The downfall of K-Swiss was a revolutionary time for Chicagoans. Juke, the grandchild of house music, rapidly absorbed the early 2000s and became a defining aspect of Black Chicago culture as it lives and breathes today. Despite being a ’98 baby, every time I see anyone I assume was born past 2000 levitate to the dance floor at the first sound of “Juke Dat Juke Dat” by DJ Rashad and Gant-Man, I can’t help but to ask in my most sincere auntie voice, “what’chall know ‘bout this!?”
So you can imagine how I felt hearing “ah shit, ah shit, that bitch got on K-Swiss” over electrifying jazz music on “RIP Rashad Harden,” a song by twenty-two-year-old Makhi Miller, aka Kaicrewsade, or Kai. This track, the first single dropped ahead of his debut album Yvette, pays homage to the late pillar of the footwork genre, DJ Rashad. His productions played a huge role in bringing juke to the global stage, along with legends like DJ Spinn, an inspiration of Kai’s who has shared stories about DJ Rashad with him personally.
“[People] don’t know, DJ Rashad, DJ Spinn, all these [DJs], these niggas is respected all around the world,” said Kai. He expressed how impactful their unique contributions to music has been, defying the expectations the outside world may place on Chicago’s artists. “Even when I talk to Spinn today; Spinn is a Chicago-ass nigga [and] one of the most genius producers ever. That’s an inspiration for me, just remaining true to yourself.”
Hearing Kai speak about the reception of juke and footwork music reminded me that it’s hard to see the grandeur of something that feels so personal and niche. When I was in middle school at juke parties, I was not thinking about folks playing our songs in Europe. When I see people footworking or bobbing, even today, I don’t imagine that anyone would understand what’s happening—because it’s so Chicago, it’s almost sacred. Kai even expressed that he sees these songs as “hymns” that embody nostalgia and express identity.
So how did he arrive at building community, composition, jazz, juke, and Yvette? In a hilarious and insightful interview with the Weekly, Kaicrewsade explained it all.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
How’d We Get Kai as We Know Him Today?
Chima Ikoro: Where are you from?
Kaicrewsade: I’m from the West Side of Chicago, I grew up a little bit on the South Side of Chicago, and I’m also from Mississippi as well, Louisville. I do music, and I’m a mental health advocate, and more—I can’t think of it all off the top but I be helping the community and shit, it be fly.
How long have you been making music?
I’ve been rapping since I was a baby for real, for real, since I was like four or five. But I’ve been recording myself since I was fourteen.
How long have you been tapped into Chicago’s arts scene?
I dropped my first EP Steve’s Demo when I was eighteen going on nineteen; I had just came back from my freshman year of school, and I was away—I graduated like mad pandemic, 2020, that’s when I graduated high school. So my experience with college was, I went somewhere far just trying to get out the city, and then came back and did my sophomore year online, and I was not trying to stay at the crib, but it wasn’t no more housing. So I had to stay in Chicago and do my shit online.
That forced me to kind of be outside, I was back home with my homies, and my homies ain’t go to school, they was at the crib, so I was with them niggas, and I was with some of my homies that was in school in Chicago, like my homie Menace [Menace4hire], going to these different programs. That’s how I found out about Fourtunehouse. I was young as hell just going out to events—we were just always trying to be outside, and I was always trying to be on some music.
After dropping my first EP in 2021, being at Fourtunehouse and these open mics, hosting my own poetry club, people were fake finding out about me them type of ways. I would do really good on the rap shit and niggas just kind of paid attention.
I noticed a lot of people who are in community with Fourtunehouse on your project.
That’s why I did that. I wanted to make sure my first big project was a showcase of what my last three/four years was like. I started when I was eighteen, I’m twenty-two now, and even though it’s still the beginning, that was like an era for me too. Fourtunehouse was my first time really performing in Chicago on some rap shit. Getting cool with them, woo-wop-da-bam, birthed the relationships that led to my first show. It was a Fourtunehouse show, I think I opened, I don’t even remember who I opened for, but I was eighteen doing shit like that—that shit was beautiful.
So from fourteen to eighteen years old, what were you doing with your music?
