The BLT Q&A with Ko-Lition by Kaitlin Fontana

The BLT Q&A: Ko-Lition

By Kaitlin Fontana

This coming Thursday’s BLT performance will be a history making one; it’s the first time that the musical performers will be a hip hop group. In this case, the Brooklyn-bred brother duo known as Ko-Lition, whose influences run the gamut from hip hop to jazz to electro and back again, and whose production company, See It Live, encompasses not only their independent spirit but also their mantra: all music is better live. Fitting, then, to have them take to the stage at BLT. 

No doubt this change in musicality will effect everything from the scenework to the tone of the show in ways that are exciting even to think about. And that’s really hip hop at its best: when we get excited about it, when it’s a vital, refreshing art form. Rock stopped being new a long time ago—when we get excited about it it’s usually because it sounds so like something we loved before. Hip hop still has a great capacity for surprise, and that’s why having Ko-Lition take the stage at Beauty Love Truth will be a unique experience. You should probably be there.

BLT sat down with Ko-Lition for a chat.

 

Tell us a truth from your lyrics.

Our song “Blindsided” has a lyric which says “Mom said show your heart let her see/Pops said never wear your heart on ya sleeve/So we’ve  always struggled with love both giving and receiving…”

What’s your first memory of something beautiful?

Us coming up with a dance routine to perform in front of our family and the look of approval they all had.

What’s something/someone you love that it would surprise people?

Broadway plays. What’s good is good—you can’t fight it.

Tell us something true.

Faith is useless without works.

What’s one thing in your life that is beautiful, you love and is true?

Madeline Johnson, our Nana. Beautiful and true.

The aliens have landed and one asks you to explain beauty/love/truth [choose one]. How do you explain it to them?

We tell them beauty is subjective and undeniable.

You have a new album called Love Jazz Robotz. What is a love jazz robot? 

Love Jazz Robotz is a representation of our start in the music industry thus far. It tells stories, makes love, and represents that stagnant feeling you get when you’re told to do music the way everyone else does—like a robot.

You’re brothers. What’s hard about being brothers that work together? What’s easy about it?

Well, we’re two different people so creative ideas are always flowing and don’t always mesh. But because we’re brothers we don’t have to worry about conflicts. At the end of it all, it’s us pushing each other to be better artists and people.

 

Catch Ko-Lition live at Beauty Love Truth, this Thursday August 30, 8pm at the PIT (123 E 24^th Avenue). 

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Kaitllin Fontana is a Beauty Love Truther who is also the author of “Fresh at Twenty: The Oral History of Mint Records,” out now on ECW Press.