Kid Ink is probably best known to the the general public for last year's "Show Me" single featuring Chris Brown from My Own Lane. The up-and-coming rapper recruited Tyga, Pusha T and Machine Gun Kelly for the DJ Mustard-produced effort. Ink is getting ready to release his third LP, Full Speed, later this month and the rapper was able to pull some more strings to get Brown, Usher and Trey Songz to contribute. He spoke to Billboard about the new effort.
"Body Language," the first single from the album due out Jan. 30, features RCA labelmates Usher and Tinashe. It hit 72 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
"I was in the studio with [producers] Stargate and Cashmere Cat, getting my creative juices and vibing," Ink said about the track's inception. "We heard Usher was also working on his new stuff and sent that one over. It got an instant response from his camp. I had this idea to link up -- from the female vocal I wrote on the record -- with Tinashe, who I know from running in the same circles, being on the same label. It was an easy go."
Despite gaining some traction in 2014, Ink is still not as prominent as most of his collaborators. He's not too worried about it, though.
"The way I work and approach music -- that's how I separate myself," he said. "I'm always here and writing for other people and trying to keep my sound. At the end of the day, I've got nice publishing checks. You look at history books and you'll see my name."
XXL gave My Own Lane a rating of XL, writing, "Kid Ink isn't an innovator. Kid Ink is a masterful replicator that reinvents genre's strengths and refashions them into a sound that moves forward while managing to stay true to its LA hip-hop roots. He hits all the high notes, tapping into the club energy that will undoubtedly make him a star, but he also hits all the right notes, crafting the more grounded records that will keep him humble."