I wasn’t dropping, I was just recording and showing my close friends. My pops was a really big motivator in my life for music because he fucked with my shit. I used to write raps on his phone, record me rapping over his phone and just leave it there for him to hear. He’d be like “Yo, this shit kinda tight.”
When I was in school I begged my nana for a MacBook, got a MacBook, and then finessed hella ways to get a microphone, headphones, all that extra shit. But I was recording off just the Apple headphones for a long time. I was mixing my beats and shit, finding my beats, writing my raps, recording, just doing the best a fifteen, sixteen-year-old could do that don’t got no money for no studio.
I was rapping kind of good and playing it for my homies, they were some of my biggest [supporters], I’ve had some of the same friends since I was like eleven. It’s beautiful for them, what’s happening to me, but they kind of knew this was gonna happen because I was always rapping like this to them. And they were always adamant about me putting it out into the atmosphere.
I wasn’t even tryna be a rapper, I was tryna run track and go to college. I’m in college now, I graduate next year, but I was tryna be a track star, and I ended up rapping!
What is a moment that if it hadn’t occurred you would not be presently making music?
I went back down South from the end of 2022 to the end of 2023. I was down South for a minute; I was in Atlanta, North Carolina, and Mississippi. Going down there helped me make the music I make now. And I hated it when I was down there. I probably would have still ended up doing this, but if I stayed in Chicago from eighteen to twenty-two, I don’t think I would have gotten better. And I wasn’t even on no rapping shit when I was out there, but it’s because I wasn’t rapping that made me so much better. I took so much time off, it changed my perception of rap. When I came back home, it was like, “Oh shit, I got some way better ways to do this.”
Note: On Yvette, at the beginning of the first track, you hear “You ain’t never really been to Chicago for real if you ain’t been to Uncle Remus.” (As a Sharks stan, that’s debatable, but I digress.)
Give me another “You ain’t never really been to Chicago for real if you ain’t never ____”
You ain’t never been to Chicago for real if you ain’t never got juked on. I’m [part of] the last generation of niggas that was getting juked on, I swear! I seen it with my own eyes. I was always at skating rinks, like my mama ‘nem, my big cousin ‘nem, all they did was go to skating rinks. I always was bad as hell, I was always with older people so I naturally was just tryna do whatever they was doing. You ain’t never been to Chicago if you never been juked on at the skating rink. Niggas would come to the skating rink and not skate!
My little brother and little sister, it’s cooked—it’s juke culture in general, obviously that’s part of it, but they’ll never experience that. That shit ended when I was like fourteen. They don’t know about when you’d go to The Rink and get all the light-up shit and you just wear it. I used to be one of the niggas that’d get the lil’ pacifier. [We laugh]
The Project
How did community and collaboration shape what you created on Yvette?
Yvette is basically about community. The whole project feels like the soundtrack to when I do my coat drives, when I do my poetry club, that’s what I made it for: organizing, community work. That’s why I got so many niggas on it. It’s only Chicago features on it.
Editor’s note: Some artists on the project may not have been born in Chicago but are strongly associated with Chicago’s music and/or have lived here for a long time.
I don’t know when I’m gonna do that again, so I wanted to make sure I my first one out the gate. This project felt like a symbol, you only get one first project. So it felt like if I’mma go out the gate, I’mma be Chicago as fuck ’cause it’s all I really know. And I felt like I couldn’t really capture community if I didn’t have [these people] on it, and not even the biggest [artists] in the world; I had my [people] on it, and then [artists] who may be bigger but I built relationships with them on some natural shit, so in a way it’s still me showcasing my vision of what community felt like to me.
Everything I make, for the most part, I want it to be a soundtrack for Chicago. Most music I make is for Chicago niggas, so Yvette, that’s a thing I specifically made for folks from Chicago—if nobody in the world listen to this I hope Chicago people relate to it. Everybody else that like it outside of the city, it be love because it’s like “I didn’t even make it for y’all niggas.”
Did you have a clear direction for the sound that others helped you execute, or is the sound that we hear the product of collaboration?
