In conversation with LoudHER Media, Kwasi explores the vulnerability behind his debut album, Outstanding MISFIT, unpacking identity, prejudice, desire, nostalgia, and the uncomfortable process of confronting the parts of ourselves we often keep hidden. There is something deeply human about the parts of ourselves we struggle to explain. The impulses we suppress, the mistakes we replay in our minds, the ambitions we hesitate to pursue, and the versions of ourselves we hide to make other people comfortable can all become pieces of an identity we are still trying to understand. For Kwasi, those contradictions are at the heart of his debut album, Outstanding MISFIT, a project that turns self-exploration into an unpredictable journey through sound, storytelling, and personal reflection.
Rather than presenting an artist who has everything figured out, Kwasi introduces a character who is messy, impulsive, ambitious, vulnerable, and unapologetically human. The Outstanding MISFIT is not simply an alter ego created to escape reality. He is a reflection of the emotions and instincts that exist beneath the surface, amplified through music and given room to speak without the usual restrictions.
Drawing inspiration from Carl Jung’s concept of the shadow self, Kwasi approaches the project as an opportunity to confront the parts of himself that might otherwise remain unexamined. He describes the MISFIT as representing the irrational and imperfect sides of his personality, while Kwasi himself remains more conscious of responsibility and consequence. Yet the distinction between the two is not as clear-cut as it might initially appear. Their relationship becomes less about separating good from bad and more about understanding how every part of ourselves contributes to who we are.
That willingness to sit with uncomfortable truths gives Outstanding MISFIT its emotional foundation. Growing up in a working-class, single-parent household in rural Australia, with a father who migrated from Ghana, Kwasi learned the importance of hard work, responsibility, and making sensible decisions. Those values helped him build a foundation for his future, but they also created an interesting tension with the freedom required to pursue an unconventional creative path.
As an independent artist, rebellion is not always as glamorous as it sounds. Art demands risks, but those risks exist alongside financial pressures, practical responsibilities, and the realities of survival. Through the MISFIT, Kwasi explores what it might mean to loosen his grip on certainty and trust his instincts a little more. The album refuses to be confined to a single identity. Hip-hop, rock, trap, R&B, and electronic textures become different languages for expressing the character’s changing emotional states. From the abrasive, chaotic introduction of “KAMIKWASI” to the internal struggle at the heart of “BREATHE,” the record moves through confidence, attraction, prejudice, heartbreak, and reflection. Its progression mirrors a character slowly opening up, revealing more complicated emotions beneath the bravado.
That complexity becomes especially apparent in “UPPERS!,” a track that challenges stereotyping and the ways society assigns identities to people based on surface-level perceptions. For Kwasi, the song’s energetic sound carries a deeper frustration with the lasting influence of damaging representations of people of color, including those perpetuated by the 1915 film The Birth of a Nation. His perspective brings a powerful dimension to an album already concerned with self-definition: how can we fully understand ourselves when the world is constantly trying to tell us who we are?
Elsewhere, “Gold On Her Tongue” examines attraction and the more superficial aspects of desire, while “Tears and Toyotas” finds emotional weight in the ordinary objects that remain after a relationship has ended. These moments reveal a softer side to the MISFIT, one that acknowledges the strange ways love, memory, and possibility continue to shape us long after circumstances change.
Interestingly, Kwasi did not emerge from the project with every question answered. Instead, completing the album left him with new questions about his past, his identity, and the character’s future. He sees the record less as a finished personal transformation and more as an origin story, the beginning of a larger journey. In our conversation with LoudHER Media, Kwasi opens up about the psychology behind the Outstanding MISFIT, the freedom of creating beyond genre expectations, the weight of inherited stereotypes, and the bittersweet emotions that remain when the past becomes a memory. What unfolds is a discussion about the courage it takes to look inward, accept our contradictions, and discover what might happen when we finally give ourselves permission to be more than the roles we have learned to play.
The Interview: Kwasi on Outstanding MISFIT
You describe the Outstanding MISFIT as holding your confidence, chaos, mistakes, vulnerability, and both the good and bad parts of yourself. If the Outstanding MISFIT is all of those things, what does Kwasi represent that the Outstanding MISFIT doesn’t? Is there still a meaningful difference between the two of you?
“I’ve always viewed the MISFIT as my shadow. I’m really interested in Carl Jung’s ideas around the shadow self and how we often suppress the parts of ourselves we’re uncomfortable confronting.”
The MISFIT represents those irrational, impulsive and sometimes ugly parts of who I am. The anger, the desire, the imperfections. Things that exist within us but that we don’t necessarily act upon.
“I think Kwasi is more conscious of those things. There’s a conscience, a sense of responsibility and an understanding of consequences. The MISFIT explores what happens when you give in to those impulses.” Kwasi continues
“But I don’t think they’re completely separate people. The MISFIT isn’t some imaginary character that has nothing to do with my life. A lot of the experiences behind him are very real, just exaggerated through storytelling. For me, becoming the Outstanding MISFIT is about learning to confront and integrate your shadow rather than being controlled by it.”
