There’s a beautiful, unbridled freedom about approaching music as an Indie artist. There’s less sugarcoating. Forgive the football analogy, but it’s like being a free-wheeling Quarterback, performing at full stride rather than adhering to a rigid industry playbook. For an act returning to independence from the industry machine especially, it has to be particularly reinvigorating.
Enter Big K.R.I.T.’s latest appearance on musician Kenneth Whalum’s “Might Not Be Ok” Amidst continuing police brutality, K.R.I.T. expresses thoughts that surely creep in the mind of even the most ardent activist. “Police been firin’ they gon’ keep firin,” he laments.
K.R.I.T.’s delivery steadily ramps up amidst the melancholy organ play and woeful vocal samples, as he adopts the perspective of a police officer, divesting anger that’s seemingly compounded from watching continuous videos of state-sanctioned violence. Whalum’s solemn, “I won’t tell you, it’s gon’ be OK” chorus provides a steadying compliment to K.R.I.T.’s fury.
K.R.I.T. delivers a relatively cynical outlook with a poignancy and passion that belies he doesn’t want it to be this way—it just is. You can listen to “Might Not Be Ok” below.
