I write to you first and foremost as a fangirl. I was so excited to finally be able to talk with one of my favorite local musicians, k3ko. Keah Washington makes “k3ko-type music,” as she puts it, blending R&B, pop, hyperpop, and Jersey Club influences. With only around a year of releasing music so far, she has already made some of my favorite songs. When I sat down with her for some coffee at Minneapolis’ beloved Hard Times Cafe, it was like meeting up with an old friend. She carries the same expressive and comforting energy in person that can be found in her music. 

Born a Singer

Born and raised in Minneapolis, k3ko has always felt connected to music. Since she was little, she has been singing. “I remember singing was just something I knew I could do. Adults around me would be crying and being weird, making sure I knew that I could sing. They were always wanting me to perform at open mics and things like that,” says k3ko.

Her long-time friend Ashley Franklin shares a memory of k3ko singing at her high school graduation, “That was the first time I really heard her sing, she had everyone in the audience crying, I was crying,” says Franklin. “I wasn’t just hopping on a wave, I’m a real singer,” explained k3ko. 

k3ko started making and releasing original music in May of 2022. In just over a year, she has created a discography that captures what some pop stars spend their whole lives trying to achieve. In this short time she has collaborated with many other artists including Almighty D on her song “Alone,” and other local artists such as seventhirtyatmorning and 4KUltra on songs “with u” and “Blush”. 

The Process

“I’ve always been a singer, but I never really thought about writing when I was younger,” says k3ko. “I started by writing songs in my Notes app, but when I had the music down it wasn’t encouraging. I couldn’t see the finished piece with just the lyrics, so I didn't care about the songs. I’ve been in studios with engineers, but they didn’t really see my vision. I felt like I wasn’t doing as much as I could. It was boring.”

When she started making music on her own with the app Beat Lab, it was a real turning point in her process. “I was able to do a lot with the background and layering in my music. I stopped writing my lyrics beforehand, everything became a lot easier. It became a lot easier to have patience with myself and just go with the flow,” she says. “It’s kind of like a painting, you have to keep mixing your colors, putting on layers, redoing some parts, and you might have to draw over that part again or whatever. But eventually, it comes together. I think of music and visual art as very similar in that way.” 

Her first memory of making her own music was an R&B song called “What You Been On?” Laying out lyrics and verses took “a long time.” She estimates it was about a week of working on that song every day for a couple of hours. “I don’t know what happened, I was listening to it on repeat every single day, over and over. I was obsessed,” says k3ko. “I’ve heard artists say they can’t listen to their own music, [but] I love listening to my own music. That was the first time I felt like I was hearing my song from an outside perspective. I just felt like what I was making was meaningful, I felt like it was all coming to life. I knew I couldn’t just make this song and never make music again, that’s when I really knew I could do it for real.”

Since then, k3ko has become very efficient in her process. She describes the process of making the standout track “Blush.” “[Collaborator and friend Matthew Mikell of 4KUltra] sent me a beat. I remember thinking the name ‘Blush’ was really clever. I sent him back my verse right away, maybe within a couple of hours. I was just really excited and motivated,” she says. 

“She’s just a very easy-going person. She makes the process really fun. She’s one of the most refreshing and inspiring people to work with for that reason, it’s not about the release for her, it’s about the fun of it all,” says Mikell. 

k3ko has her own genre that she calls “expression.” “I feel like I’m a very expressive person, I’m very verbal in my emotions. I feel like we’re losing that in music, especially in ‘fun’ music,” she says. “If you want to listen to emotional music, you’d have to listen to a sad song. I said ‘No, I’m about to bring love songs back to pop and Jersey Club.’ I sing about deep emotions on a fun beat. I’m just reminding people that it’s cool to embrace your own expression, reminding people that people still feel like this, people still think like this, and it’s OK.”

Being friends with k3ko 

“She’s just very open to working with people, she’s a people person,” says Franklin. All the praise k3ko’s friends gave to her came through during my interactions with her. She welcomed me with hugs at her most recent show, a performance at Seward Cafe on Oct. 13, and gave the crowd such positive energy, smiling through her shades on stage. It is clear that music is not only a way to showcase her talent, but to connect with her friends and community members. 

At shows, she brings her friends on stage, or they’re right next to the stage dancing, and taking photos and videos. She is surrounded by a supportive group of loving friends, and she loves to support her friends just as much. “I think everyone could benefit from some advice from Keah,” says Franklin. “It’s so refreshing to be around her. She brings a relaxed energy to the space. She made things a little less serious in a scene that can be unnecessarily intense sometimes,” says Mikell. “She’s so free-spirited and spontaneous. We could just sit in a room together and have fun,” adds another close friend, Veronica Gilbert.

What inspires k3ko

“Inspiration is spontaneous, I just get the vibe. With my friends, we could be kicking it right now and if I feel like I’m gonna make a song, I’ll make a song,” says k3ko. She credits her friends as big inspirations for her music, gushing about their shared creativity, and the love and support she receives from them.  

Her friends can attest to this: “There’s never a time where she’s planning a song, it’s always spur of the moment. She used to be over at my tiny studio apartment for weeks at a time and we’d be hanging out and she’d just randomly start making a song,” shares Gilbert.

“I broke my ankle last year and I had to change my ice pack every 30 minutes,” recalls Franklin. “She was at my place in the bathroom recording a song, and every 30 minutes on the dot she would pause and get an ice pack for me. She is really dedicated to everything in her life, whether that be her relationships or her music.”

k3ko describes music and the rest of her life as intertwined, not separate. She spends so much time being creative with her friends that she created a whole EP in the company of good friends Franklin and Gilbert. She recorded the songs “Lights” and others from her EP Shore House around them. Her friends described helping her name the EP, and k3ko even dropped it on Gilbert’s birthday. 

Her friends’ creativity inspires her music as well, “I really like being around my friends, we’ll randomly start cutting up clothes, or making jewelry, or drawing together,” she says.

“We love to sit around and draw for hours and ask each other advice on what color we should use and stuff like that,” Franklin says.

What music does she listen to to get inspired? “Justin Bieber for sure, I used to sing his songs and basically try to mimic him. I feel like I learned to sing from him,” expresses k3ko. “Juice Wrld! You need to include him!... skaiwater, especially his Jersey Club mixes. He kinda inspired me to play a little more with my beats. He was the first person that was singing on rage beats and singing on harder beats.”

“My favorite song to sing is ‘Thinking About You’ by Frank Ocean,” she adds. “I feel like if you’re a singer and you didn’t have a phase of that then you’re not a singer. I love to sing Justin Bieber, anything off of My World 2.0. I love Rihanna, my mom loved that. When I was young my mom would be obsessed with me singing and she’d be like, ‘Sing Alicia Keys!’ and stuff like that. Sometimes I’ll hear music and it’ll motivate me to want to make a song, but mostly it comes from just hearing beats, especially Jersey Club beats. That’s where I get the most ideas.”

Friendship and community are very important to k3ko. She has a deep passion for music and her personality effortlessly shines through her music. She brings so much light to a space and there is nothing more fun than dancing to her music. After seeing her perform at shows with multiple friends on stage hyping her up, it is obvious how beloved she is by the community and how bright her future is.

“I can develop and grow, I can be better. I know how to sing, it’s not that, I just want to do more,” she says. “I breathe music. Every word, every note, every run, every harmony, everything's intentional and everything is put there to make you feel like something.”