The story of hip hop and R&B group khildLike is one you’ll wanna carry with you when asking yourself if it’s time to give up your lifelong childhood dream.
Orlando “Khosen” Major and Jerell “Life” Ray came together to form khildLike over 10 years ago after the two individual musicians met through a mutual friend and decided to collaborate on each other’s upcoming mixtapes.
Once they got into the studio and realized the effortless chemistry they had both in-person and within their music, they agreed to pursue a career as a hip hop and R&B based duo, with Khosen assuming the role of lead singer and Life being the rapper.
The two have since endured a long and difficult journey, but in the process, have learned how to write, produce, and distribute their own music in-house, which has gained enormous success mostly within the last year.
Despite their various accomplishments, however, it hasn’t been as easy as getting into the studio and simply hitting the record button. Over the last decade, the two have been forced to invest in other businesses in order to gain enough revenue for their musical careers. “We’ve opened up a daycare, fostered children, and we even have an ice cream truck. We’ve had to sell our souls in order to save up a decent budget for our music,” Major said.
“But we didn’t want to sell our souls by making music about drugs, being promiscuous, guns, or material possessions like every other hip hop artist in the industry. Instead, we wanted our message to represent being leaders in our community, setting the bar, and living with purpose,” he adds. And while it’s taken copious amounts of hard work, resilience, and painfully-endured patience of failed tracks and money spent, things are finally beginning to look up for this humble pair.
A couple of years ago, the two attended a writing workshop named Mic Session led by Tupac’s old manager, Leila Steinberg. During the event, the artists were instructed to create a piece inspired by the social injustice that was dominating news circuits at the time, right around the center of the heightening regarding the Black Lives Matter movement.
The two musicians came up with a song titled “Reparations”, which since its release has been played over 100,000 times on the group’s Soundcloud profile. Shortly after the result of the track’s viral success, khildLike was invited to join American rapper Jim Jones on a track for his future album dropping in May of 2021. The duo considers it one of the most prestigious successes they’ve earned to date.
They’ve also had the opportunity to open for hip hop artists Nipsey Hustle and Eric Bellinger within the last few years. And while they’re still working persistently toward “making it big”, the two are very proud of how far they’ve come and are extremely elated that listeners are beginning to take notice of the incredibly talented duo’s soulful music. Thankfully, they are only at the beginning of what is hopefully a longly awaited triumph.
Listen to khildLike’s hit single, “Reparations”, along with the rest of their released tracks by visiting https://soundcloud.com/khildlike.
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