Katie Kate: Seattle Queen of Local Music Scene

Katie Kate is much more than a woman who can sing catchy pop songs, write emotive lyrics, and rap. She is dark yet playful when she blends swagger, attitudes, and rhythms with her pop aura. Kate works with an independent label and is an accomplished multi­tasker.

She is a musician, producer, singer, and rapper. Kate has been steadily gain­ing recognition for years ever since she started studying at Cornish: Seattle Col­lege of the Arts.

As reported in The Seattle Weekly, it was at Cornish where she got a degree in classical piano and learned the fun­damentals of studio production that helped her produce all of her beats. Go­ing to Cornish and gigging in Seattle has helped her gain recognition for be­ing a classical musician and electronic composer.

According to The Stranger, once she graduated from Cornish in 2011, she got Marcus Goodsell, a dubstep pro­ducer who works under the name Dash EXP, to produce her music. Thanks to Goodsell, her 2011 debut album Flatland was everything that Kate wanted.

The Stranger reported that Flatland was made in Kate’s bedroom. Her bed­room recording studio consisted of a synthesizer, a small mixer, microphone, and laptop. The sound in Flatland is thick, dark, and sexy.

Kate does not have any safe mate­rial; she brings humor, anger, and twist­iness with her musical complexity. Her song “Uh… No” shows that when she whispers her rap flows shows, she can be catchy and filthy at the same time. Her soft voice in “Bad Amazon” compli­ments the flute loop that repeats throughout the song.

As reported in The Stranger, Kate is one of the rare women who rap and produce hip hop beats. On August 2014, it was clearly proven that Kate will re­main this reputation when she released her sophomore album Nation.

Compared to Flatland, Nation has more organic instrumentation by add­ing band members Trent Moorman on the drums and Lena Simon on Kairos to go along with her hip hop beats. Na­tion has EDM backing beats and reveals her multiple identities.

One of her big hits that Seattle has been raving about is her catchy pop song “Sadie Hawkins.” Although most of her songs include confident rap verses about her becoming a leader, she focuses more on her soft tone and feather light drum beats in this song. Her chorus is hilari­ous when she sings, “I am gonna Sadie Hawkins you, you will not even know what to do, because I am gonna Sadie Hawkins you so hard.”

Kate’s other hit ‘Rushmore’ is full of obscure lyrics and killer drum loops. She spits, “I am a mountain face, with a treeline/You want to cross me, I got tall pines.”

Kate says in The Interview Magazine, “‘Rushmore’ is an ongoing statement to myself. The first part is defensive rap braggadocio, the second a sincerer expression of the same thought—I can­not help but be who I am, how I am.”

Kate’s two albums shows that her music impacts all kinds of genres, whether it be rock, soul, punk, techno, or hip-hop. Kate has a wide range of music influences that includes Kate Bush, Elliott Smith, the Atmosphere, and even Weezer.

Writer Jacob Uitti from Seattle radio station KEXP states, “Katie Kate exudes confidence – and rightly so, she’s the humorous, wildly talented, sonically appealing rapper and producer the city of Seattle is currently getting to know well.”