Kalisway may be only 25 years old, but you could be forgiven for thinking she’s an old soul. Heavily influenced by 1980s R&B and funk, Kalisway presents a fresh and contemporary take on that sound with her latest album, A Kid From Toronto.
Select the image to play the YouTube video of the Kalisway song “Like That”
“Every single time I play my music, they instantly think I’m from L.A., or some place in the States, because they cannot imagine that funk is coming out of Toronto,” says Kalisway. “By having an album title like that, I wanted it to be strong, because I wanted to let people know… I embrace my city doing something different, which is going to let people know talent like this is coming out of the city.”
Kalisway grew up listening to classic funk from the likes of Cameo, Parliament, and Funkadelic, and also connected deeply with the sounds of 1980s super-producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, She obsessively studied their knob-twiddling techniques on Janet Jackson’s seminal 1986 masterstroke, Control. Consequently, when Kalisway first ventured out in the music industry, she wanted to enter as a producer, or a recording engineer.
“Even before I fully believed in myself as being a producer, I honestly just thought I was going to be like, ‘Oh, I just do mixing, or audio engineering,’ like, really behind the scenes,” she says. ”I was trying to find who I was, in terms of just being creative in general. I wanted to know if my path was to be a producer and create for others, and to maybe use my songwriting element just to give them to different people, instead of creating for myself.”
A creative moment of clarity occurred when she connected with the Toronto arts and community hub The Remix Project. The JUNO Award-winning Toronto hip-hop producer and Remix Project instructor Rich Kidd noted her arranging and songwriting skills, and re-directed her audio engineering interests in the program, urging Kalisway to pursue a path as an artist.
It took awhile for Kalisway to grow comfortable with her distinctive, high-pitched voice. “The tone of it is different,” she says. “My voice is very high in general, so I didn’t think it would hit, or impact people the same way I wanted them to [be impacted] in my head.”
Soon, Kalisway would release Cream and Special K, a pair of 2020 EPs featuring the squelchy effervescence of tracks like “Cherry.” She would eventually follow up with her 2021 full-length debut Hit ‘Em With the Funk, featuring the infectious “Like That.”
Kalisway’s music started to gain some attention, and she began to land syncs with several TV shows, including three AppleTV+ productions, Bel-Air, Sweet Life, and Platonic; Harlem, on Prime Video; and Survival of the Thickest, on Netflix.
Select the image to play the YouTube video of the Kalisway song “Water”
With the syncs affording her much-needed time and space to focus on her craft, Kalisway took a year off to gather more life experiences from which to draw in her songwriting, and studied producers like Babyface, and the late Quincy Jones. A Kid From Toronto proves it was time well spent. Tracks like the yearning “Babygirl” and strutting lead single “Superstar” display Kalisway’s increasing confidence and comfort level, unapologetically meshing her songwriting, sound sculpting, and vocal skills. “I grew tremendously, not just production-wise,” she says Kalisway, citing “Water” as an example.
“That song is about feeling anxious, and doubting my craft, finally fighting out of that fear – and now being in a place where I don’t doubt who I am, or my sound,” says Kalisway. “And when you hear all those elements in the song, you might not get it immediately, because you could possibly think I’m talking about somebody else, or maybe a relationship. But it’s truly about myself, and I don’t think I was in that world at all before this album.”
Consequently, A Kid From Toronto not only shows Kalisway’s knack for re-configuring a past era for contemporary ears. It also charts her impressive growth and development, from being a tentative sound engineer to a fully-fledged, self-contained artist.
“My main goal as an artist, and putting my sound out there, is just to spread positivity, good love, good music, good vibes, all the time. Music that people can dance to, right?,” says Kalisway. “For awhile, my goal was just so strong on making people dance, and feel good, and uplifting [them], that I forgot to tie in the element where people could relate to me as well. So [now] I’m tapping into different skills: how to embrace my vulnerability, while still maintaining that goal of making people dance.”