Kota the Friend

Brooklyn rapper Kota the Friend bucks trends, favoring musically rich instrumentals and vivid, sometimes surreal wordplay over the interchangeable trap styles of many of his peers. His personal, often introspective lyrics and jazz-inflected beats met with well-groomed production on his 2020 album, Everything. In addition to further studio efforts like 2022′s MEMO, Kota has frequently uploaded episodes of his visual project Lyrics to GO and has released four volumes of music from the series. He has also collaborated with producer Statik Selektah on two full-lengths, 2021′s To Kill a Sunrise and 2023′s To See a Sunset.
Kota the Friend was born in Brooklyn in 1992. He started exploring music by playing trumpet at age eight, growing more and more interested in music production in his high school years. He performed in various bands and worked as a cinematographer for independent musicians’ video projects before establishing himself as a solo artist with a trio of singles in 2017. Kota’s style blended jazzy undercurrents with R&B touches over beats that took cues from multiple phases of hip-hop’s evolution. His full-length debut album, Anything, was released in 2018 and included cameo appearances from Hello Oshay, Childish Major, and Angel Haze.
Positive reviews and press buzz came quickly, but Kota decided early on to stay independent. He would turn down offers from major labels multiple times over the next few years, opting for a D.I.Y. approach that offered him more creative control. In 2019, he released the FOTO mixtape, and the next year he followed it with the brief project Lyrics to GO, Vol. 1, drawing from his YouTube series. His second studio album, Everything, was released in May 2020. Its summery production and unique arrangement choices gelled into one of Kota the Friend’s most successful projects yet, in terms of both critical reception and the charts. A second volume of Lyrics to GO, which included the single “Pomegranate,” followed in 2021, as did To Kill a Sunrise, his collaboration with producer and DJ Statik Selektah.
Lyrics to GO, Vol. 3, a 22-minute release that was still longer than either of the first two parts in the series, was released in 2022, followed by the full-length MEMO and single “Red Lights.” In 2023, he released Lyrics to GO, Vol. 4 and a second collaboration with Statik Selektah, To See a Sunset. After a deluxe edition of the album appeared, Kota released the singles “Hope You Heal” and “Barcelona” (featuring Samm Henshaw). ~ Fred Thomas