Kate Upton - Featuring Vonnegutt "Bright Eyes"

Kyle Lucas was working out at the gym with an old buddy from
Pope High School, T.J. Yates. As the two worked out, they caught up on each other’s lives. Lucas told Yates about his blossoming hip-hop career. His band, Vonnegutt, was finishing up its debut for Purple Ribbon Records, the vanity label of OutKast cofounder Big Boi. The group had appeared on Big Boi’s critically acclaimed solo album, Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty, and performed their collaboration, Follow Us, on festival stages around the country with him. Which is a long way to come from recording rap demos in your bedroom—with album artwork by T.J. Yates’s little brother—as Lucas did as a teenager.

Yates, a quarterback, filled in Lucas on how he had recently been drafted by the Houston Texans. “Someone told me the other day he’s been starting and killin’ them!” Lucas says from his home in the Atlanta suburb of Marietta. “Man, I’m not a sports fan. I don’t know what’s going on.”

It’s no wonder the MC is not entirely well versed in the comings and goings of the NFL. He’s had his mind focused on a rap career since the fifth grade. There are dozens of those old mixtapes sitting back at his parents house. They make Lucas cringe now. When he was a freshman at Kennesaw State University, Lucas, inspired by Gym Class Heroes and the Roots, became set on starting his own instrumental hip-hop act. He typed up a flier with little pull tabs: “mc looking to start band.” If you were anyone in -Marietta, Ga., or on the campus of Kennesaw State circa 2007, you likely saw one. They were everywhere. A Guitar Center employee named Neil Garrard spotted one at work and gave Lucas a call. And Vonnegutt was formed.

Lucas credits the friendly Atlanta rap scene for rocketing Vonnegutt’s profile. “We’re a melting pot. In Atlanta, there isn’t any beef. People are in each other’s videos. Everyone is friends,” he says. “This rapper from Ohio was all excited and telling me how he got to meet Young Jeezy. I was like, Aw, man, we’re from Atlanta. You go to the mall and you can meet all the famous people. I’ve been seeing Jeezy there since middle school. Usher is probably at Lenox Square Mall right now.”

Q & A with Vonnegutt

The first record you owned?

In third grade I got that song, I Wish I Was Little Bit Taller, by Skee-Lo. A couple years ago I found the disc at my parents house and went back to listen to it. I thought, Man, this is still pretty dope.

Your worst experience on the road as a musician?

We’ve done a million shows where no one showed. I’ll forget lyrics, whole verses. Just this past New Year’s Eve, we sold out the W Hotel. I forgot two verses. Old Kyle would have had a panic attack and freeze up on stage. But I freestyled. I do it all the time. I probably forget a verse a night. I saw Black Thought forget a verse at a Roots show and he pulled it off.

Your favorite beach?

Recently with my girlfriend I went to Fort Lauderdale. That was awesome. That was beautiful. Probably that. Or, well, Venice Beach is cool, too. Probably Venice Beach because of the crazies out there.