As Featured In

“increasingly — in-demand collaborator in the wide world of jazz”. - Capital Bop

“he powers his sometimes twangy voice through supple rhymes, brimming with clear enunciation, melodic and thematic cogency, and improvisational swing and swagger.” - Downbeat

“What’s beautiful about Kokayi in a live setting is [that] it’s truly different every time, because his level of improvising is just as high as his instrumentalist peers,”- Terri Lynn Carrington 

“His songs tell stories of the African diaspora and of Black lives in America. His raw ingredients are musical instruments and computers and his voice—rapping, singing, noise-conjuring—and even field recordings he gathers by going outside and capturing the everyday sounds of cars, birds, anything with natural rhythm.” - Amazon 

“He's a genius. He’s a freestyle master. He’s freestyling from my perspective and from his perspective, and some of the things that he can relate to. But since he’s freestyling, each time we perform he does something different.” - Ambrose Akinmusire