Looking For Your Next Fave Artist At Splendour? It Could Be K Flay

The 2019 Splendour In The Grass roster is all about hip hop and R&B – with mega-stars Chance The Rapper, Childish Gambino and SZA. But, then, the festival is hosting other international acts such as Santigold, The Streets, DAVE, Little Simz and K Flay. Also down? The polarising rapper Russ. 

Splendour's programming reflects a broader cultural shift away from rock to urban music. Yet, even at the inaugural Splendour in 2001, Michael Franti's band Spearhead appeared. By 2011, Kanye West was memorably headlining. Inevitably, the likes of Chance The Rapper rarely grant interviews. However, OG Flavas does connect with the American alt-hip-hopper K Flay (aka Kristine Flaherty), who first hit Australia for 2017's Groovin The Moo. Based in Los Angeles, she's humbly conducting interviews while loading her laundry, pre-tour. Curiously, Flaherty is anticipating catching Splendour's indie talent, including Foals. "I'm a huge fan of the band Slaves," she enthuses. "I saw them at Reading and Leeds in the UK and it was one of the most epic and disgusting – like gnarly – shows I've ever seen. So I'm very excited for that." Incidentally, Flaherty collaborated with the billed pop-punk band FIDLAR on their latest LP Almost Free.

The Rise Of K Flay

Flaherty's return Down Under is auspicious since she's just dropped a third album, Solutions – its lead single, Bad Vibes, heavy electro-rock. In many ways, the rapper/singer's ascent is comparable to that of the late Mac Miller. Both white hip hoppers came up independently. But, though Miller made US #1 with his 2011 debut Blue Slide Park, Flaherty's career has been incremental, not viral. The Missy Elliott fan began rapping as a hobby in the early 2000s while majoring in psychology and sociology at the prestigious Stanford University. Flaherty circulated the prerequisite mixtapes and EPs. She signed to RCA Records – cutting tracks with The Prodigy's Liam Howlett as well as Detroit MC Danny Brown – but left over creative differences. Flaherty crowdfunded 2014's album, Life As A Dog. She eventually aligned herself with Interscope via Night Street, which Imagine Dragons' Dan Reynolds established. Flaherty's belated breakthrough occurred in 2016 with the big beat banger Blood In The Cut (as heard on the XXX: Return Of Xander Cage OST). The next year she aired the album Every Where Is Some Where with input from Mike Elizondo (Eminem collaborator). In the interim, Flaherty's songs have been consistently synced for cult TV shows like Riverdale. "I don't watch that much television," she admits. "I need to start watching more television. This is my problem!" 

K Flay's Best Life

Solutions is Flaherty's most commercial album. Notably, she largely sings. But, as epitomised by Bad Vibes, her sound has developed into a cross between Paramore and MØ. For Solutions, Flaherty reunited with Every Where… producers JT Daly and Tommy English, but she also brought in Joel Little, Lorde's original cohort. 

Solutions' theme is self-care – Flaherty striving to be "a better version" of herself. The mood is blithe and positive. "I think the simplest way to encapsulate it, at least in my mind, is the title – which is Solutions. As I approached writing this record, I was getting off tour – I'd been on the road for just about three years, supporting my last record and the EP that preceded that – and I was a shell of a woman! I felt very broken down at that moment in my life. I live in LA – I got back home and I kind of looked around me and I was like, 'I need some solutions to how to live; how to live well.'" In fact, it was Flaherty's manager (and bestie) Seth Cummings who prompted the album's tone. "He was like, 'Hey, obviously, usually darkness and pain and those things are the starting point for songs, but what if the challenge on this record is [to] take those feelings and use them as the launchpad for a song that is looking towards, or beginning to turn in the direction of, hope and energy and spirit?'" Flaherty followed that philosophy in penning Sister – a punchy synth-rock number helmed by Little – about bonding with step-siblings. "That song originated from a feeling of alienation; me feeling always different from my brother and sister growing up because we have different biological parents. And that became the launchpad for a song that I think feels really fun and really inclusive and kind of empowering."

Solutions also references a romantic relationship – Flaherty's union with the indie singer-songwriter Miya Folick. Last month the couple gave a joint coming out interview to GQ after sharing cosy snaps on Insty. Flaherty spoke of realising her "fluid" sexuality as a twenty-something, having never previously identified as queer. "There's a complex, nuanced conversation to have around the politics of sexuality and gender expression," she tells writer Eve Barlow. "Language is precious and valuable. I personally have struggled with what language to use. It's hard to know how to define your experience, particularly if it's new." 

