#3: KALOU
Manipulating your voice 🗣️, playing cricket 🏏, Coles muffins 🧁🧁, and digital druglord by blackbear 🌐💊🤴🏻
KALOU TALKS IN TUNES.
With over 8 million streams on Spotify and 7 years into his work as a rapper, KALOU’s already performed alongside the city’s biggest names in hip-hop, at places like the Hong Kong Rap Awards and in independent shows in Lan Kwai Fong. But now, KALOU’s sights are set internationally, making his international debut at the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati’s Alcheringa Festival. Known IRL as Shawn Simon, KALOU is “a child of the world”: born to South Indian parents, he’s lived in Dubai and works in Sydney in an FMCG firm. Of course, “Hong Kong is home,” he says. Now, KALOU’s growing into a new sound. Moving away from the lo-fi, hard-hitting trap music that once defined his discography, he now speaks in crisp bars in his 2024 singles “BACK TO WORK” and “TOO MANY PROMISES,” blending hopeless romance and experimental synth-rap. His new album, “THE PRINCE’S REVENGE,” comes out on the 31st of October. Here are his recommendations on THE CHOW:
Manipulating your voice 🎙️
A big feature of my music right now is in combining synths and tech with my deep baritone voice (that I’m privileged to have, as I've been told).
Over the past five or six years, I’ve learned how to engineer my vocals, learned which frequencies to adjust and which plugins to use. There’s a whole range of changes you can apply to your track. For instance, if you want your vocals to sound like Travis Scott's, you might add compression. Many artists have specific presets they use to achieve their signature sound.As for MY presets, I have a pitch corrector (the autotune) and something that makes ‘s’ sound less harsh (it sounds very silly, but it's literally what it is).
Playing cricket 🏏
Cricket is my escape. Whatever happens in the week… whether I have a good day or a bad day, or a good week or a bad week with work, or good week or a bad week with my friends; if I have a falling out, if I have a moment of reconciliation, of euphoria… I put that aside when I go out to bat. It’s just me, the guy who’s bowling to me, and a target in my mind.
Listening to digital druglord by blackbear 🎧💊
That was a very big album for me — love the songs like “juicy sweatsuits,” “if i could i would feel nothing,” “do re mi.” I think what I really like about that album is how it sounds. That sounds very surface level to say that, but it’s the way it hits my ears.
At that time I was starting to get into rap, and this was when I still listened to quite a lot of radio-friendly pop. It was also when I was a bit of an angry, confused teenager, or whatever. The album had a lot of sharp points where you just feel like you're there with blackbear. He’s just angry throughout, but in a very passionate and melodic way where you're like, okay, this is fire. You feel the anger, you feel the passion.
Eating Coles’ muffins 🧁🧁 (SEE: 1:13 in “The Chanel Cut”)
I had about 500 in half a year once, which (if you do the math) is around 19 a week. It’s even a lyric from one of my songs, “The Chanel Cut,“ where I say “regular guy I’m at Coles buying muffins.” I love my sweet treats, however, I’ve moved on to la fournée dorée pain au chocolat (also from Coles). It’s a very comfort food: this soft little friendly croissant with a chocolate smacked in the middle. When in Hong Kong, I get them from Erik Kayser.
God 🛐, gratitude ✨, and loving parents 👨👩👦
After I tore my ACL from cricket, God’s been sustaining me.
I don’t always follow my physio. I don’t always do what's 100 percent best for my knee because I want to live life completely normal. And a torn ACL might not be a life changing injury, but it is affecting parts of my life that I would very much take for granted before. I can run a couple steps, but one false step, and you're injured again.
I am a very proud Catholic, and it's God and being grateful and probably my parents that all help me in knowing that through this injury, I’ll be okay. Whether I face challenges, I believe things work out.