“K-Drama is a fun, energetic, and word-based Christian rapper from Cincinnati, Ohio.”
“I call myself K-Drama because I act out the King.” His first name, Regis, means king in Latin. He wants to point to Jesus, the King, in his music. “Drama just represents me being dramatic. If my life was like a play, I would want people to see Jesus, the King, as the main character.”
K-Drama is a veteran of Christian hip-hop, having released his first album in 2005. “I try to approach music from a fresh perspective… I try to bring my own ideas into music.” He says that over the years, his music, as well as all of Christian hip-hop, has improved drastically.
When K-Drama started rapping, “I was fifteen years old, you’re talking ’99, 2000 so a lot of the producers weren’t as accessible as they are now. I made my own beats just because I needed beats, but then eventually I learned how to use various pieces of equipment and got good at it.” He went on to produce for fellow artists such as Lecrae and FLAME.
Whetherman is the Cincinnati artist’s ninth solo project and has been in the works since 2015.
“I want to encourage people to not live by emotions, but to live by the Word of God.”
The project has a weather theme, with each song representing a different day of the week and the various weather patterns that can occur.
“Life is gonna bring those rainy days and life is gonna bring those snowstorms.” He says that though emotions are an important part of who we are, we must allow our faith to guide us through the ups and downs of life.
“If you live in Cincinnati where I’m from, you can get all four seasons in one week.”
To come up with the tracklist, he thought “if every day could be a weather pattern, let me model each day to fight that weather pattern.”
Whetherman begins with “Sonday,” “which is like your perfect sunny day… there is no other day like a day in the son Jesus.”
As the week continues, you move forward to “Mundane,” signifying Monday. “In the typical work culture, Monday is like ‘Ugh, I’ve gotta go to work’ so I played off that.” K-Drama made the instrumentals sound like rain and thunder to imitate a dreary day.
Then on “Today,” K-Drama wants to encourage listeners that “this is a great day to take advantage of the life that God gave you.”
The project continues with “Windsday,” “which is like man, we went from sun to rain to, ok, it’s a decent day, to ah man, this windstorm.” To make the beat, he imitated the sound of the wind using woodwind instruments.
“The bible refers to the Holy Spirit like a mighty, rushing wind, so I play all that together.”
“Brrsday” represents the cold and “Fryday” represents the heat. K-Drama said it was a challenging song to write because people always look forward to Friday as the end of the school or work week. “I didn’t want the song to sound like a negative song, discounting all the other days. How do I spin this in a way that glorified God but relates to people [who are like] ‘Yeah, I’m off work’?”
“Shatterday” represents record breaking heat, “but I’m saying I’m breaking through all the opposition I faced through the week.”
“You start out with this dream, you start out with this goal, but then you have opposition along the way. In Christ Jesus, at the end we win.”
K-Drama says that though for some people, life may never be amazing on Earth, it will be a wonderful day in Heaven.
When he was writing the album, K-Drama said that each day and the corresponding song came naturally. “For me what was important was that each day sounds like the weather that I’m trying to illustrate.”
Lately K-Drama has been teaching free music production classes to people in his community after having received a generous $8000 grant.
“Someone donated to me enough money to buy eight iPads… I use it as a platform to preach the Gospel.”
In the classes he teaches teens and adults how to use music production software and shares his own story of how he has been making music for the Lord.
K-Drama has been married for eleven years and has three kids. He has been making music full time since 2009 as an artist and a producer. The advice he gives to artists about balancing a music career with family is “as long as you’re bringing in more than you’re putting out, boom, you’re there, but don’t sacrifice your family for it either.”
“I hope people are inspired by my project… You can still rap about Jesus and meet people right where they are.”
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Get Whetherman on iTunes, Amazon, or Google Play. Listen on Spotify.