Did you create the Outstanding MISFIT to give yourself permission to become someone else, or did you create him because there were parts of yourself you weren’t yet comfortable admitting were already there?
“I think there’s an element of both, but creatively, it definitely gave me permission to break away from boundaries. I didn’t want to feel restricted by the traditions of hip-hop, rock or any particular genre. Having this character meant I could focus on the emotion rather than the rules. If I’m screaming on a track, it’s not because I’m trying to be a rock singer. It’s because that’s how the character feels in that moment. But there’s also something deeper to it. We spend so much of our lives playing different roles. You’re an employee at work, a partner at home, a customer in a transaction. Every situation comes with its own expectations and etiquette.”
“Sometimes I wonder how much of our actual selves gets lost in trying to fulfil those roles. The Outstanding MISFIT is an exploration of who you are when you strip away those expectations. In a strange way, he might actually be closer to the real me than some of the versions of myself I present in everyday life.”
We often build alter egos to exaggerate certain qualities or protect the parts of ourselves that feel exposed. What if the Outstanding MISFIT isn’t your opposite, but the version of you that no longer feels obligated to make other people comfortable? What would that version of you do differently?
“I think that’s a pretty accurate way of looking at him. He’s a version of myself that doesn’t feel obligated to subscribe to society’s expectations. I grew up in a working-class, single-parent household in rural Australia. My dad migrated here from Ghana, and although I had supportive parents, we certainly didn’t grow up wealthy. A lot of building a future for myself came down to hard work, responsibility and making sensible decisions.”
“And I think that carries over into being an independent artist. There’s this perception that pursuing art or building your own business is inherently rebellious, but in reality, it often requires you to be incredibly conservative. You’re constantly thinking about money, responsibilities and survival because there isn’t necessarily a safety net beneath you. So what would that version of me do differently? He’d probably play a lot closer to the sun. He’d indulge more in his intuition, his ambitions and the things he feels called to do without constantly weighing up the consequences. I think I’ve spent a lot of my life building a foundation that allows me to take those risks. And moving forward, I’m ready to lean into that side of myself a little more.”
Is there anything you’ve written or performed as the Outstanding MISFIT that you would struggle to say as Kwasi in a normal conversation with someone you love?
“Definitely, although I think it depends on the person and the conversation. I’ve always used music and creativity as a space to explore ideas and irrational thoughts that I might not necessarily feel comfortable bringing up in everyday conversation. There are people close to me who I’m comfortable having some pretty deep and uncomfortable conversations with, but there are also things I prefer to explore privately first. I think that’s one of the beautiful things about art. It gives you a space to sit with those thoughts, explore them and try to understand them before you necessarily have to explain them to someone else.”
Concept albums often give listeners a clear beginning, middle, and end. But personal growth rarely works that way. Was there a moment when the story of Outstanding MISFIT stopped following the narrative you originally imagined because your own understanding of yourself had changed?
“Yeah, I think you often go into storytelling expecting to tie everything up in a nice bow by the end. But when I reached the end of this project, I realized I was finishing it with more of a question mark. The character’s journey doesn’t feel complete. If anything, this feels like the beginning of a much bigger saga. It’s almost an origin story. There were also experiences and ideas I initially didn’t think I’d be exploring so soon because they felt incredibly close to home.
Working on this project forced me to confront certain things from my past that I don’t think I’d fully processed. Some of those experiences had been staring me in the face for years, but I’d never really examined them on this level. So rather than arriving at some perfect resolution, I think the project opened up a whole new set of questions about myself and where the character goes next.”
“KAMIKWASI”: The album opens with a title that suggests a collision between your identity and something explosive or self-destructive. Is this introduction about announcing your arrival, burning down an old version of yourself, or acknowledging that the pursuit of becoming someone can sometimes come at a cost?
“I wanted to start the album right in the middle of the action. There’s a storytelling technique I really love, particularly in television series like Breaking Bad, where an episode opens in complete chaos before taking you backwards to explain how everything got to that point. That’s essentially what KAMIKWASI does. It’s the Outstanding MISFIT bursting through the door and announcing himself. It’s abrasive, chaotic, full of ego and completely unapologetic.
It’s almost like he’s saying, “Here I am. Here’s all the chaos. Strap yourself in because we’re going for a ride.” From there, the album almost blooms like a flower opening. It begins with these darker, moodier sounds, then gradually opens up, revealing different emotions and textures before ending on a much higher, more hopeful note.”
The announcement describes “UPPERS!” as manic, spoken-word rap meeting spatial EDM. The sound suggests heightened energy and overstimulation. Does the song explore the appeal of constantly chasing intensity, whether through ambition, distraction, or the need to outrun your own thoughts?
“Interestingly, UPPERS! isn’t really about chasing intensity, although I can understand why it might feel that way sonically. Lyrically, it’s much more about stereotyping, prejudice and the way people make assumptions about your character based on surface-level perceptions. There’s a lyric where I reference The Birth of a Nation, the 1915 American film that helped perpetuate incredibly damaging stereotypes about Black people.
