Hot Press meets Kid Sister ahead of her Dublin appearance tomorrow

Melisa Young is laughing. The thirty-year-old rapper from Chicago, better known by her stage moniker Kid Sister, has just wrapped up the finishing touches on her Kiss Kiss Kiss mixtape and she’s pondering its implications. So, is there any special reason for unleashing it on the world on such a symmetrical date as 11/1/11?

“It’s actually the day I’m planning world domination, so it’s pretty significant” she quips good-naturedly. “No there’s no significance to it, but now that you say that I’m going to have to figure something out!”

Add that to the to-do list then, a scroll that’s been growing alarmingly quickly in the thirteen months since her debut album Ultraviolet hit shops last November. It actually seems a bit surprising that she can remain so upbeat at eleven o’clock on a Tuesday morning after the grueling schedule she’s endured in the past year.

“I’ve been in the studio for the past twelve months, just touring and in the studio, touring and in the studio, working on the mixtape, the album, other people’s projects…” The list goes on and on for Young, who burst onto the scene in the Spring of 2008 when her single ‘Pro Nails’ was reissued with a new verse contributed by Kanye West.

Since then, she has lent her attention to collaborations with Cee-Lo Green, Travis Barker, David Guetta, Laidback Luke and Carte Blanche, and even contributed a song to the Jersey Shore soundtrack, rounding out an eclectic body of work for such a short amount of time. “I’ve really been giving a lot of my stuff to other people,” she admits. “Sometimes I need to remember to do my own shit.”

Her musical style is something she’s been crafting since she first started writing songs in the small amount of downtime she had while working three jobs. Since then, when she would perform her songs while dressed in pyjamas in her living room for her brother, she has been swept up in a meteoric rise that has taken her all over the world and to the main stages of festivals like Coachella and Lollapalooza. So at what point did she make the transition from stocking shelves in a baby clothes store to becoming an internationally known hip hop artist?

“I was touring and coming home and working at the store wrapping dumb-ass presents for rich-ass bitches. But I just kept touring and did it and did it and did it until it became too big for me to keep my job,” she says. “It wasn’t some big career choice, it just got busier and busier until I came to the realisation that this is my job. So I was like oh, alright, I’ll do this now.”

While Young has been working hard in the studio and touring to thrill her core group of fans (“Kids that wanna drink,” she laughs), she has also been expanding into other fields as well; the rapper graduated from Columbia College Chicago with a bachelor’s degree in Film earlier this decade.

“I just filmed a part for the movie Dark Horse with [director] Todd Solondz, who has been one of my favourite directors since I was fifteen,” she says. “I got a call from one of my managers who said ‘Hey, do you want to be in this movie and have your music be used in the score?’ and I was like ‘uh, yeah! Duh!’ So I just went to New York and shot this movie for a day with Selma Blair and Christopher Walken.”

So a new mixtape due in January, work on a new album, a movie appearance, as-yet unreleased singles with Carte Blanche and David Guetta, and an upcoming tour with Of Montreal… sounds like 2011 is shaping up to be a big year for Kid Sister.

“It sounds like I’ve got a lot of shit to do!” she laughs. “I’ll ride this until it ends, keep doing this until I can’t do it anymore. And if you don’t dance I’m going to kick you out!”

Tickets for the event (which also features Shit Robot, Yes Cadets, The Minutes and Bitches With Wolves) are priced just €10, and are available from Hilfiger Stores on Grafton Street, Trinity Street, Liffey Valley, Swords and the Dundrum Shopping Centre.