Name: Kinwu & Koan the alias
Nationality: British
Current release: Kinwu & Koan the alias's Live from the Metropolis EP is out via Neoprene Genie.

If you enjoyed this Kinwu & Koan the alias interview and would like to stay up to date with their music, visit their respective Instagram accounts: Kinwu; Koan the alias



What were some of the musical experiences which planted a seed for your interest in hip hop?

Kinwu: MTV Base - hearing and seeing the range of MCs, sounds and characters that existed was a revelation.

Listening to Food & Liquor by Lupe Fiasco felt like cinema. Super engaging.



Listening to College Dropout - early Kanye days where soul samples where the backbone of what he did.

Koan the alias: When I was young I took my dad's CDs and closed my bedroom door. One of them was Life After Death. I knew I shouldn’t be listening to it but I did, over and over again until I memorised the lyrics.



Everyday on the way to primary school my mum played The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. I always skipped to the songs where she was rapping. Again, because it was everyday I learnt all the words. When I got older and understood the words is when the seeds blossomed.

The first music I bought myself was Outkast - “Ms. Jackson.” It was a single. The second track was “Elevators.” That song was a revelation, how’s Andre 3k doing all that?

Again, I knew the words before understanding them. But something inside me could delineate between hip hop as pop and the deeper cuts I'd grow to love. And deeper I went …

What does the term hip hop mean and stand for today, would you say?

Kinwu: Hip hop at it’s core has been evolving and shifting for a while. I think there’s still an energy to it that you can feel at it’s core. Even if the forces driving it have changed.

I think you have someone like Kendrick that exists and shows what someone who'se a student and fan of hip hop can achieve, both whilst honoring the fundamental aspects and being progressive with the artform.

Hip hop has always been about a lot more than just music. For you personally, is hip hop a way of life – and if so, in which way?  

Koan the alias: I think those times are done. It encourages nostalgia, and nostalgia equals capital. The samples used get closer and closer to the present.

Our way of life is too individualistic for anything to be a way of life. Strict genre boundaries encourage conservatism. All subcultures get subsumed and sold back to us.

I heard that what a person deems the best music is what they were listening to at 13. In that sense hip hop purists are doomed because any resemblance to its origins in the future will be tribute acts, samples, or hip hop bottomless brunches.

The essence of hip hop, of rebellion, speaking truth to power, expressing oneself through dance, DJing etc. can be found within other / without any genre.

What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to creativity?

Koan the alias: To dig, beyond my own interests. To dig, as wide as I do deep. To dig, and interweave those roots, like a rhizome. To dig, and unearth what I find, leave it all on display, and let people sift through the dirt and decide what is precious.

Kinwu. Fusion! Bringing things I like together, but pushing to make it feel impactful and still relatable

Where do most of your inspirations to create come from – rather from internal impulses or external ones? Which current social / political / ecological or other developments make you feel like you need to respond as an artist?  

Kinwu: A search for peace in an ever more chaotic landscape.

Koan the alias: Despite being the esoteric cleric I’m weary of preaching. I may be starting all this later than the average MC but the relief I feel that I’m not making music as my overzealous younger self outweighs any feelings I may have of being late to the party.

My words are always political, in a gnostic way. Like the Tao Te Ching. Though anything I say on a song can ever be a personal philosophy. My main inspiration is the Jester. Who else can tell the king the truth? I’m a satirist.

We live in an age of irony. I am not trying to contribute to that too much as sincerity could do with a boost. Like Ken Loach said, if he put the whole truth in his films people wouldn’t believe it. There has to be a balance.

I’m an artist, not a politician. Who wants to see a politician's art? Music is entertainment. I am a sociologist. I am a cultural producer, insofar as culture can shift society, I’m down to contribute.  

Hip hop has always had an interesting relationship between honouring its roots and pushing the music forward. What does the balance between these two poles look like in your music?

Kinwu: Evoking feeling in the listener, saying something that’s real to me. Pushing forward with sounds.

What role do electronic tools and instruments, including AI, play for your creative process?

Koan the alias: I use my notes app on my phone for my lyrics.

Kinwu: I do a lot of work with virtual instruments and effects. I do use the tools available to me as much as possible too.  

How do you see the role of sampling in hip hop today?

Kinwu: Still as creative as ever - the nature of sampling means it will never die. Bootleg or actually approved, that inspiration will continue.

Koan the alias: Like Marlene Dumas said: “I am an artist who uses second-hand images and first-hand emotions.”

It can sometimes seem as though, in hip hop, production is the main force of progress. Do you feel like there is still space for genuinely new ideas for lyrics and vocals as well? If so, what could these look like?

Koan the alias: New ideas can only come about by loosening the grip of genre boundaries. What hip hop could be like is something so far from its origins that it may not be called hip hop.

Recycled samples from noughties hip hop hits and copying the cadence of 50 cent is going to appeal to a bigger audience than someone trying something new. New ideas don’t care about nostalgia.

If the bible said there are no new ideas 2000 years ago how can new ideas emerge from 20 years ago. Everything that feels new can only ever be a remix of something that's existing.

If the remixes move the goalposts far enough something may feel new again in the future. Grime was new, this new sound of Len et al feels new, but could be seen as a remix of grime with more African than Caribbean influences.

What are currently developments and directions in hip hop or hip-hop-adjacent communities which you personally find interesting?

Kinwu: BTS footage is more accessible than ever.

The way streaming is becoming a part of the landscape too, it actually opens up more ways to earn as an artist or producer if you can hold that down.

Are there approaches, artists, festivals, labels, spaces or anyone/-thing else out there who you feel deserve a shout out for taking hip hop into the future?

Koan the alias: The Alchemist.



From Star Wars via The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy to the Fifth Element, there have always been amusing sci fi ideas about how music could look like at some point. For a not too distant future, where do you personally see it going?

Koan the alias: I see it going so far in the AI direction, of endless playlists of AI generated songs that people will seek out the most raw and lofi sounds to feel something human.

The human imperfections will be replicated perfectly by AI and the vicious cycle continues until the last scratched up, dusty vinyl is carried through the world, like the bible in the book of eli and the final humanoid rave takes place everyday till the vinyl is worn out and cracks and passed out like the Eucharist and the final piece is retired to a museum for robots to look at.