Kota The Friend Gets Real About Music And Mental Health On ‘On My Mind’
In this week’s episode of On My Mind, producer and host Raquel Quintana sits down with hip-hop artist Kota the Friend to discuss the advantages of being an independent artist, the importance of taking care of your mental health, and how gratitude continues to play a big part in his career.
Growing up in Brooklyn, Kota always had an affinity for music. He attended the Brooklyn High School of the Arts and went on to create a rap trio in college before focusing more on his solo work. But even as his popularity grew, he never let go of the do-it-yourself mindset that went into his artistry, even as he began receiving—and turning down—record deals.
“I shoot my own videos. I record my own music,” Kota explained. “I don’t have an engineer in there saying, ‘You ready?’ That’s all me. I go from the computer to the booth to the computer to the booth. Being an independent artist — it’s like your hands are directly on your career.”
Kota’s full artistic control doesn’t just allow him to make the music he wants, but also to tell the stories he thinks are most important. As he told Quintana, the messages in his songs are often deeply personal, stemming from his own insecurities and growing up feeling alone in his struggle with mental health, a concept that often felt foreign in his upbringing.
“At first, I didn’t even think I was talking about mental health,” Kota said. “I figured I was just telling my story and talking about how I felt about life, and it wasn’t until I actually started learning about the mind and the brain and how it works and how trauma affects your life and how it affects your personality that I started realizing that I’ve been on this journey the whole time, and now I can actually pinpoint what’s what. I’m just now realizing that I’m actually a mental health advocate, and it just made me want to be more careful about what I say and what I put into the world.”
And it’s true—Kota’s influence is undeniable. As he grew as a musician, it became more and more common for him to receive DMs from fans who thanked him for changing their life and helping them get through particularly tough times. It’s because of this that Kota’s music has evolved in a way that keeps his audience in mind and that continues to look at hardship in both an honest and uplifting way.
“I want to give good messages to the world. I don’t want to put anything negative into the world, so I focus on making sure what I’m saying is right and that it’s coming from a good place and not a depressed place. Even when I’m talking about sad things, I want to show people the light at the end of the tunnel.”
What’s striking about Kota isn’t just the realness in his music, though—it’s the realness in who he is. He may boast over 300k Instagram followers and 3 million monthly Spotify listeners, but at the end of the day, he’s still human—something he believes it’s easy for people to forget when looking at his life on the outside.
“I’m just a person,” he said. “I mess up. I do good things. I have people who love me. I take care of my child and he loves me and I love him. My family has their own things to say about me. They have good things and bad things to say about me. I’m just a guy. You shouldn’t put me on a pedestal.”
Check out the entire conversation between Quintana and Kota the Rapper in On My Mind’s third episode, which premieres Tuesday, February 1 exclusively on Thought Catalog’s YouTube channel. You can also subscribe to On My Mind on Spotify.
Be sure to check out Kota’s newest album Lyrics to GO, Vol. 3.