Editors’ Notes “I been dropping Kiss projects since 2012, since my momma basement,” K CAMP tells Apple Music. “I never knew that it was going to get to a 5, [but] the reaction from my female fanbase was just—I can’t go against it.” The preceding edition of the series dropped in 2017, but it’s not like fans have been hurting for K CAMP music in the time since. Over the past half decade, the Atlanta singer and MC has worked tirelessly to become one of hip-hop’s most in-demand collaborators. He continues spreading that love across Kiss 5, recruiting no less than eight featured artists. “I tried to make 5 a bigger album,” he says. “I tried to take it up a notch.” And while he doesn’t know when the R&B-leaning series will end, Camp claims that he can release them, ostensibly, until he finds that special someone. “I don’t write,” he says. “Everything is off the heart, everything is off the mind. I just go in there and just express how I feel. Depending on that and how many females I've been dealing with, you're going to get a good project, you feel me?” Below, K CAMP explains track by track how we got Kiss 5.



Regret

“I just felt like this was a dope intro. I didn't want to do too much to it. I just felt like I wanted the instruments to play. My girl pulled up one day and I thought her voice would sound pretty on this record, so I told her to add a couple melodies, and I ended up keeping it. That record wasn't really going to be on a project, it was a last-minute buzzer-beater type shit.”



Fall in Line

“I was recording myself, and the girl I was making the song about was in the lounge and I was talking about her ass the whole time. She lived a fast life, she be in the club—it’s just a record telling females that's just out here really like getting to it at a fast pace: Just slow down, take your time. If you're going to live this life, do it the right way. Don't go out here and get your head cut off, you feel me?”



Tatted Up

“As a kid in high school, the original [‘Tattoo’ by The Alliance featuring Fabo], when Fabo did his thing the end of that song, it was the hardest shit in the world. I was trying to sing that shit in the shower type of shit, so that melody was always in my head. That verse that y'all hear on Kiss 5, that was me just mumbling, fucking around. I was going to change my whole verse, but everybody was fucking with it, so I kept it. Fabo went berserk.”



What’s on Your Mind

“I’m real cool with the producer Nash B. I was one of the first ones to bring in Nash B when he was living in, I think, Macon. He was a young n*gga. I got an [older] record called ‘Actin Up’—Nash B made that record. So he came to the spot and this beat was was just so cold. I was texting one of my chicks and I think I had asked her, ‘What's on your mind?' and I just jumped in the booth and started singing, 'What's on your miiiiind?' I hit up Nash and I was like, 'Throw Quees on this muthafucka.' Jacquees did his verse and he killed it.”



Trill Love

“‘Trill Love’ was one of the ones we took our time with. We were in there all night. Even when they left, I was in there engineering, tracking out, mixing, cutting different parts of the beat. The crazy part about that song, the one y’all hearing is not the original song. We made a new one like two days before we turned the album in. And it pissed me off ’cause the other one was cold. But the one we remade sound good too, so I ain't tripping.”



Ice Cold

“I wrote this verse on tour. I came to the studio once I came back to Atlanta and I cut it, and when I got done recording, I was not feeling it. I felt like it was just lame as hell. My partner walked by like, ‘Boy, that shit going crazy.’ So I was like, ‘Oh shit, well, let me tap back in on it.’ I went back in, added background, some more melodies, some more flavor on it, and, shit, we got ‘Ice Cold.’”



Rude Boy

“My DJ and my business partner is Jamaican. I'm tapped into the Caribbean style. We just got back from the Bahamas. I love Jamaican music, I love African music, I love all type of cultural music. I get influenced by all this shit, all the melodies. When I recorded that song, one of my homegirls, she's a choreographer, she's African. She was in the studio, and that's why I was just on my Caribbean, rude boy, yardie—I was just popping shit.”



Friendly

“I made this about a little chick I was fucking with. She call me every other day trying to get back with me, but she too friendly, you get what I'm saying? You can have a female that you're talking to but it's a code to this type of shit. You bring your little chick around your partners—don’t be talking to my partners and doing all that extra laughing shit, just getting out of hand and being too friendly.”



What’s Your Name

“I might remember somebody face, all their features, but not know their name. This was really a follow-up for ‘Marilyn Monroe.’ If you go listen to [2014’s] ‘Marilyn Monroe’ part one and two, I say, ‘What's her name, I must have forgot.’ Part two I say, 'Still don’t know her name, but fuck it.' I just took that and made a complete song out of that little vibe.”



Black Men Don’t Cheat

“Black men don't cheat. Females love to say that we dogs, we dirty—so I tried to make a record defending us and I reached out to who I thought would sound crazy on it. My fans, they been wanting me and Tink to get back together. Me and 6LACK was overdue. With Ari [Lennox], she was supposed to send a verse, but she was taking the longest. But when I had sent her the record originally, she sent me a voice memo. I had it in my phone, and when I didn't get Ari's verse, I took that damn voice memo and I put it in the beginning of the song.”



Top 10

“This is the real K CAMP, that's slumlord K CAMP. I don't want folks to ever forget this shit is real. I might be soft and lovey-dovey to you one minute, but this shit's still cutthroat on the other side.”



Energy

“I did ‘Energy’ at Jeremih's house. The beat was just so melodic and so easy to rap on. I laid it with a melody and then put words to it. It's crazy ’cause DaniLeigh was there that same day. I wanted her to get on it, but she had a show or something.“



1 Mo Time

“Jeremih is my dawg. I recorded ‘1 Mo Time’ at his house too. Me and Jeremih got like 10 songs in the stash—we could put out a project together if we wanted to, for real. I know I'm cold, but he a singer for real. I'm not a singer for real, I'm pretending to be a singer. That n*gga a singer. I fuck with him as an artist, man, that boy real talented.”