(jewelry jangling) (bird tweeting) - I got started with music with the alto saxophone in fourth grade.

(Klassik whistling) Product of MPS, so public school, arts.

Thank God for that.

♪ Shout it from the top, I'm so on, yeah, yeah ♪ My name is Klassik.

That's with a K in the front and a K in the back.

Or spelled all the way out, K-L-A-S-S-I-K.

I am a musician, producer, performing artist.

Born, raised and based in the city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

And in high school I got into music production, so making beats on a computer.

Found a way to kind of blend the jazz sounds that I was in the theory of, and finding a segue into more modern music using the computer.

♪ I ain't met nobody that don't really see me yet ♪ Combining all of those experiences, public school, arts education, jazz studies, beat making, I got the crazy idea to be an artist, and step out from behind the production boards.

So the way that I would define my sound currently, electro symphonic rap and soul.

I think that those four things encompass the entire breadth of kind of this wide angle lens that I'm looking at.

I use the term of like I'm a sonic landscape painter.

So I think in wide angles, large brush strokes.

(Klassik singing) My love for classical music kind of dictates the breadth and the scope of it.

And then rap at the center of it, because that is where I, as an artist, found my lyrical voice.

It's that soul aspect, but it's rap.

So it's poeticism, and it's lyricism, but it's symphonic in scale.

The electrical part is obviously everything that's here.

It's a bunch of Wizard of Oz stuff going on, a guy pulling a bunch of levers.

But I use technology to still produce something that is soulful.

What I want people to feel and what I put into my music is a sense of urgency and a sense of passion.

Encouraging and inspiring people to be more proactive in their lives, to be more aware and compassionate to not only the people around them in the community, but also to themselves.

The idea of self love and accountability.

♪ Shout it from the top of the mountaintop ♪ ♪ You hear me yeah, yeah ♪ ♪ Invisible man ♪ ♪ Fall to his invisible death, death, death, death ♪ I'm less concerned with the idea of someone being entertained, as much as I am interested in the idea of someone being moved.

And the act of actually spiritually, or energetically, or mentally moving somebody is more important to me even than the physical movement.

This is Kellen Klassik, K in the front, K in the back, Abston.

Here with you live and direct with PBS.

And this next song I have for you is a song entitled Active.

I actually prefer intimate settings.

I love it because there's no, there are no excuses, and there's nothing to hide behind.

That it offers me the space to be the most raw and the most vulnerable.

That's the context in which it is best received.

♪ These ain't us in the same dreams ♪ ♪ Is this happening, yeah ♪ Doing non-traditional spaces, things that strip away the extra, you know, the entertainment, the industry part of it, the food and beverage part.

And it's, look at this the same way that you go to a museum, that you go to a piece of theater.

(Klassik singing) That's what this is supposed to be.

Woo!

(Klassik laughs) Boy.