7 minute read
Changing the Community with Music
Aaron Middleton
Interview
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Matthew Perry is a busy guy. On top of being a full-time student here at MSU Denver, he is a writer, producer, activist, and creator of the Black art collective, BLVCK Kosher. He has found a way to not only showcase and collaborate with other artists but contribute to the Denver arts scene in a way only a few have done before. Not to mention, Perry released a hiphop album earlier this year under the alias, BLVCK Qi. You can check out his music on either SoundCloud, Spotify, Apple Music, or YouTube.
Photo provided by Matthew Perry
Can you tell me what BLVCK Kosher is?
BLVCK Kosher is a local art collective. It was founded in 2016 when I was a junior at East High School transitioning into my senior year. I always knew that music was meant for me—like it was just my drive for what I wanted to do in life and how I just wanted to change the world in a sense […] BLVCK Kosher originally started as a label for local artists—as a name and a symbol to hold people together and to create a community. Once I came back to Denver, I transferred to MSU [from the University of the Virgin Islands] and ended up finding out that a lot of my friends had gone off to college or were going off to do different things and then came back home. It was those people who really wanted to start this idea, this concept, and this organization with me. So, I said, “You know what? Let’s do some research. Let’s figure out what we need to do to become an LLC. What do we need to do to become an official company—an official organization in our community so that we can start making a real change?” So, BLVCK Kosher ended up transforming from a label that everybody just wanted to be a part of and have a name to fall under and became a revolution of sorts for the arts and for the community.
How has the pandemic affected your collective?
We had so many plans that were canceled. We planned to do six different events in 2020, but we only got to work with MSU Denver on one event, which was Black Art Matters for Black History Month […] COVID has affected all of that. Prior to the pandemic, we would have meetings on campus every Wednesday. After COVID, those meetings turned into FaceTime calls. A lot of important things were pushed aside because people had work. People had school. People had other priorities. Finding new artists [in person] got put on hold. A lot of our scouting has been more virtual and more through social media more so than going to local events like we used to. We used to go out to events that weren’t even ours, but we knew that it was a showcase of artists. So, we would go down to Civic Center Events or Five Points—things like that […]
On the other hand, collaboration is going up. I would say double or triple to a degree. It’s easier to make plans around collaborating with other artists. I mean, myself, I have an album coming out at the end of this month—February 28th. Honestly, out of nine tracks, three of them are only me. I got to collaborate with a lot of artists this past year. Artists are getting acclimated to this idea of I have to have my own setup. I have to have my own stuff in my house. Because otherwise, I’m not going to move forward in my art. People have been starting to adapt a lot more. That’s what is exciting to see […] Collaboration has been a lot easier, but everything else has gotten more difficult.
Who are your musical inspirations?
This is always such a hard question. When it comes to the approach of how he handled himself and how he introduced himself into the music industry, Chance the Rapper. Even though he had iconic artists like Kanye West, these amazing gospel artists on his side, and he had the whole city of Chicago just behind him, I think the way he came out with 10 Day is amazing. [..] I think just his approach—how he stayed independent and how he relied on and kept having trust in his own people that he came up with—that is an inspiration to me and is a truth to what I want to do.
Another inspiration is Tyler, the Creator. He came up with Odd Future. He and a group of his friends created whatever they wanted: music, clothing, skateboarding—everything you could think of. Then, they joined with all these different partnerships—with these big labels. All because they believed in these kids who had a vision. It was such a dope concept. I remember being in middle school and listening to Goblin on repeat. There’s a song called “Radicals.” It’s this idea that you can be as weird as you want to be—you can be you. It was kind of like an anthem to a degree for the weird Black kids that I knew. It was just like damn, this idea that I don’t have to constantly try to please every single person that comes into my life. I don’t have to live up to audio expectations. I can do whatever I want. I can be my own person. I can live my life as I see fit […] It was really inspiring to see a kid who came from almost nothing and a lot of the same background as me—as a kid who grew up in a single-mother household and didn’t have a father figure. He then went on to express these truths and experiences about his life and was able to build an empire from that in as little as three years.
On the producer side of things, Quincy Jones, Kanye, Hit-Boy, Metro Boomin, Madlib—the list goes on. When it comes to my music, I’m from Louisiana. I have a very southern upbringing. A lot of the music that I grew up on was either R&B or southern rap. So, OutKast, Lil Wayne, TI. I also love artists like Musiq Soulchild, Erykah Badu, India. Arie, Sade. I love old school artists—old school R&B specifically, like New Edition, Faith Evans, Chaka Khan, Michael Jackson. I also grew up listening to Chris Brown, Usher, Omarion—those newer R&B artists.
What’s next for BLVCK Kosher? Where do you see yourself, assuming, you know, the world gets back to some sort of normalcy in a year?
We want to start making a real change in the community. This is really what this work is about, and this is really what motivates us. We’re from all over the place—Baton Rouge, South Africa, Chicago. We all come from these places where we saw so much struggle. It seemed like the only way to get out is by either becoming a professional athlete or a famous musician. We have this concept that we want to make it easier for kids out there. We see kids coming from Mont Bello or Park Hill, who have such great talent, but they might not be using that talent because they are preoccupied with all the other things—all these other challenges and obstacles they’re facing […] Our main mission is to get these kids off the streets. We want to put programs into high schools. We want to go back to the high schools that we were involved with. We want to go to East High and open after-school programs in the event that the school defunds its art programs. We want to be a safety net […]
The biggest goal for these next four years is to get a partnership with the mayor’s office in the city of Denver so that we can get funding to go into these schools and really help kids out. Give them mentors. Give them people that they can look up to—people that they can rely on to help them out.
