Katchphraze

Kallen Saczkowski, aka Katchphraze, is an urban artist unlike most. As he puts it, "It's like we want our rapper to have been shot, or to have tear drops tattooed on their cheek." Well Katchphraze has none of those qualities to his name, but he does have a fresh brand of hip hop just itching to be heard among a sea of artists waiting to be heard. Check it out!



How did you start to be involved with music? Was it something thatyou always knew you wanted to pursue?

I've been writing music ever since I can remember. When I was really young I had a toy guitar that I used to pretend I was playing on stage singing songs that I wrote. I'd say I really got into writing hip hop songs in grade eight, and I can remember the track that really inspired me to write was "Bow Wow Wow" by Funkdoobiest.

Before I hit high school I was starting to record myself on a mini tape recorder, but not really playing it for anyone. Once I hit high school I started to let people hear the tapes that I was making. Eventually I'd have to bug someone to play the instrumentals that I'd buy because I didn't even have a turntable, so they'd hear me recording into their speakers and the feedback was positive. I played it for a really close friend who I had found out was wanting to dabble in making beats, and the first track that we did was called "Ones N' Toos" which I released as a single a few years later. That was really the start of it. When we recorded the "Ones N' Toos" single, that was the first time that i'd ever been in a studio that wasn't a mic plugged into the back of a computer. I'll never forget the look on the engineers face when we showed up with a computer, lyrics and not a clue about what to do. He told us after we finished that based on what he saw when we showed up, he did not expect the music to be as good as it was.



Your latest album 'Eye Can See Now' is full of commentary and what I would affectionately call "wordplay". What were hoping audiences would get out of this album? Are you working on anything new right now?

Because Eye Can See Now took a while for me to finally finish, it I had a lot of material, and a lot happened in that time. During the writing process I moved across the country and then came back, I found out what I wanted to do as a career and went back to school, I took breaks, had set backs and worked crappy jobs. I tried to include all of that in the album. I had a lot to get out of my system and I really felt like I did that with Eye Can See Now. I wanted to be versatile, and show all of the sides of me. I have two projects on the go right now, one is with a producer by the name of Sy Wyld, who also happens to be the guy that produced "One's n' Toos". This is something that's I'm really excited about because we haven't worked together musically for a while and it's a real natural, like we never left vibe in the music. My other project is with a producer named Seaton. It's more musical; he plays all of the instruments live and it's a direction that I've wanted to go for a long time.



Where does most of your songwriting inspiration come from?

I'm inspired a lot by other people, and my own emotions. Usually I write when i'm overwhelmed with a feeling or emotion but it tends to not be right away. It tends to happen once I've had sometime to think about things. At first it's like there is too much going on and I can't make sense of it so I'll try to write but usually it's all over the map. It's when I see down and I'm not really trying to write anything, that my best work happens.

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