It’s May 8th. That means Phat Kat’s Carte Blanche is in stores.
HipHopGalaxy explores Phat Kat’s growth leading up to Carte Blanche, starting from the beginning.
After meeting Guru and Dj Premier during a promotional stop through Detroit in 1994, Phat Kat gave them a demo tape - the first demo he had ever passed on to industry folks, he says — and ended up getting signed to Payday Records on the strength of one song, the now-classic “Front Street.” The song appeared on the Representing the Streets compilation, and First Down seemed poised to be one of the first midwestern groups to blow up nationally. Unfortunately, their label was folded into a much larger company and they were lost in transition. Phat Kat says the experience was “devastating,” but it didn’t deter him from pursuing a career in music – if anything, it strengthened his resolve. “I use that as coal for the fire. That’s why I’m so tenacious in my rhymes,” he says.
Kelley L. Carter of the Detroit Free Press wants you to meet Phat Kat. Kat talks about taking the ‘D’ to the world.
“Whenever I’m in Europe I always take the Detroit culture with me and try to leave it and let them feed off of it,” Phat Kat says. “It’s sticking over there. You see a lot of Olde English D hats over there. You see a lot of Detroit. I’m always going to be a Detroiter at heart. But I feel like for what I do, it’s more lucrative to spread the word around the world. Detroit is just a little speck on the planet. I’m going to always be here, so that ain’t going nowhere; I just want to spread this whole movement around the globe. I want it to be global.”
Biba Adams and the Michigan Citizen also spoke to Phat Kat. This article talks about the Phat Kat / J Dilla dynamic duo.
Since ’92, J. Dilla’s sound continued to echo through the east coast and still resonates in hip hop. Before the producer died last year, he completed a European tour.
At night he performed in his wheelchair, in the morning, he did his dialysis. It was Phat Kat who accompanied his friend on this final tour.
“He handed me a beat CD (in Europe) and said, ‘Get what you need off there.’ It was the last tracks that he would ever personally give me.” Several of those tracks are on Phat Kat’s new album, Carte Blanche due in stores May 8th.
Black Milk also chimes in on his journal at HipHopGame.com.
Phat Kat’s album Carte Blanche is about to drop. He’s about to go on tour also. I think he’s going out on the road in a week or two with Slum Village and Dilla’s brother Illa J So go check that out when they hit your city up. I have four beats on his new album. Go out there and support my man Kat.
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