Kellen “Klassik” Abston

[somber piano music] [Klassik vocalizing] – Klassik: Oh, and then it was supposed to go… [somber piano music] And then it goes back to the top So Klassik’s sound is an electro-soul, hip-hop artist.

Like, because there’s obviously a lot of electronic elements involved, but it’s still spontaneous, there’s still musicality involved.

I’m still actually playing these instruments.

And then I’m also, not only am I just rapping, but I am actually like, singing singing.

[vocalizing] Everything is language and everything is communication.

And hip-hop and jazz are both very, very Black forms of music that are conduits for expression.

[gentle music] [waves crashing] It’s interesting that I have an affinity and closeness to water.

I was born on the water.

Born and raised here in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

I grew up in the Rufus King neighborhood.

My family grew up here as well, in Milwaukee.

I was fortunate to have a very musically diverse household.

My dad definitely had some jazz records, definitely more funk, more, like, a lot of Parliament, a lot of Marvin Gaye.

But, like, my dad also liked classical music.

And then my mom was very much so more a product of the ’80s.

Like, the Prince, the MJ, and then a bunch of early ’90s, like, R&B.

So I guess all that to say that my palate was already pretty widespread.

I started playing music when I was 10.

I started with the alto saxophone.

I started studying pretty seriously right away when this woman who was a jazz singer, she was a paraprofessional at my elementary school.

And as the story goes, she heard me playing in the hallway.

She rounded the corner and expected to see one of her jazz buddies and saw this little, like, 10-year-old kid with a saxophone as big as him.

So from that moment, up until now, music has been kind of the focal point of my entire existence.

For a long time, and probably still now in a lot of ways, like, my dad has served as kind of a creative guiding spirit.

My dad was primarily an actor, so he was very involved in the theater scene here.

I would help go over lines, like when he was practicing for plays, I would go to rehearsals.

My dad sang.

We’d go over to his friend’s house and they would do four-part barbershop harmonies.

Danced, just like this super lively, outgoing, energetic spirit.

In that regard, I’m very much so my father’s child.

Forgive these quotes Look up at how you live And give me now Give me now those life extensions Mix the signals The way that I’ve been killing it Man, I should take and buy the rivals’ thoughts But something very tragic and traumatic happened when I was young that I couldn’t have seen, I don’t think that anyone could have seen coming.

That was my father being murdered.

[somber music] I do vividly remember just having this sense of, like, “I have to go, I have to keep doing this thing.”

Like, he set me on this path just a couple short years ago.

Because I feel like this is what he would want me to do.

So I studied at the conservatory, the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music, pretty much from fifth grade all the way through high school.

In middle school, I was exposed to music production.

Like music creation on computers.

I got immediately obsessed with making beats.

So by high school, not only was I the jazz kid, I was also the kid with beats.

[music beats] Little ride cymbal in the back.

That nice sear pad going in the background.

That’s the word I use, like, sear.

That’s like sear.

And then, of course, you gotta have your… [key changes] Mmm!

And… [beat drops] And this song might go, like, 37 different places, but this is basically the loop.

Um… [beat continues] Hold on a sec.

[vocalizing over beat] And you know you got it [vocalizing continues] The core of jazz is improv.

That spontaneity, that free flowing, being able to traverse and tell a story fluently, kind of off the cuff.

And one of my favorite things about rap is freestyle rap.

It just so happens to be my entry point.

Ain’t no blowing out my light Ain’t no blowing out my light Just like a candle Man, how you handle all the stress And manage everything they taught you Keep it candid Keep the cameras rolling Man, you been toiling, toiling Everything is boiling over You can’t tell ’em Man, this toiling’s boiling over Flip the fantasies Anything you need Need, can’t make believe Back to make-believe Sampling, which is one of the kind of founding tenements of hip-hop and of rap music creation, was a bunch of people taking samples or pieces of other music that’s already recorded because they didn’t have access to instruments, they didn’t have access to gear.

What they had were these tape machines and the ability to, like, dub tapes.

I would take records I heard on the radio.

I’d go find the original sample and I’d reverse engineer it.

So I’d just go find it and just from scratch, look at the waveform and, like, that’s how I learned how to sample.

I had a lot of unprocessed trauma from my dad’s death.

I had a few very scary moments.

And I eventually decided to see a therapist and to kinda start my journey to recovery.

I’m one of those, like, music definitely saved my life.

Even at my lowest points, the things that I was able to articulate through music never changed.

Going through grief and going through heartbreak and still doing the shows and the interviews and, like, being a whole person and being aware of all those experiences, like, man, I’m really, I’m really working.

Hard.

If something has enough meaning and enough love and purpose filled into it, it’s good art and you can always pull something out of it.

Always something new.

Always resonate in a different way.

Always fit that moment.

So I’m hoping that I can deliver something.

Time to get active.

[upbeat music]