I’m a composer, so I feel like everything I make is always going to be like—I hear the strings, I hear the chords, I hear the bass, I hear what needs to be added, I’m hitting the people up to do it for me. “I need this person talking for this amount of time,” “I need her to say some crazy shit,” like I’m always composing. I would definitely say people helped bring this alive for sure, people definitely added to it. Even going back to [my previous work], I’ve always been composing. I’ve always done it how I saw it, and had people that I envisioned for it be a part of it. So I would definitely say my music is a collaborative thing, it’s just me conducting it.
How does your love for Chicago and Chicago’s music reflect in the way that you chose features?
Everybody that’s on this shit is so important. Everybody that’s on this project is somebody that I’m inspired by. I really don’t even want to work with [people] I’m not inspired by. I’d say for the bigger features like Lance [Lance Skiiwalker—the only Chicagoan on TDE, Kai later shared with me], Fem [femdot.], Zigg [theMIND], Nico [Nico Segal)] etc., I grew up listening to all of them. Those are people I had no notes for, I was grateful for them to hop on the project. The way I show love–this fake some shit I was gonna announce but I’ll just say it here: I put Zigg on track two, “Preroll”, because he was on track two on Telefone [Noname’s debut mixtape]. Shit like that mean a lot to me, Zigg was the first person I got on the project. And bro I was so happy cause the nigga was rapping, and it was like damn this is “Edgar Allen Poe” —Zigg!
My homies that’s on the project, like Menace [Menace4hire], Senite, Gayun [Gayun Cannon], SONNY, Kari [NombreKari], Lowlife, Aija [Aija Cymone], everybody that’s on some upcoming shit, I think I was trying to showcase where we’ve been at as far as Chicago on some underground shit. Niggas in New York are bumping this shit, they say it gives them that umph, it gives them that feeling, and they say it’s been a while since they had that feeling. I just wanted to showcase [through] features what I’m inspired by and what got me here, and also where we could go type shit. That’s why I got my niggas on it, cause they’re raw, and the way [they] feel about me that’s how I feel about them, like “these niggas tuff’, the world gotta hear this shit.” That’s why it’s like six [people] on one song.
I wanted to make sure I gave everybody a baton like let’s see what you go do after this. People will be like “Damn, I fuck with Kai, I wanna hear this shit,” and then they’re put on to my homies.
So what are some non music related places that you drew inspiration from for this project?
I took my ass down South–I’m telling you, I could not have made this project if I wasn’t down South. I made Steve’s Demo, I didn’t really know what to do next. So I left. I was like, “I’m gonna go back down South for a while, see my mama and shit.” That shit turned into, like, a longer time.
Even though I was out there kind of going through it, I was with family. I was seeing folks I ain’t seen in a minute. My auntie had passed—my close auntie, somebody I was super close with—she passed May 2023. On Steve’s Demo at the end of “Brookfield Zoo” it’s a woman singing “Happy Birthday,” that’s my auntie Scooter. I went out there, end of 2022, not thinking nothing of it. And that was like my last solid eight [or] nine months with her, I didn’t even know. I was hating [being out there], didn’t know why I was out there, and the whole time I was spending hella time [with] my auntie, being around a Black woman.
I was raised by nothing but Black women. Most of my time was spent around her […] like just a cool-ass, mid-fifties woman giving me knowledge every day. She was somebody I fucked with that was super non-judgmental, so that helped our communication. I could be honest and vulnerable. That was my dawg, I miss my auntie.
When I was down South I was drawing a lot of inspiration from Black women, because I was with my mama, I was around my little sisters a lot, I was with my auntie, I was with the girl I was kicking it with at the time. When I was in Atlanta, I was part of different music groups, so I was seeing how people from different cities approach music. That was beautiful to see; I met some close friends.
Being down South really helped me connect with myself as a young Black man, as a person who approaches jazz in a very respectful way, [and] as a person who loves and respects Black women.
And Now, Back to Juke Music
RIP Rashad Harden, what’s going on in this song?
