with hip hop?

Music of all kind of came at once, including Hip Hop. I’m Congolese born, so I had all the staple Soukous & Kwassa Kwassa playing in the house – Awilo Longomba and guys like that – but that was my parent’s music you know. Hip Hop came a little bit later in my early teens when I was in Canada, but I didn’t start really paying attention until guys like Kanye & Chance came around. I felt I had people doing it on a high level I could identify with wholeheartedly, that’s when the fires were stoked – like I was aware of all that cool G-Unit stuff going on before, Nelly, Ludacris all that bling era stuff in the early 2000s, but I couldn’t fully identify with their experiences, or they were so larger than life it was like they were on another planet you know. 

Does your early upbringing in Congo have any influence on your music today? If so, how and in what way?

I don’t think it did directly. I wasn’t super into music those days. Subconsciously maybe, the music was in the house like I said – we had instruments in the crib and all sorts, but I couldn’t give you a reference from a Congolese artist and say “yeah the drums we used on Tim Burt are a direct reflection or have been inspired by the stuff I heard from this person in Congo”. My journey to this music thing has been weird – I am a son of the land I was born in and am very proud, but I don’t want to misrepresent or mislead – but the consistent feedback I hear about the project, and in particular Tim Burt is that it’s very ‘tribal’ – which is cool – thematically I was just trying to present myself in as authentic way a possible, part of that is being a proud African and a proud man from Congo so sonically and rhythmically there are things in there that may align with whole Afro-Fusion thing happening, but it wasn’t intentional. I felt that was important but more for the diaspora now as opposed to anything that came before.

Describe your vibe in three words.

Raw, hard, and refreshing. 

What was your main source of inspiration for your new EP ‘Kongo Kane’?

The journey man. It’s been a long road to get to the EP. Originally I didn’t want to do an EP, this was back in 2018 after I dropped ‘Threat’, I just wanted to keep hitting the people with track after track and get some breathing room to explore a bit. I’m still young in this, you know, and I have high aspirations, and I wanted the project to be right. So in the midst of dropping these singles, I grew, more songs were made, a few of the songs on the EP are half-finished tracks that I found the confidence to finish, or had for a while but couldn’t find a home for them.

My team and I – in the process of all these singles dropping between 2018 and 2019, doing shows and so on – evolved the strategy for my career and I became so much clearer about where I wanted to go, my positioning as an artist and who I was and could be. A lot of this was about heritage, embracing all that I was, being brutally honest and passionate with my words, having fun and being a real-deal musician. So things became a lot more clear for me – I felt the best way to present myself as an artist of a particular calibre was through the medium of a project – songs with connective tissue between them, layers, like a story and a lot of meaning. There were many names before ‘Kongo Kane’ my team and I tossed around a bunch – I like to collaborate – ‘Kongo Kane’ is the one that kept coming back, we had this idea to not necessarily create a character but to have the title and moniker ‘Kongo Kane’ represent me and who I was – not an alter ego or anything but if you called me ‘Kane’ i wouldn’t be mad at it – that’s how you actually say my name phonetically (with the ‘s’), and I am from Congo. So pride, heritage, and visions of the future inspired this thing.

What have you learned through being such an experimental artist?

You’ve got to lean into the fall. The enemy of creativity and progress is fear. You have to be fearless in your creativity – as anyone involved in the creative industry may know, sticking to a formula too rigidly or not being open to new ideas, new ways of thinking about your craft (small things like starting with the melody before the drum pattern and vice versa) severely limits your potential. I want to do it all, man – I want to sing, I already did something a little left of field with Francis Novotny over in the UK, and I loved that – I’d love to collaborate across genres more. Also important not to be dictated to by the algorithm – that shouldn’t inform your music, if your intro is 2 minutes long, keep it like that – its art you know, people don’t know what they want to hear till they hear it if it knocks it knocks.

Do you have a secret talent?

Not necessarily a secret talent as its part of my job – I produce/make beats – I have a few tracks on the way that I produced that I’m excited about – one I’ve done in French/Lingala – I’ve been getting some good feedback from the fam and my Congolese homies, my French homies in Montreal, so that’s going to be tight. 

What would you be doing right now if it wasn’t for your music career?

I’d be a small business owner. I plan on doing that in the future, regardless, I was doing the normal white collar thing interning at marketing companies before music, had a little project where we made an app, and all that. My small business might be a little more traditional than that, not so tech-focused, you know, like a Mom & Pop independent thing, local to the area very cool – but I’m keeping my mind open to different opportunities.

What is something you want people to know about you and your music?

I appreciate the love for real. You guys that send me messages on IG, comment, and so on – you have no idea how much that keeps me going. In this world of streaming numbers, followers, etc. things tend to be a little faceless, so it’s nice to know you appreciate the work regardless. I learned something recently; you can either be for the industry or for the people. Some of the bigger pop acts they got the whole industry pumping money into them, and that’s great, but that’s not the kind of energy I’m looking for – I’m for the people, my favourite artists have been for the people (‘Ye, Chance, Kendrick) and they been around a long time, and will continue to be. Some of those industry folk are here and gone in a flash. I’d love to have both, but if I had to make a choice, I’d choose the people all day. I make music from the heart, I take pieces of myself and tell stories – my journey is your entertainment, I hope in the future I can bring you peace, motivation, make you think a little bit. Stay tuned with me, man, I got a lot more coming.

Where do you hope to see yourself in 5 years?

In front of a crowd performing, with a tour schedule booked out for months, a home somewhere warm – doing what I love to do with incredible artists everyday. 

Make sure to check out Keynes Woods brand new EP ‘Kongo Kane’ below…