In a few short years, local rapper Abdu Ali has become an important fixture in the creative community of Baltimore. On the heels of a brand-new album and the anticipated rebirth of his Kahlon party, the young talent talks about his personal growth, positive message, and the future of our city’s arts scene.

You were just featured by Teen Vogue as one of the “coolest queers on the Internet.” Teen Vogue! How did you hear the news?
It was early in the morning. Somebody tweeted me and I didn’t believe it. The writer wrote about my—for lack of a better word—rants, or monologues, on social media and I realized, ‘Whoa, people are really paying attention.’

It’s especially awesome because there’s so much stuff out there now.
It’s really exciting. 2016 has been the year of me getting over a hump, coming into myself, and self-actualizing both my music and my identity—being queer, and black, and from Baltimore. Because of those pieces of my identity, I face a lot of challenges, especially in the music industry, especially rapping, which is such a heteronormative scene.

Being from Baltimore creates challenges, because for a long time, people in other cities like New York or D.C. ignored the Baltimore music scene, so we had to work so hard to give the city national weight. There are also the challenges of just being a creative in this city, trying to combat these archaic, deep-rooted institutions where older writers, editors, gallery owners, academic leaders don’t want to move forward and let young people, black people, women come through and do their thing. We’re working with so many challenges being from Baltimore, but Baltimore has so much potential, it has so much talent. We see who we could be.

What are some of the things that you’d like to see done?
For a long time, the media wasn’t really giving us platforms, which is so important, not just for artists but also for the community to be introduced to new voices and ideas. It creates progress and gets Baltimore out of that old, dry environment. We also need more support from city government, and not just for straight white artists but more marginalized creatives, like they do at The Contemporary with the GritFund. The city needs to realize it already has a good thing going [with the DIY scene]—something that makes the city beautiful—and they should put more money towards those things than tourism.

A number of local musicians have mentioned that the lack of venues is a major issue.
Space is very limited, but since I started touring, I realized that’s not just a Baltimore issue—it’s national, it’s happening all over, with gentrification. We need more venues like The Crown, and collectives like Balti Gurls, and events like Kahlon. One of the constant struggles is how do we get bigger audiences? How do we get new people to come out? Because at this point, it’s just a bunch of artists supporting artists.

As a leader of the local music scene, from your perspective, is the arts community as close-knit as it seems to be?
There’s starting to be a web—the Freddie Gray unrest definitely helped ignite some creative solidarity. It created a lot of sparks and inspiration for people to come together and be more active. It was a significant landmark in Baltimore history that catapulted impossible change. Baltimore will never be the same because of it. We saw so many positive things happening during that time, but there’s still a lot more work that needs to be done.

I think the mainstream has success, but the alternative and underground needs help. The visual arts scene is severely lacking in cultivators, a missing piece that could help create a kind of artistic renaissance in Baltimore. They need more than just Bmore Art. This is a big city. There are 600,000 people here, and that’s not including Towson or the county or surrounding areas. There are definitely a lot of people we can attract. And black artists specifically are still not getting the audiences they deserve. It shouldn’t be hard to get people to come out on a Saturday for a $5 show. It’s kind of crazy how hard it is.

That’s interesting, given that Kahlon, your bi-monthly DIY party at The Crown, always had a line out the door. What was it about that show that inspired such turnout?
We put in the work to put that party in people’s faces. We put flyers at MICA, Morgan, Towson, and had this massive email list. These days, people are just using the internet, which might work in New York City, but in Baltimore, you still have to be visible—and physical. We put ourselves out there not just in URL, but IRL. We had to prove that Kahlon was something that people should be a part of. We had to make it more than just a show; we had to make it an experience, where people felt welcome, and like they were witnessing something different and new and exciting.

Kahlon did a great job at pulling different walks of life together in Baltimore, thanks to its genre-crossing lineups.
I just started making music three-and-a-half years ago and I would go to shows and be the only black, queer, or young person, and I thought, this is too separate. Why not put something together where everyone can go? Inclusivity is the most important thing that made Kahlon different, but we shouldn’t have been the first.

You recently ended Kahlon, but it’s returning as a festival.
November 5 at Bambou. We’re working on a lineup now, with a lot of local artists and more national acts. The Crown was getting too tight. We want to bring it from 200 people to 500 or 1,000. And if this one’s successful, we’ll do more.

And you also recently had tours with the likes of Lower Dens and :3ION.
Those tours made me realize, this is working. That’s why I say 2016 is the year of self-actualization. I’m realizing that what I’m doing is bigger than me. I’m realizing that I am creating representation and inspiration for people like me. I want to go out there and empower and speak positivity for black people and queer people, and women and trans people, and any other identities that cross or intersect with mine.

