Killah Priest sets new record with Alaskan artists on ‘Alaska Borealis’

This story has been updated due to the artists changing the name of the album.

American rapper Killah Priest, a Wu-Tang Clan affiliate, is seeking to elevate Alaskan artists’ voices on the new album “Alaska Borealis” set to release at 8 p.m. July 27 at the Crystal Saloon.

The project’s goal is to put Alaskan hip-hop artists on the map, said event organizer Lance Mitchell, a featured musician on the album.

“They’re gonna be famous,” Mitchell said. “They already have the talent. They just need the exposure.”

Priest was raised in New York; however, Mitchell refers to him as an “adopted Juneauite” since this is the fourth time the rapper will perform in Alaska’s capital city.

Alaskan musicians impressed Priest with their opening performances at his 2019 Juneau Arts and Humanities Council concert.

Mitchell said that’s when the rapper’s idea sparked to showcase the up-and-rising talent in Alaska, but it was a long process. Priest also performed in 2021 and opened for Afroman in 2023.

Usually the rapper gets paid to do features like “Alaska Borealis,” but he did not for this project. He decided to help get musicians exposure after talking with Mitchell.

Tickets for this month’s show are available through Eventbrite. “Alaska Borealis” will be available to stream and for purchase on YouTube, Amazon and Apple. He also plans to create CDs with 100 available for purchase and 100 sent to radio stations.

Mitchell said he believes the difference between artists in Alaska and artists in the Lower 48 can be heard through their messages.

“Cars and women and you know, clubs and all that stuff, getting money, that seems to be the focus, but the focus of these artists aren’t necessarily negated to that,” he said. “They’re about living, having fun, you know, enjoying their life.”

Juneau artists Radiophonic Jazz and Zansler, along with Sitka’s Phonetic, will perform at the release event. Fairbanks-based Alaska Redd and artists from Juneau’s Diamond Dollar Entertainment are also featured on the album.

Priest is known for his spiritual lyrics, containing religious references and metaphors, according to the artist’s official biography. He’s also connected to the Black Hebrew Israelites through his rhymes, and is known for his controversial and political subject matter. He is also a part of the supergroup HRSMN along with Canibus, Ras Kass and Kurupt.Killah.

In the soon-to-be-released album, local musicians aimed to build off Priest’s musical themes while incorporating their Alaskan perspectives.

Arias Hoyle, a.k.a Air Jazz, is an Afro-Indigenous hip-hop artist who raps in Tlingit. He has two songs on the album — “Uncle Tomahawk” and “Wu-Tang Bonfire.”

Hoyle sought to make his songs equally Killah Priest and Alaska Native orientated by balancing East Coast sound with his own lyrical vision. “Uncle Tomahawk” began as a solo project, but then Hoyle discovered the album opportunity.

“It’s supposed to be a representation of our Native community and showing that we have kind of this militant warrior lifestyle where we defend our way of life,” he said. “And rather than saying ‘Uncle Tom,’ which is seen as a stereotypical black man who has very like obedient white type attitude, Uncle Tomahawk would be the more Indigenous version of that — where an African American who’s Afro-Indigenous can express their Native culture and stand up for their way of life for both their Black and Native side.”

Hoyle said he sees the potential for “Alaska Borealis” to jumpstart his and the other featured artists’ careers.

He added that he hopes his voice being spread nationally through entertainment can provide a future platform for Indigenous leaders to advocate for other issues.

“I want to have a voice for the Lingít community,” he said. “I want to have a voice for the overall Alaskan Native community as a whole. Once you have one big network to choose from and everyone knows about it, all of those connections can be utilized. And on top of that I also want to start new generations of hip-hop artists that can have these connections on standby, so that when we meet someone who’s really poppin’ off and has tons of skill, they can work with someone like Killah Priest and instantly establish a name for themselves.”

