King Los: Keeping "Control" After Life With Diddy [EXCLUSIVE]

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Baltimore native Carlos Coleman aka King Los is known by many as the fresh faced word wizard who’s been methodically blacking out all over the airwaves of morning radio shows across the country with the kind of freestyle verses that send vets dashing back to the drawing board. And after Kendrick Lamar dropped the bomb on Big Sean’s “Control” that put the fear of Christ in his peers, K Dot himself singled out Los as one out of the many MC’s to offer a worthy rebuttal.

After bodying a 10-minute freestyle in 2006 Los got the attention of Bad Boy CEO Sean Combs and was signed to the legendary label. However, some “street stuff” scuttled that deal before the ink was dry.

With his “Zero Gravity 2″ mixtape supplying so much heat for the speakers, why is the main MC named co-signed by Kendrick opting for free agency over a second deal with Bad Boy? See for yourself.

TUD: You shout out ‘West Side’ a lot. And with your name being King Los, there’s been speculation about where you’re from. Lets clear that up for the record.

King Los: I’m from Baltimore… I’ve only been living in California for two years. I’m from the west side of Baltimore and that’s probably how it got confused. But you know if I’m from Baltimore, I’m not gonna be shouting “West Baltimore.” I’m just gonna say “Westside” so it might have just got confused like that.

That’s an interesting thing… With so much going on in that area and so many influences, do you consider yourself Southern or East Coast?

Definitely East Coast, I’m not Southern. I’m above the Mason Dixon line being from Baltimore. But we definitely have that Southern appeal and that Southern influence because our relatives come out of the south and our proximity to it… but definitely East Coast. We three hours from New York and an hour from Philly. We right there.

With that said, when it became about bars, you weren’t mentioned in a lot of the conversations even though yours are incredible. Why do you think that is?

To be honest man, every interview that Kendrick had, he spoke about me and my response to “Control.” So I don’t know how people view that, but for me that’s absolutely being mentioned. I mean, every time? By what more notable source can there be than the actual guy who made all the controversy in the first place? Forget a second party or some arbitrary person… this is the actual guy who did it, not to mention a west coast artist, mentioning me every single time. So to me, that’s being mentioned.

That’s actually a better look than anything else. Baltimore doesn’t have a lot of representatives who can say they signed to Puff. How’d that happen?

Let me give you the short version man. I’m from Baltimore City originally and Baltimore’s not known for having many media or musical outlets. It’s more so a hard town… I don’t know if you’ve ever seen “The Wire,” but it’s really a drug town. A lot of murder and stuff goes on. Not that there’s not good stuff about the town but those are some of the things it’s known for, it’s known to be a rough place. I came up out of there. I started rapping at about 18. I was moving around, I was in college at the time and I started moving around, I started traveling due to music. It started taking me to different cities and different places and had people wanting to meet me because I had a flow and I could do what I was doing pretty good. I just got introduced to all the right people and one day somebody took me to meet Puff. I did a 10 minute freestyle that’s actually legendary… online. It’s been viewed probably a couple million times by this point. I did a 10-minute freestyle and he signed me off of that 10-minute freestyle. This was in 2006. But what happened was, coming from Baltimore, I was surrounded by people that I was doing an indie label with before the Bad Boy deal and they were connected to the streets. So by the time I got my record deal, things came full surface (circle) and kinda caught up with them and I ended up losing my deal due to some street stuff. And I spent six years back on the grind and I ended up getting another call from Puff saying how he hears me out here making all this noise and he wanted to resign me and give it one more shot. And that was two years ago.

So what happened next? Tun the page find out..

And now you’re become a free agent again…

Yep, Me and Melo.

I’m not entertaining any hate speech about Melo leaving the Knicks dawg…

He’s not gonna leave! Just because he’s exercising the right to be free and to re-negotiate his true worth… that’s all it means. It doesn’t mean that he’s leaving. I just feel like in regards to that, we share similarities because I’m just exercising my true worth. I just want the league and everybody else to understand what I’m truly worth and what I should be valued at. And Melo’s about to get that now… 130 million for five years, he got Phil Jackson now. They’re putting the components around him that he deserves. That’s what I need. I need the components I deserve and I need my true value and my true worth out of the game.

And you didn’t feel as if you were getting that with your second deal with Diddy?

Not in its totality… or maybe not at the rate that I felt that I needed it at. Just from Diddy having so many endeavors and his hands being so full with so many different things, because of my past, because I’m not a new, new artist… I might be new to people who just heard me but I’ve been doing this game for ten years plus, to where I need to see some results from my work. So that’s the reason why. It was more personal within myself and my journey.

With that analogy in mind, does that mean that you wouldn’t be opposed to signing up with Diddy again if the deal was right? Or are you looking for a whole new team.

Well, I’m not looking for a team… like I said; I’m just looking for my true value and my true worth. So I might be doing my own thing next, there ain’t no telling. Right now I have a lot of opportunities and lot of people reaching out that wanna help. So I’m just gonna figure out what I wanna do and how I wanna do it, and you know, learn to be my own boss and make these maneuvers the way I need to make em. It’s all about growth.

As far as growth is concerned, do you ever worry that yours will be stunted because somebody with your skill level will have problems getting people to collab with you from fear of being embarrassed?

Umm, maybe… you know? But everybody can’t love you man, any human being should know that. That should be an applied philosophy… at some point at some point that everybody ain’t gon love you man. And everybody that say they love you, it ain’t gon be real. So at the end of the day, all you can ask for is respect and hopefully you don’t get disrespected. So that’s all I ask for, I don’t need love. Just respect me for what I do, acknowledge me for who I am and what I represent and for everything else… it is what it is.

So with that said, what’s the possibility of you and Kendrick getting on a track together? He did salute you in all those interviews…

Yeah, I see that as a strong possibility. We met up one time when I saw him at the mall, we exchanged numbers and… I see that as a strong possibility. Just in the realm of how he said my name so many times without me even knowing him… I just think when the time is right and when I step up to do everything that I’m gonna do and my work shows, I think those things are going to happen. I don’t expect those things to happen prematurely though.

So what’s the next step in the progression to get you to that level?

Well you know, I released this project that dropped on the 24^th. From there I go on tour in April. And after that man, who knows what’s gonna come from it? Good stuff can only because it’s all been progressing anyway! Despite me making a move from Bad Boy it’s all been progressing but now its just better. I’m definitely gonna do something that involves me establishing my own structure. There’s no telling who I might do a venture with yet it’s still early, so it remains to be seen at this point. I just want them to say that I was one of the greatest if not the greatest to ever do it. I don’t think that’s too much to ask for.

Stream and download King Los’s “Zero Gravity 2″ below!