Your new album, Mongo, carries a lot of those messages and is especially powerful.
I wanted to create something that was raw, real, inclusive, and accessible. On my previous projects, I was thinking too much—that I needed to be very different from everybody else, like I needed to be the future, that my music was a product. I wasn’t thinking about the bigger picture, and I realized that in doing so, a lot of my music wasn’t accessible in many ways.

I started thinking about how I go to art shows and some abstract artists don’t humble themselves when explaining their work. They’re not like, yeah, this is abstract but everybody can get it. They’re elitist, like if you don’t get it, it’s not meant for you. I don’t like that shit. I think art should be for everyone. Music is a universal language and it should be for all people. I think music can create an open dialogue for people to be able to dissect things like racism, misogyny, and transphobia and start to understand how they relate.

You call the album a “black self-care mixtape.” How does the process of creating music help or heal you?
It makes me feel like I exist—like my existence is important and valid. It makes me feel powerful. It brings me purpose. It does something for me that no money, clothes, or material things can do. It helps me survive. And that’s what I want to make people feel like, in Baltimore and beyond. Like, you do exist. Like, you fucking exist. This world is trying to tell people like me that we don’t, and I’ll do whatever little efforts I can to make people feel like living.

Like in your songs “I’m Alive” and “I, Exist.”
I’ve never told anybody this, but I’ve had suicidal thoughts, and that’s not something I should ignore or not talk about. We have anti-bullying campaigns but that’s not fully addressing the problem for those people who need it the most. People will say, well there’s Ru Paul, and there’s Caitlyn Jenner, with her own reality TV show, we are progressing—but just because you see people getting support doesn’t mean it’s easier for the other thousands of people out there. Transgender people still get murdered every day. So I want my music to inspire some queer black boy living in some city where not a lot of people look like him.

You want the music to do for them what it did for you.
You asked me if it helps me heal and it really does. Growing up, I always wanted to be an entertainer or performer, but my fears of being queer and black had me unsure if I really could. But then I just said, ‘Fuck it—let me try this thing out, and see where it takes me.’

It takes a lot of courage to do that.
It does, and while I try to motivate people, I’m not going push somebody who struggles to do so, because it’s hard. It’s hard to be yourself when you’re not a straight white male, because you get challenged at every step of the way for just being you. It’s hard to do things that people like you don’t tend to have the opportunity to do. But music makes me feel like I’m worthy of living, and that there’s love out there for me. When I say ‘I exist,’ I’m speaking to the audience, but I’m speaking to myself.

Even with all these hurdles to overcome in Baltimore—as a city, in the arts and culture community—what is the best thing about being an artist here?
The freedom to do whatever you want to do and not to have to limit yourself. We have an advantage in Baltimore to grow as much as possible within ourselves and for ourselves. In New York, there are a lot of rules. You have to adapt to what’s going on or you’ll be overlooked. But Baltimore is unruly.

Meet Abdu Ali, the young prince of Baltimore Club, or the breakbeat genre that fuses hip-hop, house music, and choppy, looping samples into a frenetic dance party. The 24-year-old city native grew up on the sound, living in central Baltimore’s Orchard Mews Apartments, attending Booker T. Washington Middle and magnet high school Baltimore City College, before earning a degree in creative writing at the University of Baltimore last year. By that point, he’d been making music for two years and had already started to garner a solid reputation as both a bold, unbridled artist who champions and pushes forward Bmore Club, and also as the mastermind behind Kahlon, the exceedingly popular, monthly, underground dance party at The Crown. Now, on the heels of his new Best Of mix tape and at the end of his “Keep Movin” tour, we talk with Ali about the future of Kahlon, his upcoming album, a new festival, and about always carrying Baltimore on his back. He performs his tour finale at The Crown on March 26.

So you were living in Brooklyn for a while last year, but you’re back in Baltimore?
I moved back a couple months ago. I’m a traveler, you know, I tour a lot.

Did you like Brooklyn?
I love Brooklyn. I love the energy. I love the vibe, but as far as lifestyle, it wasn’t worth the compromise. I went because, as a musician or creative, you feel like the Big Apple is the harbor, and in order to prosper, you have to go to there. I had just graduated from college and had no obligations so I thought that was the best place to be for what I wanted to do. I came back because that wasn’t the case.

Was Baltimore pulling you back home to it while you were up there?
I was pulling myself back. Sometimes you can outthink things. Before I went, I didn’t really look at the true benefits of being an artist while staying in Baltimore, especially in a place that’s my hometown. My urge to go to Brooklyn was more superficial and idealistic, but it definitely taught me a lot. It taught me to hustle, and about hard work, and to get stuff done.

