Wholesome beats

It was 2008, and Kennedy Wrose was in a dark place. Drinking. Too many women. Too many parties.

“I really made a lot of bad decisions,” he says.“I felt like my heart wanted one thing, but my body wanted another.”

Then, he says, God stepped in. “[He told me,] ’Remember what I told you when you were 18, just give it all to me? I can still help you with this,’” Wrose recalls now. “He told me ’I’m still here.’”

That divine intervention pushed Wrose to relocate to Texas for a church internship. There, he fell in with a different crowd, quit drinking and focused on his music.

Eventually he moved back to California, and now the rapper, born Eugene Kennedy Clarke, writes and plays melodic Christian-focused hip-hop. Nominated for several SAMMIE Awards including Artist of the Year, Emcee and Live Performer, he’ll perform at the SAMMIES Award Show at Ace of Spades this Thursday, June 15.

Music has always been an integral part of his life. As a kid growing up in South Sacramento in the ’90s he was big into rock, influenced by his babysitter’s tastes: Nirvana, Green Day, Soundgarden, Deftones and Bush.

“I wanted to be Gavin Rossdale,” he says now.

High school opened him up to hip-hop—as did a friend who pushed him to flex his freestyle chops as they drove around town.

Initially Wrose hesitated, but he soon learned that the car made for an ideal musical vehicle.

“I’d just keep going and focus on the road,” he says. “And then when I wasn’t driving, I was on point. It helped me as a songwriter.”

Wrose released his first mixtape in 2013, but it didn’t really go anywhere. He blames that on his poor marketing skills.

Eventually he hooked up with a local marketer who advised him to get out on the scene. Wrose decided to sign up for an open-mic show at the Blue Lamp and treated it like a legit gig, promoting it, inviting everyone he knew.

He crushed it—so much so that the booker invited him to enter a contest.

What happened next reveals a telling bit about Wrose. In person he is fresh-faced with a gray streak in his hair and very soft-spoken. Don’t be fooled. He is also confident and even competitive.

Wrose’s second-place win in that contest, for example, left him disappointed. Angry, even.

“I was mad,” he says. “Second place was disheartening.”

It wasn’t fruitless, however: The contest led to another competition, and this time he came in first and won a cash prize that helped him finance a website and music video. He also worked on sessions for a batch of songs that never made it outside of the studio.

Finally, in 2016, Wrose released his full-length debut. Abstract Heart reflects the artist’s dedication and poise. The hook-laden tracks here are symphonic and lyrically thoughtful with a nod to his faith that’s undeniable but never heavy-handed.

“I feel like God’s giving me a message in a way that people can understand, but that’s not too preachy,” he says. “God made me a truth teller.”

When he’s not making music, the Sacramento State grad works part-time, and he’s contemplating a career in environmental studies or urban planning.

For now, he and his wife are expecting a son and looking to the future. The baby, he says, has made him “a lot more intentional” about his artistic purpose.

“Music is my minister,” he says.