Think of Cap D as hip-hop’s Daredevil (minus the blindness), except instead of fighting crime at night, he fights wack emcees. Well, sort of. Once night falls, Katten lawyer David Kelly becomes the artist we know as Cap D. Crazy huh? Cap recently chopped it up with the Wall Street Journal for a quick question & answer session. Peep an excerpt from it below.
Now. It seems that “PolyMath” isn’t your first record. How long have you been making music?
It’s something I’ve been doing since the late 1980s. “PolyMath” is my fourth solo record. I’ve also released four with a group called All Natural.
But I didn’t put anything out until the mid 1990s.
Did you ever think of pursuing it for a living?
I did. Between college and law school, I worked a number of different jobs, most of which I worked to make money to pursue music. I worked as a journalist, an editor for one of the biggest children’s book publishers around, and as an ad salesman for a magazine. Most of these pursuits involved writing or journalism, but they all really were meant to allow me to pursue music.
My group, All Natural, landed a record deal in 1995 with a subsidiary of EMI, but they went bankrupt before our record was released. We were the kiss of death!
What about now? Do you ever think about quitting your day job and doing this full time?
I’m realistic about it. I’m 40 now. It’s kind of hard to imagine myself jumping up on stage for a living. I think of myself more akin to the guy who always wanted to be in the NBA, and now is just pretty happy to be working in the sports industry. If I can marry my music career with my law career, and bring along the sports work, then I’ll be thrilled. But to answer your question, no. The music is really a glorified hobby.
Seriously, who would’ve thought? Check out the full conversation here.
I recently took my old ass back to school & watching Cap “quit” to go become a lawyer was one of my inspirations. “You can be dope & still finish school” indeed
I consider Cap to be not only a big brother to me but also an inspiration. One of the most talented emcees Chicago has ever produced in my humble opinion!
That’s pretty sick, I didn’t know this brother was a lawyer, too. I just got the project, high hopes.