Before you released your first mix tape, Invictos, in 2012, you’d never written any music before, but you did dabble in poetry?
Poetry, journalism, I had my own blog where I spotlighted local artists. I went through all the mediums I thought I’d love to do, but they weren’t completely satisfying. Then I got the urge to start doing music. It was something I’d never thought I wanted to do, but deep inside, I always saw myself as a performer, so I tried it, and it just kept flowing.

Did performing always come naturally for you? Seeing you now, you’d think you never had a nervous bone in your body
[Laughs]. I don’t know where the hell it came from, but it did come weirdly naturally. I was in the middle school choir and took some acting classes with the TWIGS program at Baltimore School for the Arts. It might have come from there, but to be honest, it just came. When I first started, I wasn’t as confident as I am now. I’m still not as confident as I probably can be.

Is performing just as rewarding for you as making the music?
They go hand in hand. It’s just as much my responsibility to perform, as it is to deliver music. It’s all one medium to me. What is music that can’t be performed or visceral to a crowd of people when you playing to them? It brings it all together.

Your performances have garnered such a following in Baltimore. How does that feel? It must be kind of strange.
People leave Baltimore for places like New York with this sort of bitterness or resentment towards it, like, Aw, you can’t make it there, you can’t be creative there, you gotta go somewhere else. To be in a city where people have that attitude, it feels really good, because I proved them wrong. Like, no, you can do it. You can be a creative. You can have people support you. In New York, a lot of people are disposable or just come and go, but in Baltimore, the people who love me or love what I do, it’s feels more genuine. It’s long lasting. It’s family. I feel really, really, really proud to have that kind of support in my hometown. I’ve especially seen that with Kahlon. Every time we threw it, the crowd just got bigger and bigger. It’s been beautiful to watch it grow in a city like Baltimore—where a lot of people doubt things, but where things like Kahlon, or artists like me, can be pioneers.

Did you have any idea Kahlon would turn into the sort of underground institution it’s become?
I’m an optimist, so I definitely envisioned it becoming big because that’s what I wanted, but it’s still shocking to see it actually happen. It’s like it’s own entity now. People are coming from D.C., Philly, New York, just for the party.

Are you going to keep throwing them?
Slowly but surely, we’ve been trying to build a good reputation and following, and I haven’t told anybody this yet, but the goal is to turn Kahlon into a festival. We’re actually starting to move in that direction. Another goal is to have it traveling. A lot of people hit me up like, Yo, you need to bring Kahlon to Philly, D.C., New York, so over the summertime, I plan to do that.

How would you evolve the party and still keep the heart of it?
I’ll figure that out. I definitely want to keep the vibe and aesthetic of an underground party, with Baltimore Club, a lot of electronic music, maybe some rap and punk, R&B. It would definitely be indoors and probably an extended one-day festival, like a long party—5 or 6 hours. I’m drawing inspiration from what I hear is happening in Berlin, where they last for entire weekends. I want it to have the vibe of this different world you go into for a moment, where you get an experience that knocks you off your feet, and then you leave like what the hell just happened. I’ll probably bring like a few national and international acts into it, but it will still have a handful of Baltimore artists on the bill. That was my main reason of starting Kahlon in the first place. I wanted to create a substantial platform for Baltimore musicians to perform, showcase their work, and get exposure to a really good audience who will support and follow up on them.

You’ve had the likes of Dan Deacon, Al Rogers, and Baltimore Club forefather Scottie B, among others. You bring a lot of local people on board with your music, too.
I definitely hold Baltimore on my back, because Baltimore Club music is so universal and so powerful and it’s really important to me. Its something I grew up on; it’s a part of my narrative not only as a musician but as a person. I always try to bring awareness to it, but I also try to push the sound, push the envelope—make it more futuristic and incorporate other sounds.

Do you remember your earliest memories of hearing Baltimore Club? What it was about it that made you feel a certain way?
It wasn’t necessarily the sound itself but what the sound did for my community, my family, my people. It brought us together. It made us happy. We always heard it at celebrations, whether it was birthday or block party. Amidst all the things that were going on, when many families in Baltimore were dealing with drug addiction and HIV and AIDS and just poverty in general, that put a smile on everybody’s face. Baltimore Club brought everybody together and created this pathway to another planet. It was like an exit for us to leave our realities for a moment and just enjoy the beauties of life, music, and family.

