Liverpool Mesh artist KOF describes his musical journey on the road to success and his style and fashion inspiration along the way for Purple Revolver’s hottest new fashion feature My Career In T-Shirts.
“Hello, I’m a singer-songwriter, sometimes rapper and sometimes producer based in Liverpool. I have a love of music, my BMX, women, good food and T-shirts. This is my career (so far) in tees.”
“2008 was the Capital of Culture Year in my home-town of Liverpool. At the time I had just finished 3 straight mix-tapes and was on the cusp of releasing an EP in partnership with Zavvi. I had some quite political tracks and really enjoyed sending a message on quite fun and uplifting production. That year message and statement T-shirts were my favourite thing to rock.”
“2009 was a big year for me in my evolution as an artist. I put out a project called THE KOF EP – which was a collection of what we, at the time, called MESH music. – which was basically various genres meshed together.”
“The response to the music was great and led me to perform at Glastonbury, headline the HUB skateboarding festival, Liverpool and do a lot of shows in Europe. The music was big, loud and bright and aimed at rocking diverse crowds across the world. It was only right that I reflected that in my attire on-stage.”
“At the end of 2009 I released an EP called DJ Put It Louder. All year I had been saying it on tracks and it became sort of a tag. We knocked up some t-shirts and ending up selling about 1,000 of them while I toured at the end of the year.”
“After a year or so off the national scene due to a lot of regional and overseas gigs/releases 2010 was a good year nationally – I charted in the commercial club chart with two tracks Fire It Up featuring Wiley and All Good, which was also play-listed by 1Xtra. We dropped a new t-shirt – one that was influenced by the rave-LSD smiley face – but wasn’t about drugs – more so about spreading positive vibes. We shifted a lot of these at shows.”
“In 2011, I moved away from rapping and naturally fell back into the way I started my music career – singing. It came so easy. I felt like the sunglasses and the big beats kind of limited what I wanted to say and had people taking me the wrong way. I naturally rolled with a stripped down sound and a stripped down look.”
“2012 has been a crazy year for me. Starting off with my addition to the BBC 1Xtra Sound of 2012 list, alongside the likes of Azealia Banks, Frank Ocean and Mac Miller. I also charted in France and had a couple more national playlist adds. All before April, when I released my EP An Alternative Soul EP. Recently I have been wearing a lot of Trainerspotter gear – both tee-shirts and shirts – I like”
KOF plays BBC Merseyside 95.8 FM Upfront Live Sessions @ The Brink, Liverpool on 13th August.