Features : Kidd Otto changes up the story and the music with new release “Hate to Love”

Until he discovered he had a voice, Kidd Otto was all rap. Now he sings and, along with other things, it has been life changing.

“Hate to Love,” introducing the singing Kidd Otto, will drop August 4. He doesn’t sound like someone singing for the first time. His voice is strong and clear and in command of the material.

Actually, he didn’t discover his voice. Someone else did and told him he had one.

“I started out, really, rapping — drill rap, gangsta rap,” he said. That is on his other two released tracks, “Big Yavo Flow” and “Well I’m Gone.”

“My mentor, my manager P-Wonda, he heard me one day in the studio. We did this one song, and then I started singing. And him and the engineer were like, ‘Hold on. Wait a minute. You can sound like that?’ And P-Wonda was like, ‘If you can sound like that, why you rapping?’’’

P-Wonda went on to tell him, he said, “Not to take nothing from the rap, but you know, rapping about drilling and guns and stuff is kind of getting played out and even some of the big rappers who do it, like Dirt and different people, they might rap about violence and street stuff, but they’ll sing it, and it makes it more appealing.”

The song is in the pop-R&B, love-gone-wrong genre, but his hip hop rap roots are clear and so is his enjoyment of the new style. Singing, the beat, the music combine to make him sound pretty satisfied, if not actually happy, about the breakup.

True love

Shouldn’t be this complicated

…

You’re the reason that I fell in love

Now you’re the reason that I’m hating us

Kidd Otto knows the street stuff. He was born in Virginia, grew up mainly in Chicago and later in Washington, D.C., and knows the kind of neighborhoods where the street is life and the drill and the gangsta reflects that life.

“Growing up in Chicago, growing up in Washington, D.C., out east, it was tough. I got affiliated with the gang early. I’m just blessed to still be here, because a lot of my friends, they got killed by gun violence and gang activity. So for me to still be here is a blessing. And I’m trying to change my life. I don’t want to be a statistic.”

He is 25 now and living in Greensboro, North Carolina, where he met P-Wonda and got serious about music. He is with P-Wonda’s Ooh Wee Da Label and has been making music seriously for about five years, mostly rapping.

Until now.

“Basically, ‘Hate to Love’ is really a sad song. It’s about me breaking up with a girl, you know, and I wrote a song, but I wrote it to an up-tempo Jersey type beat, like an Afro-type.”

The song also features Rayleon, who is also Kidd Otto’s engineer.

“When I got to the studio, we both were going through something with our girls. So, while we’re recording the song, Ray’s writing his verse, and we came out with ‘Hate to Love.’ And, like I said, it’s really a song about breakup, but we put it to an up-tempo beat, so it just feels great.”

He writes his own lyrics, and he can come up with them easily, he said. “It’s just in me.”

“But it’s easier to come up with singing lyrics than rap lyrics.”

The change in musical style reflect his change of lifestyle.

“I got love for my family, and people believe in me and keep pushing me to the change. I can’t, I don’t want to let myself down. I don’t want to let them down, and I want people to hear my heart instead of judging me by how I look or the way I used to rap or the things they heard I was into in the streets.”

His plans include some love songs, some club songs, and one with a name already, “Best Friend.” He and Rayleon may make a tape together, “because we both just complement each other.”

He will still rap, because he wants to show a lot of different things to his fans. Mostly, though, he will sing.

Singing, he said, “is more fun and way easier for me to make music, and everybody likes it. So, I’m loving it, and I’m going to keep doing it.”

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