Flaherty composed the ballad Nervous specifically for Folick. "Miya and I started dating pretty much when I started writing this record. So it's no coincidence that I was much more amenable to looking for positivity and to sort of having a sense of optimism. I think falling in love, in general, is one of the great experiences of life. You don't often get to do it many times, but it's a beautiful thing when it happens – and it's a really energising thing."

K Flay: Rapper, Rocker Or Electro Star?

As a hybrid artist, Flaherty has created her own niche in the industry. She's gradually transcended a traditional hip hop paradigm, gravitating towards indie. Indeed, Blood In The Cut was nominated for a Grammy in the Best Rock Song category. She has likewise linked with EDM producers, guesting on Sydney DJ Golden Features' trap 'n' B Telescope. Flaherty is routinely asked how she perceives her style – but, as the answer is "always changing", she's content to revisit it with every project. "I am really comfortable in this genreless space. I think there was a period of time where I felt self-conscious about that, and I felt like I was doing something wrong. But, on this record, and just in general, I think I'm kinda leaning into it. I guess it just feels very liberating and very exciting." She continues, "You can do whatever the fuck you want," joking, "at some point, that not 'fitting in' actually becomes like a superpower." There are no rules.

The Politics Of Privilege

Female rappers have long battled to prove their credibility in a male-dominated industry. In a recent interview with PeopleTV, the '90s urban super-producer Jermaine Dupri – who mentored Da Brat at his So So Def label – dismissed Cardi B, Nicki Minaj and Megan Thee Stallion as "strippers rapping". Cardi was quick to defend herself and others. By coincidence, the teen Bhad Bhabie has stirred up yet more controversy on Instagram Stories, claiming that she isn't supported as a white rapper. 

White female rappers are often disregarded justifiably. That Aussie expat Iggy Azalea has been accused of not merely co-opting a Black Southern hip hop, but also of minstrelsy. (This week the now-independent Azalea will deliver In My Defense, her substantially-delayed follow-up to 2014's The New Classic.) Nonetheless, some white female MCs have won respect within the hip hop scene as individualists. In 1990 the Californian Tairrie B released an album, Power Of A Woman, on Comptown, an imprint of Eazy-E's Ruthless Records, reclaiming the word "bitch" in the gangsta rap era. She later pivoted to metal. In 2015, Tairrie was welcomed back to hip hop with the weirdly occult LP Vintage Curses – the single Beware The Crone critiquing gendered ageism. New York's Princess Superstar was dubbed 'Feminem'. But she presented trailblazing art-rap LPs from the '90s on. Superstar subsequently helped pioneer electroclash, segueing into DJing. Flaherty, too, is doing her thing as K Flay.

Still, Flaherty is conscious of the pop culture debates arising from intersectional feminism. "My instinct as a human being, but also as an artist, is to listen before I say anything," she says. "I think our global culture on some level right now is about talking and inserting yourself and being loud – and that's how you get attention. There's all these examples right now of especially political figures who are being fucking loud, and people are looking at them. I think it's a totally backwards approach… We don't often talk about it in pop culture or whatever, but nuance is the great arbiter of so many things. Everything contains multitudes. Every person contains multitudes. I think, when we fail to appreciate nuance, or search for nuance in any situation, that's when things start to devolve, in my opinion."

Ultimately, Flaherty believes in honestly, acknowledging her privilege. "I started making music in the West Coast indie-rap scene here in California and that was my environment – and what so much of that community is premised on is expressing your authentic experience. I feel very lucky to have had that as a guiding principle. To me, when you're authentic and authentically interested and authentically willing to say, 'Hey, maybe I'm part of the problem,' that's not to say everybody needs to be a villain in order to be absolved – I think that's also not productive. But I do think it's very productive to say, like, 'Hey, as a person who is whatever-my-demographic-features-are – which has kinda nothing to do with my personality, my work ethic, any of this stuff – how has that really shaped my life? And what does it mean for the way that I exist in this world?'" 

It was for this reason that Flaherty and Folick chatted to GQ – to be open. "Miya and I thought a long time about speaking about this stuff, because sexual politics, identity politics, all this stuff, is incredibly complicated and nothing to be taken lightly. But, again, to me the guiding light is, 'Listen to other people, consider your own experience, and express it authentically and honestly.' I think, when you do that, you leave yourself in a position to be a learner and to also possibly offer some insight for the broader conversation."