Kayatta Patton’s journey in music began with a trumpet, includes a bike shop and features a new hip-hop experience in Sonoma County.
“I was in band, so I was kind of like a nerdy kid,” Patton says.
The West Oakland native also grew up on a musical diet of hip-hop groups like A Tribe Called Quest and found inspiration in female rap artists like Ms. Lauryn Hill.
“Coming from Oakland, it’s a prideful place in a sense that we didn’t have much, but you could put together a rhyme with nothing,” Patton says. “I think the most creative people are the people who don’t have a lot of resources.”
Patton performed in bands and worked as a teacher in Oakland and Sacramento before moving to Sonoma County to help a friend open a bike business in Guerneville. “I needed a plot twist,” she says. “It was on a whim, I did it for a year, then a year turned into two years, three years, and now Sonoma County is like my home.”
Since then, Patton has performed hip-hop under her first name, Kayatta, and is quickly garnering attention for her engaging stage presence and soulful songwriting.
“Songs come at the most inopportune times, you can be in the studio and somebody drops a beat that you need to write to,” she says. “Or it might be a situation where you’ve got a story to tell and you write because you’ve got to get it out, and then you find a beat to complement that.”
Readers of the Bohemian voted Kayatta as “Best Hip-Hop Artist” in this year’s NorBays Music Awards, and she recently received an arts grant from Creative Sonoma which she is using to produce a proper, full-length LP that is currently 90 percent complete.
Now, Kayatta wants to bring her music to the masses. In addition to performing live with artists P Butta and Erica Ambrin on Nov. 27 at Lagunitas Tap Room in Petaluma (see Calendar, pg 29), Kayatta hosts “The Precipice,” a monthly hip-hop showcase she formed with Sebastopol’s DJ Dyops that returns to Shady Oak in Santa Rosa on Nov. 23.
“I wanted to establish something where women are empowered, where hip-hop is present, where community is present,” she says. “It’s also queer-friendly, everybody is included. I would invite people to come out and see what we do, if they try it out they might find that they like it.”
‘The Precipice’ happens on Saturday, Nov. 23, at Shady Oak Barrel House, 420 First St., Santa Rosa. 7:30pm. Free. Shadyoakbarrelhouse.com.
