With his razor-sharp wordplay edgy style, this 26-year-old artist offers an unfiltered look into his inner demons, life and current affairs. Delivering each song
with an uncompromising realness that’s earned him an exceptionally devoted fanbase. This artists name is Call Me Karizma.
In that outpouring of feeling, Call Me Karizma transforms his pain into music with fierce wordplay and life’s interactions; he now receives dozens DMs daily from fans declaring that his music has saved their lives.
Call Me Karizma slayed the stage in The Crowfoot in Pontiac, Michigan! The unique music style of Call Me Karizma incorporates rap, synth, and metal. Fans can expect a very intimate show with the opportunity to see Karizma at a smaller venues. It gives fans the opportunity to get to know the band on a more personal level than just going to a show. If you have the opportunity to catch one of these shows in the future, do NOT pass it up!
Our photographer Oli Quinn had a moment to sit down and chat with CMK about a new upcoming album, upcoming European tour, tattoos, and his fans.
OQ: what’s up, man? It’s nice to meet you.
CMK: Nice to meet you, dude. I like the tattoos by the way.
OQ: Thank you!
CMK: How long did that take to get? When did you start?
OQ: I started my sleeve in 2013, so it’s been a while.
CMK: Nice, i’m scared to do color. I just have a bunch of black and white ones.
OQ: Why? what is it about color?
CMK: it’s just, i don’t know, some people don’t look as good in color in my opinion,
ya know like tattoos. So I just don’t want to be that guy.
OQ: Where are most of your tattoos?
CMK: I just have like patchy stuff everywhere, ya know? Just random stuff. They’re
all over my ribs, just everywhere. I’ll finish it, like make it into something eventually.
OQ: Oh, for sure. So tell me man, what’s tour been like? Has it been fun?
CMK: Yeah, it’s been amazing! This is our 16th show, and honestly at this size of
venues and some of the markets we’re playing we want to get like 100 tickets, and
we only had two shows that didn’t. One was 98 and one was a smaller one.
Everything else has been crazy. This show was about 200 tickets, Yesterday in
Cleveland was around 205, Fort Collins like 230, Arizona like 230. So we’ve
stepped it up. This is for sure my biggest headline tour and we had no support.
Literally just me and if there’s any locals that want to be on it.
OQ: I was at a show here on Saturday shooting for Mayday Parade and I met one
of your openers.
CMK: Oh sick! So literally three days ago it was just me that was gonna play and i
kinda wanted to do that just to see how much i can actually draw. Ya know not
worry about oh maybe this band brought 50 tickets, i wanna see what my real
draw is for support stuff and to get on other bigger tours. I actually brought in 200
tickets by myself, so that’s the goal.
OQ: How do you go about finding people to open for you? Do they reach out to
you or?
CMK: Some people reach out, sometimes the promoters will be like “these guys
are good if you need an extra 15 tickets or so.” Then some people message me
through instagram and i kinda check it out and if it’s good I tell my managers about
it, and we make it happen. Ya know i’m not anywhere near where i want to be yet,
but I feel i made it to a certain level and i’ve always dreamed of this. So like when i
was doing local shows, if someone put me on I didn’t forget that, cause you’ve got
a chance to make some fans. i hope to be that for people.
OQ: Oh absolutely. That’s really admirable. What are you looking forward to within
the next year? You have anything coming out or coming up?
CMK: i’m announcing some European dates. About seven or eight shows, it’s
gonna be sick. Then putting out my first real album. I was with Sony and i put out
like 7-8 songs, this is gonna be like 13 songs and we’re gonna do a vinyl and
everything.
OQ: So it’s gonna be like a full drop then?
CMK: Yeah, we’ve designed it already and it takes like 6 months to make vinyl just
cause of how the world is right now. We’re already putting those in production
though.
OQ: Dope! Alright man, we’ll wrap this up. Do you have anything you want to say
to your fans or anyone trying to do what you’re doing?
CMK: Just being able to meet my fans is insanely cool cause over my career the
internet is a blessing and a curse. Theres a lot of negativity and i think it outshines
the positivity even though there is more positivity. I think just being able to meet
people in person really gets to show who i am as a person. Knock out all the
bullshit, and just be like “Karizma’s a good dude, and he puts on a good show.” So
any fans that wanna come out to a show I really implore them too. I try to stay after and meet every single person at merch and things like that. I think it’s really important. We lose connection over that sometimes, like the real connection is coming to a
concert, meeting the artist, seeing that person in real life. We’re so on our phones
so much that we forget that, that’s what life’s about.
OQ: Cool man, Thank you so much. Metal Blur Media and I really appreciate you
taking the time to talk.
CMK: Appreciate you so much dude.