K-Rino

K-Rino is without a doubt one of the best lyrical emcee’s ever. His clever wordplay, intelligent metaphors and whole vibe takes Hip-Hop to another level. His close affiliation with Wolftown Recordings has led to him starting a new situation called SPC UK. We sent Jonathan Miles to get the latest from this Houston legend.

Hi K-Rino, thanks for taking the time out to do this interview. How’s life in Texas? How’s the scene and music industry out there?

Thanks for having me. Life in Texas is good homie; the music industry here as well as many places is slow at the moment. There’s not many people dropping much music, and the few releases that have dropped haven’t made any significant impacts. It’s basically August and I haven’t even dropped a CD yet. LOL!

Your last album ‘Blood Doctrine’ is quality. How has the album been received in the States and who produced the album?

Well the people who have actually HEARD the album love it. The thing we're trying to do is expand the range of exposure because I feel like allot of my music goes unheard by a vast majority of people not only in the States but worldwide. We gotta change that.

You featured on Scarface’s last album on a track with Slim Thug. What was that experience like and how did that all come about?

Well me and Face go back to the 80's and we've always been real cool, we just hadn’t ever worked together on a song for some reason (lol) but he and producer Mike Mo (Cory Mo's brother) called me one night and was like "come to studio we got a song we wanna throw u on". So I came thru and we sat in the lab and I wrote and dropped my verse. Slim hadn’t been added to the song at that time. Face was actually debating on who he wanted to put on there so when I left the studio it was only me and him on the beat. I didn’t know Slim was on the song until the CD dropped and Slim wrecked and represented real strong.

So the new album ‘Speed Of Thought’ is due for release on September 21st on new label SPC UK. Tell us about how this all come about.

Well I connected with wolftown years ago and the relationship has grown into mutual respect as fans and business partners. I’m fans of their work and fans of their hustle so we linked up on a few features then eventually evolved into putting together whole projects. We did the " A Lyrical Legend" a couple years back and Tricksta felt like it was a good time to do something new, so me and him talked long and hard on the phone and we came up with "Speed Of Thought" which will contain FOUR brand new songs all produced by Tricksta that wont be on ANY other K-Rino album.

So tell us about some of the tracks on there and what we can expect from this album.

We wanted to live up to the title so there’s allot of lyrical stuff on it but also allot of reality based concepts as well.

LATE features heavily on the album turning up on three tracks out of the sixteen, and you also featured on three tracks on his ‘Below Street Level’ album. How did you two meet?

Me and Late met thru the whole Woltown/K-Rino/SPC initial connection that I mentioned earlier. The power of the internet really deserves the credit though. Late is my homie and he's a very solid artist who takes pride in making sure he's saying something of value on everything he spits on.

I see Tricksta is heavily involved too, producing a total of six tracks. Will you be working with him again in the future?

Oh yeah without a doubt! Me & Tricksta correspond from time to time and he's very focused on putting projects together, so me and him are always going to work together.

So what else can we expect from SPC UK in the future?

Hopefully growth...we wanna expand this thing beyond just K-Rino and Wolftown. We wanna get people from all over the UK reppin SPC. South Park Coalition is a global movement so we're definitely recruiting new people.

What’s happening with the C.O.D album?

I’m going to drop it in a couple of months. We're going to add a couple of more tracks to the album before release.

What else are you planning to release in the future?

I’m going to start a new album in late August and have it out by October GOD willing...

For more information on K-Rino check out www.myspace.com/spckrino

Interview by Jonathan Miles