Dubbed the “Princess of New York,” Lil Keyu is a Florida-bred, New York-raised native who claims she’s a “regular girl who wants to change the world.”
Dedicated to leaving an imprint, her At 19-years-old, Lil Keyu is ready to go full-fledged into this music game.
Her passion and love for music is evidenced in her high-energy records.
Most recently, she unleashed the official music video for “Play Dumb,” which sees Keyu talking her s##t.
While she only recently moved to Los Angeles to pursue her rap dreams even further, she still manages to find time to balance being a single mother and recording artist.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B0AIp4bH2O8
AllHipHop: Your music is a cross between rock & hip-hop. How would you describe your sound?
Lil Keyu: Like an urban rockstar.
AllHipHop: When did you start making music?
Lil Keyu: I’ve always been into music. I started doing this officially not even six or seven months ago.
AllHipHop: At what point did you realize this music thing was forreal?
Lil Keyu: It’s not that I wanted to take forreal because I always did, but I was also a young mom. I’m like “I need something serious because this is not cutting it right now.” I was in that mindset, but then I prayed one night. Two days later, I was hitting up a whole bunch of people who did management. I just kept on and on and on.
Finally I found @abon15, who’s Miguel Solano. He used to do Lil Pump when he first started. He answered me back then read my message of why he should have me.
He just read it, so I sent another long message why he should have me. Don’t read and leave me on seen! I’m gonna fight for this, this is something that I want and this is why. This is not for no reason, this is not for fun and games. I really wanna go hard, this is my passion.
I also have a kid and everything. Not just that, I want to do something that’s fun for me. I’ve never been the type of person for someone to tell me what to do. I want to be doing stuff by myself and doing stuff I love at that.
AllHipHop: What was the inspiration behind your name?
Lil Keyu: I started off as Keyeezus. Key is literally in my name and I was into the Kanye stuff. I put Keyeezus but I couldn’t really keep that name because it had something to do with him, so I stuck with Key and I kept the ‘u’ in ‘eezus’. It’s Lil Keyu. I had a little era where I was listening to Kanye West’s music, liking his clothing line, etc.
AllHipHop: What’s his influence on your own rap career?
Lil Keyu: More of the aggression in trying to get a point across. My music is tryna get a point across like he’s trying to get a point across. Not saying that I use him as a mentor, that’s something I could be like “oh damn alright, I see what he’s tryna do.” When I listen to his music, I can see it.
AllHipHop: Best memory from the video shoot?
Lil Keyu: The water scene, that’s when I really got into it. I really liked that part when it was raining. [chuckles]
AllHipHop: How’s feel being compared to 6ix9ine?
Lil Keyu: I don’t like it. I hate it.
AllHipHop: Who started that?
Lil Keyu: To be honest, I really don’t know. That s##t is so annoying. Because if you gonna say that, it’s like okay so 6ix9ine copied Waka Flaka. Waka Flaka had that yelling stage he went through. If you gonna say he copied Waka Flaka, then Waka Flocka copied one of these rock stars. Come on, why you saying that? I just feel like it’s ‘cause I’m from New York. I just feel like it should just be a genre, people shouldn’t make names and s##t like that.
The reason why these old heads and OGs are mad towards these youngins is because they actually do hip-hop. What they do is hip-hop, what we do isn’t really hip-hop to me. It’s hip-hop, but it’s mixed with something else.
There needs to be more genres for us to open. It won’t be like “alright so you can’t say that I really do hip-hop,” because my music ain’t really hip-hop. If you said, ”oh she does hip-hop.” someone else could be like “nah she don’t do hip-hop.” And I agree with that, because I don’t do hip-hop.
AllHipHop: What do you do?
Lil Keyu: I do whatever I feel like.
AllHipHop: Who’s in your Top 5?
Lil Keyu: The Weeknd, Pop Smoke, Ski Mask The Slump God, Alicia Keys, and Linkin Park. I live two different lives, I like R&B and reggae.
AllHipHop: What can we expect on your upcoming EP, A Different Key?
Lil Keyu: Songs I’ve been previewing before. Old songs that OG fans have been wanting me to drop but I haven’t, they’re gonna finally hear it.