I used to be at these juke parties, I was a badass kid just being young and dumb. And by the grace of God, my big homies that I was outside with was music heads, they was nerds, and I used to hear a lot of crazy shit. I used to hear hella DJ Spinn and DJ Rashad, on some riding around shit and at the skating rinks. DJ Rashad, he got this joint [“That Bitch Got on K-Swiss”], I wouldn’t even call them songs, I be calling them hymns. The “bang bang bang, skeet skeet skeet,” the “that bitch got on K-Swiss,” I don’t even consider them songs, those are like hymns. When I was a kid I used to love that shit. And I said, “If no other Chicago rapper uses this shit, I’m using it, because [anyone] can use it.” And crazy enough, I’m surprised nobody has used it, so it was perfect timing. I was like, “blessings.”
I sampled [that song], didn’t think it would mesh well, crazy it meshed well, and that’s all it is. DJ Rashad is a legend.
I remember being a kid with other kids saying those expressions. My big cousins was in high school at the time, so all of these cool things were happening and I’m just witnessing it. My family, my community is very Chicago-as-hell.
Rest in peace to K-Swiss [he laughs], I don’t know why [he said that], I still don’t know why, I never asked Spinn. But whoever pissed him off [while wearing] K-Swiss like…damn. I never heard a nigga stand on the opposite side of whatever DJ Rashad was talkin’ about in Chicago. Everybody was always on DJ Rashad’s side, so I don’t know what happened, but yeah….
Do you think footwork or juke will ever die? Should we be trying to keep it alive?
I don’t think it’s gonna ever die, but I ain’t realize how important it was to make sure we keep talking about that shit.
I definitely think Chicago artists, Chicago people, we gotta do more with talking about it and putting it in our music. But I always felt like our culture was something only we knew for real, and I think that’s what makes it raw. I always looked at it like a lot of other cities respected our culture because it wasn’t something that was easily emulated. We kind of keep our shit fake to us.
I don’t know if it’s dying, but we definitely gotta keep talking about it and putting it in the music. Chance [The Rapper] was doing super well, bro definitely brought a bigger, wider audience to juke music.
Dreams for the Future
If you could bring one artistic resource Out South or Out West that you feel as though you or your peers needed, what would it be?
I’ma be real, I don’t know if this is selfish, but off top, we need more record stores bro. I’m a record store nigga, my CD collection is crazy—I just got this Mary Mary—I got a crazy CD and vinyl collection. That’s a hobby I got, and I’m always up north! I don’t like driving up north every weekend or every other week to grab records.
The West Side, for sure, is empty as fuck. I think we need more record stores—that’s something I am scared of losing. I think with the new resurgence of social media, fans really love and appreciate records, so it might never die, but I be fearful of the idea of record stores leaving the world.
I went to my first record store when I was like four to six, my first record store was Hyde Park Records. My pops took me to that shit [during] the Hyde Park festivals. I did that from like six years old until I was like thirteen. Record stores is important; it’s the appreciation for music.
I think [as time goes on], everything’s consumed by music, but we’re losing physical appreciation for it. We’re losing buildings to just come into—I don’t know this because I wasn’t alive, but I imagine in the ’90s you could just go to a record store and talk to a nigga about music that you dont know. And I see it with older folks, so that’s where my imagination [comes from]. I think that type of thing brings us together more, I think more than ever we need shit like that. Like in the world, we need more reasons to be outside and talking to good, kind people and connecting with music.
It’s some [stores] going brazy, Miyagi Records, Hyde Park Records—and Miyagi Records is one of my favorites because they got discount joints. I don’t know why all the record stores are up north, I could count seven record stores off-top that’s up north and they be having heat.
I found some crazy jazz shit at [a store] up north, I ain’t even buy that shit cause I was mad! I ain’t gon’ bap, [Hyde Park Records] probably still the best record store on the South Side. I think it’s because they’re very youthful.
What is an accomplishment that will make your younger self proud once you achieve it? Say it as if you’re certain it’ll happen.
Aw yeah, for sure. I can do that now, low-key! When I get my first tour, I’ll know I did some shit. I don’t know when it’s gon’ happen, but I know it’s gon’ happen if I keep doing this music and I keep getting better and hopefully things keep working out. I definitely believe I’ll have my own tour one day.
Yvette by Kaicrewsade is available on Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, YouTube and more. You can follow him on Instagram @kaicrewsade!
Chima Ikoro is the Weekly’s Community Engagement Coordinator.