Along the way, he tells the driver to stop to scoop up yuke, the 17-year-old BX native who has been blowing up online lately with his tape Cheetah World 3. ksuuvi pulls a stack of cash out of his bag and greets him with a money spread for no real reason. “Nigga, what’s all that for?” asks yuke, his curly Afro nearly drooping over his eyes. “I don’t know,” says ksuuvi. “I thought it was going to be a video interview.”
They have a big brother-little brother relationship. ksuuvi gives him advice about girls and getting in his own place when he turns 18. yuke puts him onto vintage Summrs loosies. ksuuvi asks for his opinion on some of his blown-out new beats, which are full of carnival airhorns and Mustard-like “heyy” chants. When we get to ksuuvi’s block, he sticks his head out of the window to geek out over all of the new graffiti. It’s a bustling area with heavy traffic and Jamaican men chilling outside of the shops bumping the old love songs of Gyptian and Sanchez out of their massive soundsystems. They give ksuuvi a finger salute when they see him.
He lets us into his vacant childhood apartment. There’s a pile of mail waiting for him, stacked up to the height of multiple shoe boxes. He and yuke smoke and spitball new flows in his old bedroom, examining the graffiti-covered walls. There’s a story to go with each mark; his favorite is when a writer from around the way he grew up idolizing came through and left his tag.
ksuuvi moved to this apartment after a tragedy upended his life. When he was 9, his mom was killed by his father, who has been in jail ever since. “I don’t have a mom and dad, I’m an orphan,” he rapped on “Innit.” He lived here with his older siblings for more than a decade, but mostly considers himself to have grown up on his own. He’s quieter when we’re inside, like memories are rushing back to him. “That trauma shit ain’t easy, bro, I’ve always wanted to talk about it in my music but it’s hard,” he says. “Nigga, if I didn’t find music I probably would’ve killed myself by now.”
