Keshore is weird. It’s the impression that the fairly new underground artist often gives to his audience. Having gained almost 8,000 followers on SoundCloud in the last year or so, he is not only conscious of his outlandish personality, but he is also proud of it. In fact, one of the main purposes of his craft is, “to make people comfortable with being weird because their weirdness is just them being normal.” Hence why a Keshore song is quite difficult to describe, since it can be a refreshing, yet mind-boggling experience. Some songs can be extravagantly silly and carefree rap bangers, whereas others can be very emotional lo-fi tunes with mellow R&B elements. His latest track “Sleeves” somehow fuses both of these categories in a rather blissful and symphonious way.
Although he is spending most of his time in L.A. right now, Keshore grew up in quite a few places from Florida to different parts of Georgia. It is without a doubt that his upbringing made a significant impact on his music style. “It sharpened me to reach outside the box and do something different, being in restricted households trained me to be myself. All the pain that I went through growing up and all the things that I didn’t have, which other people had, allowed me to build from the ground up and believe you can really do anything.” Keshore often draws inspiration from childhood as he remembers things through music. He views his craft as a personal diary and songs serve as reflections of different time periods in his life, regardless whether it was a positive or a negative one.
If it wasn’t for such music, Keshore would have ended up going into the fashion industry. “I ran away from home after high school and it was the week before I was supposed to get into a fashion school in The Art Institute of Atlanta.” However, he hasn’t given up on fashion completely. Since there are lot of similarities between these two pieces of art, Keshore wants incorporate clothes with his music as well. Music and fashion are both two branches of art through which a message can be conveyed and therefore Keshore wants to dedicate a lot of effort into creating the perfect clothing. He is currently working on some merchandise as he hopes he can one day branch it off into its own separate medium.
Keshore draws inspiration from various artists and that can be easily noticed in the variety of sound that he offers with his art. Nonetheless, some of his main influences are people like Tyler, The Creator, Childish Gambino, Frank Ocean and Kali Uchis, whose name is even used as a title for one of his songs. Tyler, The Creator and Childish Gambino in particular are both artists that have truly embraced the eccentric side of their personality through art, which is a rather poetic symbol for the journey that Keshore has embarked on. It is also essential to mention that anime plays a vital part in assembling the image that the 19-year-old artist has created. He says himself that, “anime music is always dear to my heart. I wanted to create music like that as well and I call it anime openings for niggas.”
Keshore dedicated fully to music around this time in 2017 when he was in his senior year in high school. “My girlfriend broke up with me and I didn’t know what I was going to do after school but the only thing I knew I really enjoyed was music… And everything started falling into place afterwards.” Since he seeks to make people feel comfortable about themselves and the things they like, Keshore emphasizes that music itself is not about a particular message, but about the feeling that you take away from it. Music is about what it represents emotionally and it’s meant to reassure the people that cannot find a sound that represents them. “My songs are unconventional, and they are really meant for those kids out there that don’t have music like that to listen to.”
Get familiar with Keshore’s discography here.