nombreKARI talks "Tulips"
Photos by Michael Salisbury
Kari blazed onto the Chicago music scene at a mere 16 years old, dropping invigorating raps and soulful, heart tugging tracks. Starting off strongly meant that fans’ expectations have been high for 5 years and now at 21, Kari has entered a new season of his life accompanied with new music. The South-Side native is what many people may self-proclaim as, an always learning, student of life. His urge and interest in constantly evolving his personal and musical knowledge is what makes hearing this new music so special. His music serves as a vessel for his personal evolution, a way for him to challenge his beliefs and ideas while simultaneously having an everlasting effect on you and yours.
His growth as an artist and love for live music has led him to re-releasing a fan favorite track, “Tulips,” this time accompanied with a video performance backed by live instrumentalists and a vocalist. With live vocals and instrumentation from Chris Hogan, Jaden Berkman, Brooke Skye, Camila Isabel, and Eddie Stix, the “Tulips” video is the long-awaited return of one of the city’s most promising musical talents. Sticking to his truth-seeking character in “Tulips” he bravely asks, (“Or do you like it better baby when I’m not around?”). The answer is short and quite easy, we don’t. Luckily for us and you, we won’t have to be without new music for much longer. We sat down with Kari to talk about “Tulips,” what he’s been up to, and of course- what’s to come.
Iman: I’m super excited to dive into “Tulips” but first, what have you been up to?
Kari: I really been focused on trying to get everything in order for the release of my first project. Aside from that I've been making a bunch of new music and just working to get better as an artist. Practicing piano, producing, reading etc. I've also just been doing more in my free time like watching movies, cooking, doing fun stuff outside with the guys.
“Tulips” has always been a fan-favorite for you it seems, why did you choose to re-release it?
I released Venus back when I was like 17 in 2017 and “Tulips” is just one of those songs that kind of stuck out. A lot of people within the local community identified with it so we just wanted to sort of revitalize that song and just bring some new energy to it, but also just re-release the song cause it wasn’t public on DSP’s and stuff, just off the strength of like starting a clean state.
What’s your favorite line from the song?
My favorite line from Tulips is probably (“But I really can’t say 'cause that shit still pending we ain't even start but I can see how it’s ending”), I think this is my favorite line because the longer you live the more you’re able to identify patterns. And I've experienced situations that were like situations that I've experienced in the past. And I was able to sort of understand how it was gonna play out before it even happened.
Is there a particular reason you chose to do a live version?
Well I mean at the root of it, I just love live music. I love hearing instrumentalists take music and interpret it in their own way. I just love live music so I wanted to sort of reimagine the song with live instrumentalists.
That being said, what’s a live show that’s had a lasting impact on you?
Seeing Chance live at Pitchfork in 2015 was such a magical experience for me. It was like seeing Michael Jackson or something. But that moment changed my outlook on live performances tbh.
So then it’s safe to say we can expect some live shows soon?
Definitely! We wanna create spaces to connect with people face to face, safely obviously. We’ll do a release party, something just to engage with people in person and I’m just super excited for that too. Just to start being able to perform again. Last year, I was really starting to get into a groove of performing with instrumentalists and I sort of wanted to just take what I learned from those experiences and keep it going, a lot of the tape has a lot of live instrumentation on it.
What is “Tulips” the beginning of? And what does it mean to you?
I guess this time around I just wanna present the most truthful work, I just wanna present my truth in music. That’s really at the root of it. Tulips is the beginning of me getting to a point of releasing a project that I’ve been working on since my senior year of highschool, so I’m just super excited to just release music and to commit to sort of the campaign and getting people to hear the music. I just love music so much and it's a real joy and real pleasure to get feedback and to see how people interpret the music that I’ve spent so much energy and time creating.