“Ambitions of a Writer” The Emergence of Kai Phoenix

Kai Phoenix is a man that knows alot about reinvention. At forty years young he has been a soldier, artist, poet, author, counselor, mentor, detention officer, essayist, and novelist. And according to him, he’s just getting started. “I have my heart set on becoming a playwright, screenwriter, podcaster, show creator, and director in due time.” Hailing from ‘Military City’ San Antonio, Texas; Phoenix’s story is very unlikely. If he is a product of his environment, then he is a combination of diverse multicultural gang infested neighborhoods, clean and regimented military base housing, deep south racially tense suburbs, and European multicultural isolated civilian villages. His footprints, much like his mind, are embedded in many a soil. Phoenix is a man who constantly speaks on reinvention as his favorite concept. The ability to reintroduce yourself in another capacity than what you have been in the past or what is expected for you to be. One’s ability to determine their own destiny based on acting on what you can imagine or becoming something or someone you never would’ve imagined yourself being.

– “I believe in the qualities of people that can’t be quantified on a resume or even a bio. In this country you can easily be defined by paperwork or labels and you just allow this to happen and go about your life. On paper realistically, I should be in somebody’s factory working a machine, or fighting someone’s war, managing someone’s Church’s Chicken, or guarding someone’s inmate. But that’s not who I am, I am an intellect, a visionary, I have genius in me. I know this in my bones or else how do I explain all these things going on in my brain. But these are not things that I can put on a resume, these are things that people either say about you when you die, or you prove while you are living.I mean I was just depressed man. After getting out of the military I was working in a factory scared that this was going to be the rest of my life. “
Kai Phoenix

To those unfamiliar to him, Phoenix seemed to emerge out of nowhere into the public space as an important and influential young Black voice. Releasing three different book projects in a little under a year and a half. Starting in February of 2022 with a fiery poetic manifesto entitled Must You Burn Before You Respect Fire. A book of radical socially conscious poetry born out of anger he wrote while serving in the military during the Black Lives Matter era. “When you are connected and consciously invested in your culture, you feel things deeply as if they are happening to you. You won’t just be alright after the news goes off or when you put the phone on the charger. These things affected me.” Just five months later, he released his most ambitious work entitled Militant Manchild. A brilliantly revealing and humorous introduction to Phoenix’s philosophies using his memories to address an array of subjects coming in the form of essays, anecdotes, observations, and poetry. Deliberately written in the language in which he speaks. These back to back projects established him as something different. A young relatable voice with the ability to express his pain, humor, perspective, insights and social commentary prolifically through several mediums. He comes across as having his feet both in the streets and in the library.

An unprecedented eight months later, and against publishing logic, Phoenix released his third book project and first novel The Revolutionary Act 1. When asked why he wouldn’t take his time to let the audience digest his other works properly, Phoenix proclaimed,

–“Take my time? I did take my time, I took five to ten years to write these projects. It’s harvest season for me. Besides, I feel that I can imagine and produce these projects better than the audience can appreciate them. The modern attention span is different. I have so much to do and there is a yearning in my soul to produce as though I am going to die soon. The clock is ticking, and the sound of that clock is louder to me than reasonable logic.” Set in the 1950’s and 60’s, The Revolutionary sees from the point of view of a young Black woman protagonist Kenya Freeman. She finds herself by accidental circumstance to be a living symbol of resistance to the powers that be in one of the most violent and volatile eras. The novel deals with subject matter such as racial bigotry, sexual assault, social justice, and femininity. Phoenix proclaims that writing from the perspective of a black woman in the civil rights era is one of hardest things he’s ever done as a straight man

In San Antonio, Phoenix is widely known in different circles for many different things. Most recently as an orator, appearing on and guest hosting podcasts such as the Cheap Suits Podcast (ep.271, 266, 265), Mazi’s World Podcast, How Did We Get Here Podcast (ep. 19, 24, 25, 40, 50). With more in development. He professes of his love of podcasts,

– “I feel as though people are recently developing an angst towards podcasts because they’ve become a lucrative source of income; and once something becomes a good side hustle, then it becomes oversaturated and more scandalous as people try to generate money. But for me, podcasts aside from being an opportunity to bring attention to my creations, are closer to books than they are to television shows. I learn from conversation, things change through conversation. I’m able to display my mind and thought process. I’m able to share my insights and more importantly, my viewpoints are available to be questioned and challenged; forcing me to hear and understand other perspectives different than mine. Which is important so that I don’t fall in love with my ideas in an echochamber situation. He is also known for his years of work with juvenile youth and at-risk, abused, and runaway youth in Bexar County Juvenile Detention in San Antonio and shelter houses in New Braunfels, Tx in the late 2000’s. In which he states will always be his truest calling. “In those atmospheres I am and I was at my most truly effective. And in those worlds is my true legacy if I had one. But those jobs affect your heart health man, they truly take years off your life. You carry those traumas with you for a long time and they’re not even yours.”

