Kaj Loud Brings Humility & Consciousness to PHX Hip-Hop

Kaj Loud – writer, rapper, emcee, spoken word artist and lyrical genius, among other things – is the embodiment of gratitude, and he is anything but quiet about it and the spiritual philosophy that influences his outlook on life and music. He brings a sunny personality from Vallejo, CA and serves it with a side of punching, impactful rhymes that have you rewinding just to hear them again.

He didn’t know it at the time, but the life he spent literally chasing external validation on the football or baseball field wasn’t the one he was supposed to be living. Student Athlete was the only title he held until the City College of Sacramento baseball coach cut him from the team and, suddenly, an invisible weight was lifted from his shoulders. He remembers that conversation like it was yesterday, not because it was upsetting but because it marked the beginning of a freedom he’d never tasted before, a freedom that would eventually lead to his music career. 

“One thing I could do very well [back then] was freestyle,” Kaj Loud remembers now. “So I thought about that when I was sitting in my room…[and] I took that opportunity and I started writing in my notes, and I just started making songs. I didn’t know what I was doing, for real. At the time, I was just rapping.”

From the moment Kaj Loud was cut from the team, writing songs just felt right, so he dove in head-first, his journey ultimately bringing him to Arizona where he would write and release three albums, two EPs, and countless singles and features, his track Shrimp n Noodles amassing over 400k streams on Spotify. His music has been described as vivacious and source-coded, conscious and soulful, and authentic, his songs transmuting real bars, real pain, and relentless skill. 

“The reason why the pain shows up in my music is because me making music is my way of expressing the trauma,” he says. “My entire life has been an internal battle, essentially, where it's really hard for me to get out of my own head sometimes, and I haven't quite figured out why that is yet…pain helps me prosper, in a way.”

To him, every experience is an opportunity for self-discovery and learning, no matter if the moment made him happy or hurt. This lesson-driven philosophy heavily influences his perspective on the human experience and in turn, the themes and topics he weaves into his music, even the ink he puts on his skin. His life doesn’t exist inside a sterile vacuum but instead in tandem with every other human around him, all of humanity consisting of people learning how to be alive for the first time, constantly meeting new people and experiencing new things. 

“[N]o matter how much life you’ve lived, there’s always new levels and new devils,” he says. “We’re all born with different cards and we’re all playing the same game. It’s just a matter of how we play the hand that we’re dealt that makes us, us.”

Kaj Loud prefers to play his hand with humility and gratitude, energy and authenticity. He performs on stage as if he were performing in his bedroom, all the energy, soul, and goofiness he can muster spilling out onto the stage along with his words. 

“It’s me not only breaking the ice between me and the crowd, but me being able to release and just be myself for a little bit of time,” he says. “...getting to do that is liberating…it’s cathartic.”

Just like a deck of cards, there’s more than one face Kaj Loud has to wear, a process that’s energetically exhausting and difficult to manage in a space where confidence can quickly be perceived as cockiness. Fine tuning his outward vibrations is not only essential for his existence, but for the strengthening of his community and his craft. 

“Everybody don’t deserve to get the full version of you,” he says. “If you’ve got good energy, a lot of people will see that, gravitate towards you, and try to siphon that off because they don’t have it…Depending on what role you land, depending on the environment, you just gotta be able to discern it.”

Despite knowing that not everyone has good intentions, his outlook on life is endlessly positive, optimistic, and encouraging. He doesn’t care if you like his music or if you agree with what he raps about, but he does care about where his energy is spent and the impact it makes.

“I enjoy the compliments and it feels good to know people recognize what I’m doing. But what I care about most is, is this helping you change positively?,” he says. “I just want people to understand how to be aware of themselves and their environments and how to be more of themselves.”

He one day dreams of spreading this awareness to stadium-sized crowds, but will settle instead for a vibrationally intentional EP called Spiritual Detox, a collection of seven tracks to reflect the seven chakras of the body, Kaj Loud lacing the beats with solfeggio frequencies to tune the listener’s body to each song. This project, along with the third and final installment of his and ZayGoCrzy’s EP series, 24SXTN, are scheduled to be released by mid-2026, extending his already lengthy discography and proving that he’s no fake motherf*cker.