What’s fascinating and disturbing to me is how those representations can have such a lasting impact that their influence can still be felt generations later, even growing up in a small country town in Australia. The song explores that frustration of having your identity defined by other people’s perceptions, particularly through the media and the stereotypes that become embedded in society. But there’s also this defiance running through it. This idea of continuing to push forward, grinning through the negativity and refusing to let those perceptions determine who you become. Ultimately, it moves towards self-acceptance. Taking ownership of your identity rather than allowing other people to write that story for you.”
Amid the album’s intensity, “BREATHE” introduces repeated breathing sounds and a strange sense of calm beneath the tension. Is breathing a way of grounding yourself in the present, or does the song capture that uncomfortable moment when you finally become quiet enough to hear everything you’ve been avoiding?
“It’s interesting because I think the idea of constantly chasing intensity that you mentioned in the previous question is actually much closer to what BREATHE explores. The song is really about trying to ground yourself when everything around you, and inside your own head, feels heightened. Throughout the track, I’m throwing out these egotistical, impulsive lines about ambition, women, achievements and not caring about the consequences of certain things.
But underneath all that bravado, there’s this internal voice telling me to breathe. It’s almost a battle between the rational and irrational parts of myself. The character is beginning to take over, and I’m trying to pull myself back into the present. I think that tension between losing control and trying to regain it is really what sits at the heart of the song.”
“Gold On Her Tongue”: The track shifts into a hypnotic blend of trap, hip-hop, and R&B centered on attraction. How do you approach desire when it exists alongside uncertainty or emotional distance? Are we sometimes attracted to people because of who they are, or because of who we get to become when we’re around them?
“That’s a really good question. I don’t know if there’s necessarily a blueprint for navigating desire when uncertainty is involved. I think that’s just part of life. Although Outstanding MISFIT follows a character arc, there’s also very much a love story running through the album. I think relationships can teach you an enormous amount about yourself, particularly through the ups and downs, the heartbreak and the moments where things don’t work out the way you’d hoped.
Gold On Her Tongue explores attraction, but also some of the more superficial aspects of desire. There are moments in the lyrics where I touch on the way someone can make you feel about yourself, and how that attraction can sometimes be tied to things like money, status or the way you present yourself. There’s something quite shallow about that, but I think it’s also an interesting part of human behavior to explore. As for whether we’re attracted to people for who they are or who we become around them, I think it’s probably a balance of both.“
“Tears and Toyotas”: The announcement describes this song as a moment of nostalgia and acceptance. Why do you think ordinary objects, familiar cars, or seemingly insignificant details can hold so much emotional weight when we look back on a period of our lives? Is nostalgia really about missing the past, or can it be about missing the person we were when we lived it?
“I’ve noticed this funny thing that happens after a relationship ends. If you’ve spent a lot of time in someone’s car, suddenly you start seeing that same car everywhere. It’s almost like this ordinary object becomes a reminder of an entire period of your life. I think those things carry emotional weight because they continue to exist long after the relationship or experience has ended. For me, nostalgia isn’t necessarily about missing the person I was back then. It’s more about missing what that particular moment in time represented.
Maybe it’s the connection you had with someone, the support they gave you or the possibilities you imagined for your future together. I think we also have this tendency to look back through rose-tinted glasses. There’s something strangely comforting about sitting in that melancholic, bittersweet space. And sometimes I think nostalgia isn’t just about what happened. It’s also about everything that could have been.”
A Debut About Becoming, Not Arriving
What makes Outstanding MISFIT compelling is not simply its willingness to cross musical boundaries or its embrace of an unpredictable alter ego. It is the recognition that self-discovery rarely follows a straight line. We can understand our responsibilities while still wanting to escape them. We can feel confident in one moment and uncertain in the next. We can look back on relationships with gratitude and sadness, sometimes missing not the person we were with, but the future we once imagined beside them.
Kwasi’s answers reveal an artist willing to explore those contradictions without pretending that every experience has a neat explanation. The MISFIT gives him room to investigate impulses, ambitions, and uncomfortable thoughts, while the person behind the character remains conscious of the consequences that come with acting on them. That tension is what gives the project its depth.
There is also something especially striking about the album’s relationship with identity. In “UPPERS!,” Kwasi confronts the way stereotypes can shape perceptions across generations, while the larger project asks what happens when we stop allowing external expectations to dictate who we should be. His journey toward self-acceptance is therefore both personal and universal: it is about reclaiming the right to define yourself, even when the world has already decided what it thinks you are. And perhaps the most revealing part of this conversation is Kwasi’s admission that the album ends with a question mark rather than a resolution. Instead of presenting his debut as the conclusion of a transformation, he views it as the beginning of something larger. The questions are still there. The past still has things to teach him. The character still has places to go.
That makes Outstanding MISFIT feel less like a final statement and more like an invitation: to confront the parts of ourselves we avoid, to question the roles we perform, and to recognize that becoming who we are does not require us to have everything figured out. Sometimes, the most honest form of growth begins when we finally allow ourselves to sit with the uncertainty. And for Kwasi, the MISFIT is only getting started.
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