Phoenix is most notable from his past as a hip hop artist, locally. Under the moniker of J Phlame, he was a fixture on the San Antonio music scene since 2003. Famously remembered as a member of the collective Vandal Records featuring his older brother Bang Bang (Kevin Phoenix) and local legend Ty One. Also featuring Ricky Ortiz, a now influential entrepreneur, impresario, and the creator of El Camino and Besame Food Truck Park and Bars. As an artist, Phoenix was known and respected for his dedication to craft. Lyrical wordplay, subject matter and content, flow pocket, melody, and passionate fiery performance. Later on in his career he would mentor younger artists. Not completely finished with music, he has been recently featured as a rapper and poet on rising star spoken word poet, actor, educator Cordney ‘MAC Woods’ McClain’s art projects 2021’s Blacker Than Shakespeare’s Ink, and 2023’s The Pressure Cookers. And most recently reintroducing himself to a newer audience as a lyrical force and performing stand out in his appearance on Mazi’s World Podcast and OCD Creates breakout segment Just Rap (ep. 13). Although he is no longer actively pursuing music, he hasn’t ruled out doing more music in the future.

In 2012, Kai Phoenix enlisted in the United States Army at thirty years old. He was stationed in Ft. Benning, GA. When he talks about it, he can’t help but laugh, “In search of stability and a fresh start, I’d say it was a smart decision; but joining the military right as your body starts its natural decline, maybe not so much.” What he had not anticipated was the coming of the Black Lives Matter Era, even during the Obama Administration. Starting with the murders of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown in 2012 and 2014. Identifying as a socially conscious, Pan-African with a heart for social justice, these tumultuous years of riots,violence, protest, police brutality, and racial and social injustice affected him deeply.To the point where he felt that during his military service is where he became radicalized.

– “You gotta understand, these things are happening at the moment when I am the most interested and dialed in social politically, and developing my own global point of view. I’m invested heavily man. In every room on a military base from headquarters, gym, to doctor’s office, Fox News is playing on every television this propaganda twenty four seven. All these soldiers of every rank are just eating up this indoctrination. And I’m coming home seemingly every day in my uniform to see the murders of unarmed Black people at the hands of the authorities on an endless loop on social media and television. Just everyday, Alton Sterling, Sandra Bland, Terence Cruthers, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Freddy Gray, Philando Castile etc. etc. Over and over on an endless loop and I am growing angrier and angrier and becoming radicalized truly. I can’t explain how it feels to serve and be in position to die for a country and government that you are losing respect for by the second.”

He began to become actively defiant in his unit. When leadership warned soldiers to try not to get involved in protest and demonstrations, Phoenix went to the anniversary of the Million Man March at the capitol in Washington D.C., to see Minister Louis Farrakhan. Very much to the displeasure of his superiors. When leadership told soldiers not to let their political affiliations and associations show publicly, he went immediately after work to get a tattoo of the Black power fist of resistance at the base of his inner wrist; so that everytime he saluted and shook hands everyone had to see it. He challenged his right wing leaning superiors publicly and was finding himself on the wrong side of the danger to be chaptered out of the military. Still newly married and working on having children, he knew that he hadn’t sacrificed that much just to get himself chaptered out.

– “I understood that I had to find a way to gain self control and build myself instead of destroying my opportunities. I decided that I would use my time in the military like I would use my time in prison. I dedicated myself to diligent, dedicated, disciplined reading, researching, and relearning. I began to use poetry as a means to write out my feeling of anger like an artistic journal that chronicled the times in which I was living. I changed the vibrations of the things that I was consuming on social media and television that triggered and fed my anger. Everytime anybody saw me I was either reading or writing insatiably. I did this for years for my own sanity and growth, not knowing what would become of it in the future.”

In 2015, Phoenix created two pages on social media called Pharaohetry to share his poetry and Build and Destroy Book Club & Cypher to share the books that he was reading and planned to read. The responses to these pages began to stoke the fire in his mind that there was an audience for his point of view. And by the time he fulfilled his military contract in 2017, there was collective demand from those that subscribed to his works for him to write a book. Although he admitted he didn’t know how to do it, he set his mind to do it.

–“I was fresh out of the military, I bought a house and had a baby on the way. I was working full time and on my way to being a full time student as well. I was busy as hell, but I had a dream now. A dream that I knew I would not be able to accomplish for years due to the responsibilities of life. I made a deal with myself that I would give myself four years to put my head down and write as much as I could possibly write. And I did so, 30 seconds at a time, at work, at school, at home while being a father and a husband. I wrote at the movie theaters, while grocery shopping, wherever. Four years was up in 2022, thus the harvest season.”

Kai Phoenix is an artist of many contradicting extremes. Both a solid and fluid individual all at the same time. His future seems to be ultraviolet based on his ambitions, intentions, and work ethic. He is on a mission to be as he says one the most important humans to open his mouth in his time. “I’m not writing for the people now to understand me, I’m writing for someone fifty years into the future who may pick up one of my works, to understand how someone like me dealt with the world that he was given.” His works can be found on Amazon.com.