Kaliii

Georgia-born rapper Kaliii (initially spelled Kali) exudes confidence, confrontation, sex, and power on her evenly paced and hooky tracks. Her song “Do a Bitch” from her 2021 debut mixtape, This Why They Mad Now, was an early hit, and a remix featuring Rico Nasty only bolstered the track’s appeal. Kaliii was joined by Latto, Yung Bleu, BIA, and others on her 2022 mixtape, Toxic Chocolate, and she scored a Top 40 hit the next year with the spare, hard-hitting “Area Codes.” She collaborated with K-pop group Fifty Fifty for the 2023 single “Barbie Dreams.”
Kaliya Ashley Ross was rapping by age 12, motivated to begin exploring music when her beatmaking stepfather promised she could have her own room on the condition that she wrote an album’s worth of songs in a month. Her excitement surrounding music didn’t stop there, and as a teen, she self-produced songs and videos while also focusing on school, early work experiences, and sports. Kali auditioned for the Netflix rap competition show Rhythm + Flow but didn’t make the final cut. A fellow contestant, KenTheMan, urged her not to be disappointed and to keep pursuing music on her own, and she self-released her proper debut single, “Mami,” in 2019. In 2021, she issued “Do a Bitch,” which quickly became one of her best-performing songs up until that point. Kali’s first mixtape, This Why They Mad Now, also arrived that year, and multiple remixes of “Do a Bitch” surfaced, including new contributions from Rico Nasty, Saucy Santana, and Enchanting. Before the end of 2021, she issued the single “MMM MMM” featuring ATL Jacob, and the song was streamed tens of millions of times.
The mixtape Toxic Chocolate, highlighted by the BIA collaboration “Eat It Up,” appeared in 2022. Early the following year, Kali released “Area Codes” — featuring an interpolation of Ludacris’ like-titled song — and crashed the Top 40 after the single went viral on TikTok. The track appeared on Toxic Chocolate: Area Codes Edition, an updated edition of the mixtape, as she expanded her moniker to Kaliii. She was featured on “Barbie Dreams,” a song by South Korean girl group Fifty Fifty recorded for the movie soundtrack Barbie: The Album. ~ Fred Thomas