Photography By Julian Schratter
Over the past year and a half or so there has been a hip-hop resurgence in New York City that has had many, including Hot97’s Peter Rosenberg, calling it a “Renaissance of Hip-hop”. Then sentiment isn’t just because of the music, which has spilled from the city’s streets for generation, but rather the re-incarnation of hip-hop culture in society on a real level. Perhaps no one else in the scene embodies that realness as much as Brooklyn native, Kitty Cash, who firmly established herself with an eclectic, thought-out 19-track mixtape, Love The Free, which dropped just before the new year. The project featured a smattering of original tracks from an assortment of artists from across the country, including the like of Vic Mensa, Kilo Kish, Phony PPL, Jesse Boykins, The GTW, Jean Deaux, Justin Rose and more. It’s a fun project that calls to mind different aspects of growing up through the 90s and early 2000s, as the newly-minted 25-year-old can attest to. The official DJ for Kilo Kish, who provides the introduction to Love The Free, Kitty Cash has been able to observe things from behind the scenes a bit, and used those experiences to put together the debut release. I had the chance to catch up with Kitty Cash just after the new year as she was preparing for her birthday and thinking about what’s next, read it all here.