Kill Che: LA's Next Legendary Painter
Kill Che is an absolute beast with a paintbrush and a really cool human being too.
He just finished up the third art show of his career at RAREHOUSE in DTLA with Papi Kodone, Balloonski, Berk Visual and a bunch of other insanely talented individuals. We caught up with the 18-year-old artist to talk about his personal progress and the current state of art culture among the youth.
Kill Che has been able to build up his brand and buzz by linking with a number of popular rappers on SoundCloud and painting their cover art. Most notably he’s done covers for Famous Dex (pictured below), Ski Mask the Slump God, CHXPO, Nolanberollin, Warhol.SS and a ton of others.
He says, “Attention spans are lowering so cover art is the only way to get a lot of people to look at anything… It’s kinda cool though cause niggas that you would never expect to be into my shit will be all like ‘Bro, I fuck with you art!’
Kill Che wants art to be for everyone. He acknowledges that it’s often times looked at as something that appeals to a certain type of person, rather than to people in general. He hopes that his work will be able to bridge that gap and get other demographics into art as well.
He’s quite passionate about this systemic lack of interest in art by so many. He says, “People literally have white walls in their apartment and shit man. They don’t realize how much seeing something beautiful everyday can help your life out.”
Another way that Kill Che hopes to reach a wider audience is his wearable prints—t-shirts with his work printed onto them. He says, “A lot of niggas can try and steal it but everybody knows the wearable print wave is me… You make a bunch of prints, and people don’t want to buy them. You make a wearable print, and then people want to buy them.” Most recently he released a wearable print with a painting of Nolanberollin. (pictured below)
Going forward Kill Che believes he has what it takes to be world renowned for his work. He says, “Where I’m trying to move beyond this and where I’m inevitably going is like art shows in Paris… like gallery shows. I’m finna make like hundreds of thousands… that’s about it.”
The most mind-blowing aspect of Kill Che’s art may be the variety between his pieces and the creative process that leads to these distinctively different styles. He actually works on two pieces at a time, one large and one small.
He talks about this process saying, “Well the way I work is like, say I’m doing a more technical piece (like cover art) I’ll always have a bigger poster or piece of paper on the side because I’ve always had really bad ADD and can’t focus on anything for more than like 15 minutes at a time. I always work on one thing that I have no plan for and one that’s more of a sketch with references and stuff… It’ll be like I’m in a lab and then I’m in a junkyard… A lot of people say my art looks like it’s done by two different niggas. I might be schizophrenic, I don’t know. I haven’t really looked into it.”
Schizo or not, Kill Che is one of the most promising painters in the LA area. His work continuously sets trends for hip hop cover art as it becomes more and more recognizable. It’s only a matter of time before he’s a household name in the contemporary art community, just like he is among SoundCloud listeners and artists.
Check out this collection of some of our favorite Kill Che pieces:
