Kitty Pryde is a teen rapper from Daytona, Florida. She's been pinned as "Tumblr-wave" by our own Luke O'Neil over at Vice, and called "arrestingly strange" by the New York Times. At Total Bummer Festival in Orlando, my friend George Awwad from the blog Portals and I got a chance to interview her. Check out the full video on thePhoenix.com and Portals, later this week.
WHEN DID YOU START RECORDING MUSIC? January 2011. I got a Mac, so I was messing around with everything. This guy I knew, he was super swag, I thought he was so cool. He was like, "You could rap if you wanted to." So I just tried and I made a YouTube video and I was like, "Hey, this is good!" And then I recorded a bunch of songs with Garage Band about how I hated my ex-boyfriend, and put them online.
SO IS THERE A SCENE FOR TEENAGE YOUTUBE RAPPERS OR IS THIS A NEW GENRE THAT YOU ARE PIONEERING? I don't know. I didn't mean to do anything with it. Justin Bieber got found on YouTube.
I DON'T KNOW THAT MUCH ABOUT JUSTIN BIEBER. I don't know that much about anything else.
SO YOUR SONG ABOUT JUSTIN BIEBER — IS THAT ABOUT A REAL-LIFE INFATUATION? Yeah. I work at Claire's and we had these limited-edition Justin Bieber Christmas-tree ornaments. So I bought all of them. Then I was sitting there looking at my Christmas tree and the whole song blossomed off of that.
HOW LONG HAVE YOU WORKED AT CLAIRE'S? I'm not telling. I'm not giving clues about my age here.
YOU DON'T WANT PEOPLE KNOWING YOUR AGE? I just think it's funny because no one can figure out how old I really am and they keep making ridiculous guesses. Like those Dig people, they said I was 13. And I was like, really? Does that really sound true? I'm not telling anyone my real age because I think it's hilarious. One day someone will blow my cover but whatever.
WHAT DO YOU HOPE THAT THE NEXT MONTH WILL HAVE IN STORE FOR YOU? I hope I get to travel.
I COULD BOOK YOU A SHOW IN BOSTON. If you booked me a show in Boston I would go. Hook it up.
