Text Peter Agoston

Photo Chris Woodcock



Kirby Dominant is no simple character.

"You got a dude who grew up in the hood, sold dope, gangbanged, been shot, shot at, locked up - all that shit - all before I was 17. And then I started going to school (UC Berkeley) and getting straight A's," Kirby plainly states, abbreviating his adolescence.



The outspoken MC/producer from Oakland is an anomaly in that his decade-plus music career mirrors a similar sentiment. Kirby is illicit but articulate, with a finger on the pulse of the rich Bay Area milieu and an ear for bubbly tastemaking. On song, he's both politically-gully and fully groping of cultural taboo. In person, Kirby is contemplative and kind, with a stout build, long locks tied down his back and the mouth of a forlorn pimp devoted to settling old scores.



Planting his foot in highly active underground of a late '90s Bay scene, Kirby refined his childhood talent of freestyle on Berkeley's college radio KALX (90.7FM). Kirb found confidence to turn craft from hobby and created his debut album Rapitalism: The Philosophies of Dominant Pimpin' (Dominant, 1998). This cassette filtered its way along the West Coast and beyond and found a young Kirb introducing his brand of assertive musical politics: Part Oaktown-brand braggadocio, part Berkeley-based activism, all colored in with a pimp's paint set. Six albums later he returns with Starr: The Contemplations of a Dominator (Rapitalism) a full length some 2 years in the making. Kirby alludes to Starr's down-to-earth process being about "dealing with the topics of life... shit not so esoteric. Human emotions, basic things, like tree and cup and water and juice and food."



A humble idea in theory, but modest considering Starr follows up the devilishly-addictive Niggaz and White Girlz (Rapitalism, 2006). A marketing move for the ages, done with brash class and attitude, Niggaz - with labelmate, Chris Sinister - looped and chopped the new wave pop that molded the '80s with comically interracial sex-raps; it's hard not to laugh and love it. For Kirb, it's just another step with the times: "It [can't just] be about rhyming anymore. The public don't wanna see two niggas walkin' back and forth on stage. No one wants to see that shit. They want excitement now, it's back to some glam shit."



An intriguing difference indeed, but a calculated move to be appreciated, for his last widely distributed release Savage Intelligence found Kirb - alongside Fundamentals producer/MC King Koncepts - at his most aggressively politicized. Brandishing faux boar-snouts on the cover, Kirb is fiery on tracks like "Black Anger and "Flawless Execution."



While it was nearly 6 years between those two albums, Kirb also released full-lengths with Vancouver's Moka Only (2002's Super Future Stars) and Saskatoon producer Factor (2004's One Way Ticket) in preparation for his return to form in Starr. Vividly produced, with Kirb manning the boards mostly throughout (and contributions from Pismo, Roddy Rod, and trumpeter Roy Hargrove), Starr captures the fun of Niggaz and White Girlz along with the grab-your-throat realism of both "Savage Intelligence and Rapitalism.



On his latest he says, "I'm really trippin', because I make this stuff and I don't know who is gonna like this shit [or] what they're gonna like. I'm pacing myself because I don't feel like I'm at a peak with my music. That's one thing that keeps me grounded. A lot of people think they're there and I'm not there. Musically, we got a long way to go as rap musicians in this hip-hop world."



And experiencing him live is another story, "It's not a bunch of old fans showing up to my show, it's usually new people that never heard of me which I find great, because I feel like I'm reinventing myself. A lot of the older people that know me, they don't even know I put out six fuckin' albums since Rapitalism."



Hopefully now they do, Kirb. •



Article from RE:UP Magazine issue 13