By Tanya Gamble

Coming from a musical family,  K Pi$tol first was inspired to pursue music after witnessing the local success of his brother, Jay Batters, aka Kenneth Pettway Jr.

“The real reason that made me really want to make music is my big brother, Jay Batters,” K Pi$tol said in a recent interview. “If you haven’t heard of Jay Batters, I’d say look him up. He was – I’m not gonna say was – he is one of the biggest rappers to come out of Buffalo. 

“Unfortunately, he was arrested and locked up for a long period of time and wasn’t able to do everything I feel like he was capable of. But prior to him being arrested, he made songs with Benny the Butcher and Conway [The Machine] before they even blew up.

“He really pushed me to want to try and give it a go. [I wanted to] be like my big brother. He was my inspiration.”

K Pi$tol said that his recent favorite song to write and perform has been his latest single “Hat,” featuring Baby Kia.  Viewers be forewarned: the video has some violent and disturbing elements.

“[‘Hat’] is my most recent biggest song. I had a great time recording it. It sounds really clean and that surprised me,” K Pi$tol said. “I love the beat. I love the song, and it’s not like me to like a song that I released a minute ago and still gravitate to it and still don’t mind performing it.

“Cool story about that song is that I recorded it two to three years ago and I wasn’t too fond of the song at first. I mean I didn’t dislike it, but I wasn’t sold on it like how my homies were. But it just kept gaining traction before I had even released it. I performed it at my album release party for my album ‘Motion Man’ just to get people’s reaction to see what I should drop next, and a lot of people just gravitated to it.”

K Pi$tol says the hardest song for him to write was his single, “I Admit.”

“My song ‘I Admit’ was the hardest for me to cook up only ‘cause that was the first and probably only song I got where my producer gave me that beat and gave me a reference to the other song that inspired him to create that beat. I was trying to capture a feeling also while being K Pi$tol, not be anyone else or sound like anyone else.”

K Pi$tol also has a fashion lifestyle brand called “Designer Brand Label” that sells items such as clothing, sneakers and hats.

“Designer Brand was something I wanted to venture out into. It started out as me selling different K Pi$tol merch. I had a little record label I was pushing when I was younger and we would do merch based off of that. But I started to notice that people were only buying it to support. They weren’t buying it because it was cool or buying it because it was something fly to wear. So I ventured off of that and started “Designer Brand” with my partner and that’s been flourishing for me,” K Pi$tol said. 

K Pi$tol recalls the coolest thing that has happened to him in his musical career so far has been being invited by DJ Holiday to open for American rappers Wiz Khalifa and 24hrs in Seattle.

“Prior to the show, we were chillin’, smoking weed, just kickin it watching sports and choppin it up. [I was like] I’m in the same room with Wiz Khalifa. Honestly, it was like a dream come true and I didn’t even know I was dreaming it. It was cool though, it was real dope,” K Pi$tol said. 

“The show was one of my favorite shows I did. I had never been to Seattle and the fans showed me a lot of love. That was real dope for me. That was tuff. That was fun. Coming from Buffalo it’s something you don’t see. It’s something that you don’t think is obtainable until you obtain it.” 

K Pi$tol credits Conway the Machine for giving him good advice about focusing on his goals.

“I got some really good advice from Conway the Machine one time after one of his shows. We were backstage and I had never met him a day in my life. I don’t even think he knew who I was. He just looked at me and started talking. 

“He said, ‘You know it’s okay to be bored when you are trying to get to a goal. Sometimes it’s alright to sit in the house and not go to the parties that the homies are going to and not have the newest clothes because you’re sitting back and you’re focusing on the main goal. You have bigger fish to fry.’ 

“And that stuck with me and helped me navigate through my everyday life and still push towards these goals I’m trying to get to,” K Pi$tol said. 

You can check out K Pi$tol’s YouTube Channel and Instagram [@smgkpistol] for more information on his music.

Tanya Gamble is an arts writer from Cheektowaga. She received her journalism degree from Buffalo State University in 2023.