Beyond Baltimore Club, you’re also inspired by the mid-90s hip-hop you grew up on.
Hard Core by Lil’ Kim. Reasonable Doubt by Jay Z. Ready to Die by Biggie. Illmatic by Nas. As a child, I didn’t necessarily understand everything they were saying, but as I got older, I became really drawn to them because they were something I could relate to. I grew up in the ghettos of Baltimore. I didn’t come from the most rich or financially stable family. I had been through or seen or witnessed or had family members who went through a lot of the stories they were telling. Especially Ready to Die. I empathized with Biggie’s voice and struggle and hustle, even if he had to do things he didn’t want to do. He just wanted the juicy life; he wanted something better for himself. I can always relate to that because, even as a child, I always wanted something better for myself.

What are some of the newer influences that you used on, say, the Already EP or anything you’re working on now?
I’m so topsy-turvy with music right now but I’ve been getting really into jazz.

You can definitely hear that in “Keep Movin’.”
Jazz is really futuristic music, even if it was made a long time ago, and I think those artists knew that, especially people like John Coltrane. It’s a timeless genre and I find that really powerful. I need to study and tap into that because I feel like it would be important for me to know why it’s still so beautiful.

I been getting into Alice and John Coltrane but I’ve always been into Sun Ra, who was a jazz legend and more out there than most jazz artists. I’ve also been into a lot of what I call “body and soul” music: DonChristian, an R&B artist who lives in New York, and Kelela. She’s really, really good. I love what Kanye West is doing with his new music, but I just feel like rap is turning into a lot of other things right now.

Some people have called what you’re doing the Yeezus of Baltimore.
That’s a huge compliment, you know. Kanye, and a lot of other artists, are thinking about how we listen to music. We listen to Taylor Swift in one click and Patti Smith in the next. That’s what I mean when I say rap is turning into something else. Music in general is turning into something else, where all the genres are blending into each other. It’s starting to become genre-less in a way.

I don’t even know what to call half of the stuff I do. In reviews and articles about me, everybody says its something else. It’s futuristic. It’s punk. It’s noise. It’s brass. It’s soul. You know, you ask me what it is and I say it’s a gumbo. It’s everything put together—you know what I’m saying?

Maybe that’s why so many different kinds of people resonate with your music or your performances, as you can see in the crowds of your Kahlon parties. There might be some aspects they’ve never heard before or don’t understand yet, but there also might be something in there they have or do. Your music is rooted in Baltimore Club, but with your new tracks, you’ve been striving for a sound that’s a bit more global.
I want to make music that’s more open and universal without comprising who I am. It’s kind of elitist when some musicians say, Oh, people don’t understand my music, I don’t care… I don’t think music is meant to be limited to one audience. As an artist, it’s my responsibility to make music that everybody can be a part of. I want it to be tangible. I don’t want to cast anybody out. I know what its like to not be included and I think that’s unfair.

Is that something you thought about when working on “I, Exist“? That is definitely your most accessible song yet.
I knew that Already and “I, Exist” were definitely the start of that. I started thinking: I want my mother to like my music. I want my dad to like my music, and they do. I want everybody to feel it and still keep my flare and boldness and grittiness and explicitness and rawness or whatever you want to call it. The sound is more open while the lyrics are still me and still a little out there.

Is that the direction you’re going with your upcoming album, Octarine?
It’s going to be real spacey. A lot more cosmic. But it’s really going to be dance stuff that everybody is able to feel and get into. It’s also going to be a softer side: I’m opening myself up in my lyrics, trying to put more of my life and story and feelings into them. In a lot of my earlier stuff, I was speaking out against something like a commenter, instead of putting my actual self into the narrative of the song. With Octarine, I plan to talk about things like heartbreak and love and family tragedy or, you know, simple things like smoking weed. I want people to be able to relate to my music on a personal level. I can only go so far as an artist if I don’t do that.

You’ve said that you haven’t created your definitive debut yet. Is that what this is going to be?
This will be the book. [The Best Of] is for people to be able to reconnect with my old stuff, because Octarine will be the big bang of all those songs and albums put together.

“Octarine” means the imaginary color of magic, right?
I just liked the way it sounded and the idea that it’s whatever color you want it to be. It’s whatever you see it as.

For people who have never been to your shows, how would you describe them?
It’s actually easy to describe my performances. I feel like sometimes I’m a priest who is delivering messages or speeches through music. I’m shouting. I’m in your face. It’s very visceral, and very punk; it’s intense and aggressive, but at the same time, very soft and approachable. I don’t think I scare anybody. I bring a lot of comfort through my performances—I touch people, I hug them—but they’re very raw and priest-like.

Your next Kahlon is at The Crown on April 18.
It’s going to be a mega knockout Kahlon before we take it on the road this summer. We’re going to hopefully take it traveling to New York, Philly, and D.C., followed by the festival in fall.

So I guess we better catch you while you’re Baltimore.
The next Kahlon is going to be a big-big show. I’m trying to make it huge.