How Rage Against The Machine Shapes Citizen Kay's Live Shows

Canberra's rising rap star Citizen Kay (aka Kojo Ansah) doesn't light candles and mellow out in preparation for gigs. Instead, he cranks up one of his favourite acts: rap-metallers Rage Against The Machine. "Before every gig I listen to Rage!," Ansah laughs.

Ansah, nicknamed 'CK' by his publicist, recently dropped Belly Of The Beast - his first album on Illy's ONETWO label. Today he's on the road as the Melbourne hip hop mogul's support - next stop Geelong. But he's also headlining his own dates.

Ansah arrived in Australia from West Africa's Ghana at six years old, his parents settling in the ACT - where he still contentedly resides. "I don't know why everyone leaves Canberra 'cause it's super-sick!" he extols. In his downtime, the MC, producer and multi-instrumentalist works "behind the scenes", recording and mixing local music-makers.

Ansah has a music role model in the family - Sydney's Miracle is his "big cuz" (and a fellow Kanye West fan). "I feel like I'm following in his footsteps without meaning to as well - 'cause he was rapping, got signed, then I was like, 'Hey, I wanna rap.'" In 2014 Ansah independently released the Demokracy EP - home to the single Yes! - and received his inaugural ARIA nom. His full-length debut, With The People, showed the next year. Yet Ansah felt that he "rushed" the album - being "super-keen to get something out there." For Belly Of The Beast, he applied lessons acquired from With The People - recording on the down-low to ensure himself maximum creative space. "Taking my time was a massive thing I learnt to start with, but also just being okay with saying whatever I felt like I needed to say. I didn't put a filter on myself in whatever way." Though focussed on lyric-writing, Ansah has developed a full modern funk sound with live instrumentation - his key studio collaborator jazzman Patrick "PattyBoomba" Gabriel.

Belly Of The Beast is a bold rumination on selfhood. Even apparently carefree songs carry deeper meanings - the lead single These Kicks (featuring Georgia B) tackling materialism. Most powerful is Barred, which, sampling a Facebook video by woke Melbourne studio engineer Tony Mantz, deals with racial injustice. Ironically, Ansah was hesitant to include the song on the album, worrying that listeners might skip it.

Ansah wrote Barred both in response to calls to change the Australia Day date and a discussion with Briggs about the relevance of #BlackLivesMatter to Indigenous Australians. Around the same time, Ansah visited Ghana and saw its inequalities through adult eyes. He personalises that global struggle in the emotive Never Again. "I guess Barred was more the anger side of it, whereas Never Again was more the reflective [side] - asking myself the question of why am I so upset about it all?"

Channelling Rage Against The Machine, Ansah's current show, centred on Belly Of The Beast, is "uptempo", "energetic" and thumpin'. Indeed, he tours with a drummer rather than a DJ. Says Ansah, "It's slowly been getting a bit heavier and heavier and kind of more in the mood of the record."