Hoyle and Chris Talley, whose stage name is Radiophonic, have performed together for several years — when together, they’re known as Radiophonic Jazz. They both grew up listening to Wu-Tang Clan and called “Alaska Borealis” a dream come true. Talley’s song on the album is titled “Dance.”

“‘Dance’ is just kind of made for seeing someone you really think is really beautiful on the dance floor and just being like, ‘I see you over there. I want you to get up and dance with me, straight up,’” he said. “And I think Killah added his part perfectly, honestly — his is a little bit more slower, a little bit more sensual. Mine’s a little bit more, you know, just expressing how I feel about the person in general. I think it complemented each other very well.”

Talley said “Dance” is a more upbeat love song than others he’s written and he looks forward to performing it on July 27, which is also his 27th birthday.

Hoyle and Talley both said they feel like their stage presence has improved significantly since they opened for Priest in 2019. Juneau artist Zander Kotlarov, a.k.a Zansler, shared a similar sentiment.

Kotlarov is a singer, songwriter and producer who identifies as non-binary. They recalled the moment Priest came up to them after their opening performance in 2019 and said “you’ve got something, and I want to put you on an album.”

“I was really touched by that,” Kotlarov said. “I didn’t expect that reaction at all. But I’m happy he liked that. It gave me a lot more confidence in what I was doing. I was like, ‘Wow, OK, cool.’ I don’t take myself very seriously and I just kind of do this stuff because I like doing it. So when someone recognizes it, I never expect it.”

They first made the beat for their featured song “Yesterday” back in 2019.

“I was kind of in a period where I was like, ‘Oh, I’m going to make beats for other people,’” Kotlarov said. “But occasionally, I would make something, and I’d be like, ‘Oh, this is way too good. I need to keep this for myself.’ And that was one of those things. Like the chord progression, I always just thought it was really special. It’s funny, because always in the back of my head, I was like, ‘You know, it’d be sick to get Killah Priest on this.’ And then, the opportunity came this year.”

Kotlarov sat down to write “Yesterday” with the goal of capturing Killah Priest’s world-at-large and societal messages. They said it pushed them to channel a conscious rap direction when usually their musical genre is defined as pop, hip-hop, and R&B.

“It’s really exciting to not only have him on stage, but to perform something with him,” Kotlarov said. “It’s gonna be special. I actually haven’t heard any of these other songs that these other artists have made with Killah Priest and I’m really excited to see what these other artists did with him.”

Juneau artists recorded at Second2NoneSound, Josh Laboca’s home studio in Lemon Creek. Other artists recorded from home and Priest recorded his verses from his studio in L.A. Laboca also creates his own R&B, pop, and hip-hop music.

Laboca, a.k.a Jbo Audioe, said he went to the Academy of Art University in San Fransisco for sound design.

“That process allowed me to really try to be a storyteller for mixing for a lot of these artists,” he said. “The whole process for editing the song ‘Kingdom’ — it’s probably my favorite one because there’s six artists on one song. I always find the most challenging ones my favorite ones because I try to learn something from it.”

Like Priest, Laboca didn’t charge anyone for the project. He wanted to make it possible for Mitchell to complete the album. The process showing the artists recording behind the scenes will be available to watch on his YouTube channel.

“My goal for this album is for the artists to just keep creating,” Laboca said. “A lot of artists get down off of one album because it didn’t go nowhere. Well, you have to be an entrepreneur at that point. It’s like a car salesman. You got a bunch of cars in your lot, but if you’re not going to try to sell them, well, you’re gonna go bankrupt. If you’re an artist, you make a song, you got to put it out, in this case, create content, and go around this town and perform as much as you can to try to get people to know who you are. Because that song, that song has a personality, but it doesn’t have an identity. That identity is that artist.”

After the July 27 performance, Radiophonic Jazz is scheduled to open for Michael Franti on Aug. 6 and for The Former Ladies of The Supremes on Aug. 8. Zansler is currently working on their second solo album, “A New Way Out.”

• Contact Jasz Garrett at jasz.garrett@juneauempire.com or (907) 723-9356.