"It's dangerous to be my friend," Kristine Flaherty, the rapper also known as K.Flay, says with a laugh. "There are a few songs on the record that are me imagining different trajectories of my life, the rest of the songs are pretty true to my experience. And I'm sure I usurped some of my friend's stories and emotions along the way, too."
On her debut full-length Life as a Dog Flaherty writes about everything from getting sloppy drunk on a bottle of Jim Beam to deal with unrequited love ("Wishing It Was You"), getting sloppy drunk with questionable friends in questionable places ("I'm Good") and hitting bottom every night only to wake up and do it all over again ("Bad Things").
It'd be easy to write off Life as a Dog off as a party record, but a darker perspective sits just below the blissfully buzzed surface. The songs, backed with mid-tempo, smooth beats that sneakily urge you to nod your head, don't just carry the banner for getting fucked up. Flaherty is more vulnerable than that, often openly exploring the emotions that caused her need for chemical escape in the first place.
On "Get it Right" she raps in a loose, fluid style that earns her Lady Sovereign and Matrix comparisons, "I wanna stay sincere, but that kind of thing is tricky / When you give up all yourself and still the end result is iffy / Like nothing I've created even matters / So now I wanna do stupid shit, I wanna get fucking plastered." On "Can't Sleep" she says, "Maybe I've been freaking out, moving quick, burning the wick at both ends / Screaming loud, stupid shit, scaring all of my old friends / Fell down on Bedford, hope that it's not broken / Safe to say I might have had too much of some of these potions."
No doubt her double sociology and psychology degrees from Stanford come in handy when forcing herself to examine her bad habits — and their roots — for her art.
"Proclivity towards observing people in a deeper way is certainly helpful when you're thinking about how to convey something or explore a feeling, emotion or experience," she says, talking to the Scene via phone from a tour stop in Cleveland. "I think it's a blessing and a curse. You have to push, sometimes in a dangerous direction, in order to get in touch with something that people can relate to or something that resonates with people."
Her approach to crafting songs that are more honest than defined by genre has made it easy for her to carve a niche anywhere she goes. Over the years Flaherty has collaborated with hip-hop peers including MC Lars, Grieves and Danny Brown, and she makes a guest appearance on Macklemore-approved pop singer Mary Lambert's new album, Heart on My Sleeve. And this summer she held her own on the predominantly male, predominantly hard rock Warped Tour.
"I didn't really come up in any kind of scene," she explains. "When I started making music I was isolated, not in a sad way, but I think I was able to follow myself down whatever path. There was no external voice admonishing me or reminding me, 'This is how you make music,' because to be perfectly honest, I'm still figuring that out."
To be sure, Flaherty has figured out that the most rewarding way to connect with people is by finding the courage to be true to herself, warts and all.
"The more honest you are, the easier it is to maintain," she muses. "Whether it's creatively or in your personal life. For better or worse, it's now a part of my general catharsis, so when I am feeling whatever angst, my inclination is to write. It ends up being a little more emotionally raw or vulnerable, it's awesome."
Email music@nashvillescene.com.
