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Kellz Da Cheefa makes moves with ‘Block Pain’ EP
Liz Fay
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Special to Worcester Magazine USA TODAY NETWORK
Worcester native Mykel Deleo, professionally known as Kellz Da Cheefa, gets personal in his long awaited EP “Block Pain,” dropping April 20. Over the course of six tracks, the 24year-old rapper is making a splash as he dives deeply into some heavy personal experiences growing up in Worcester’s Main South neighborhood.
“Block Pain” is Deleo’s first project to release since moving his music career to Los Angeles a year ago — time and space away from home being the medicine Deleo needed to overcome a creative drought.
“All that pain over there with dark clouds over my head, I don’t gotta deal with the same pain over here. My whole tape is called ‘Block Pain’ and I lived like that every day. I had to live with intense stuff, dealing with cops, all this nonsense every day. It’s hard to build a future and a career around that. So as soon as I moved, it made it 10 times easier to find myself and find what I want to do, like making beats and making my own cover art. There’s just so much more to this than music. I’m now on the third drop from my clothing brand. I would’ve never thought like this if I didn’t make the move.”
Deleo says that the first track, “508 Gunsparks,” “summarizes the entire picture of what I’m talking about in this project.”
Discussing the hardships faced while residing in Main South, Deleo says, “I had to deal with losing a lot of family, friends and loved ones to gun violence at a young age, so I remember at 16, 17, 18, having friends getting shot, going to the hospital, and having friends dying and that’s what I’m talking about in ‘508 Gun Sparks.’”
He opens the song rapping “508 the city that I’m from! Lose so much it’s hard to have a heart! Young’ins grow up fast they dodgin’ gun sparks! Couldn’t call my dawg it made me fall apart! When I lost my dawg I swear it made me fall apart!”
He says the second track, “Touchdown,” is “his personal favorite. “I feel like I really
Rapper Kellz Da Cheefa records in July at at Paramount studios in Los
Angeles. SUBMITTED PHOTO
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Samantha Valletta getting the messages out
Richard Duckett
Worcester Magazine USA TODAY NETWORK
Samantha Valletta is part of small team of artists who will be trying to reach underserved communities with creative COVID-related public health messages, including the importance of getting vaccinated, as part of an initiative by The Metropolitan Area Planning Council.
For Valletta, a Worcester native who grew up in Sutton and now lives in the North End of Boston, it’s part of “working in the arts and staying in touch with reality.”
Valletta is a filmmaker, actor, writer, dancer, choreographer and, as she describes herself on Instagram, an “Earth & Human Activist.”
She said she has “long been fascinated by the human experience depicted through the written word and moving image. I have tunnel vision for introspection.” She’s also “a firm believer in collaboration over competition.”
In February, the Metropolitan Area Planning Council invited artists, designers and creatives to pitch concepts to inspire safe and healthy behaviors and then chose nine individuals/teams to share $45,000 in grant funding.
It is looking for “posters, videos, postcards, public art, comic strips and other accessible artworks that can be used by health agencies, municipalities and community groups to spread the word about COVID-related public health advice,” MAPC said in an announcement.
Valletta is one of four members of the The Greater Boston Artist Collective, one of the chosen teams, a collective of female artists across all mediums based in Boston whose mission is to “uplift artists and to provide a platform for all communities and cultures to share their stories.”
“Art has always had the power to help heal, especially during these trying times,” said Valletta. “Using the power of film and multimedia, GBAC looks forward to creating a piece dedicated to the communities hit hardest by the virus. Our goal is to encourage everyone to come together for this last push, allowing us all to come out on the other side safer, refreshed and renewed.”
The Metropolitan Area Planning Council is a regional planning agency serving 101 cities and towns of Greater Boston, including Bolton, Hopkinton, Hudson, Marlboro and Milford. The scope of the public health COVID vaccination message initiative runs further, with other grant recipients including Chelvanaya Gabriel, a multimedia art activist/storyteller and resilience facilitator based in Western Massachusetts.
Once completed, MAPC will make the artworks available for digital download and sharing.
Valletta said GBAC will create videos to be shared across all social media platforms.
GBAC will start by making a video at the Reggie Lewis Center in Roxbury showing its work in getting people vaccinated. But GBAC could go across the state, “as many neighborhoods as we can,” including to the Central Community Branch YMCA of Central Massachusetts, 766 Main St., Worcester, to “showcase their efforts” with vaccination, Valletta said.
“I’m hoping to. I know the area pretty well,” she said.
Indeed, she said her first job was at the Central Community Branch YMCA, working with its after-school child care program.
“Readily available vaccine communication resources are not always resonating with communities of color that have been treated unjustly by medical systems,” said MAPC arts and culture director Jennifer Sien Erickson. “Many materials also aren’t designed to reach communities speaking languages other than English. We are excited to partner with this diverse team of local artists to promote equity in community access to the vaccines.”
All of this came before the recent pause of distributing the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
MAPC gave priority in awarding grants to projects that engage diverse ethnic, cultural and BIPOC communities, and many of the completed projects will be available in multiple languages.
Valletta said, “This has GBAC working with activists in the Black and brown communities. It’s a nice thing to do despite the difficult subject matter.”
Besides Valletta, GBAC includes Gisell Builes, Karen Elisa Garcia and Jennifer Medrano.
“We’re producing and directing it all together. I’m the lead on the project, but it’s a collaboration with the four of us,” Valletta said
The goal is to create “something super simple that people can share. Get this COVID vaccine message out. We want to make it very human. That’s what our focus is.”
The team has been working with MAPC to finalize visual and concepts, and hopes to be filming this week, and into the next week. “And hopefully get the project done in a couple of weeks,” Valletta said.
“It’s just a really powerful time to get to work with an organization like the MAPC specializing with communities that have been hit the hardest with health inequalities in the state.”
Valletta graduated from the then Holy Name Central Catholic High School in Worcester and was a dance student at Jo Ann Warren Studio in Worcester. She was also working at the YMCA.
“I tell people I slept in Sutton and spent my whole days in Worcester,” Valletta said.
She comes from “a very large Italian family,” and also helping to keep her
Samantha Valletta SUBMITTED PHOTO
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poured a lot out in that one, I explained a lot of how I feel, all these years of trials and tribulations, losing people, I put the lyrics in a relative perspective for the kids in similar situations to relate to. All the songs have different vibes and feelings, each song means something else but they’re really just all put together towards explaining the same thing and what these kids are going through.”
While Deleo’s new life in California led to his successfully finishing the EP, Deleo still considers Worcester home, and plans to return full time down the road.
Upon Deleo’s return home, he hopes to come back to a city better than he left it.
“I want to see the growth. And I want my supporters, my friends, and my family to see the growth.
In addition to “Block Pain,” Deleo says he is dropping a surprise for his fans on his birthday, May 17.
Speaking from his own life experiences and career milestones, Deleo shares a few words of wisdom for aspiring artists.
Kellz Da Cheefa is available on all music platforms. Follow him on Instagram @kellzda.cheefa and shop his merchandise line @lovemadness.apparel.
