When you think of hip hop and the movement that has embodied the force behind the genre, Milwaukee Wisconsin is probably the last place that would enter into your mind, until now that is. Enter, Casta. Casta represents a movement that not only transcends political boundaries and conscious awareness, Casta symbolizes a growing movement of hip hop culture which focuses on what really happens when people “stop being polite and start being real”.

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Casta – Message

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Born Tory Lowe in Milwaukee, Casta not only grew up not knowing his father, but was also abandoned on his grandmother’s doorstep by his mother. Never letting the absenteeism of both parents shake him from his path in life, Casta set out to change his unfortunate childhood and turn a negative into positive. Attending Iowa Lake College on a Football scholarship, Castor stumbled upon the music scene by pure accident and never looked back. Casta began heavily experimenting in the rock scene going by the Moniker “Crooked.” Performing alongside such artists as UHC, Papa Roach, Alien Ant Farm, No EFX only to name a few, Casta began seeing success in this genre and he was immediately hooked. Creating a fan base around various parts of the United States and being recognized wherever he went, Casta was heavily involved in the, until his life was almost cut short by the cruel hand of racism. Relocating to Worthington, Minnesota due to his impending girlfriend’s pregnancy with his first child, Casta, who was not aware that he would be the only African-American face in his new rural community, unknowingly became a target of a hate crime at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan forcing Casta to not only have to fight for his life, but also forcing him to change his genre of music that he received so much adulation from due to the incident.

Relocating back to Wisconsin and focusing on spreading the awareness of his past trials and tribulations, Casta pulled from the core of the hip hop influences he grew up on to tell his saga. From the likes of LL COOL J, BDP, MC LYTE, Too Short, NWA, Dre and New York Hip Hop in general, Casta found his voice not only to spread his message of awareness and accountability but by giving the public the dose of reality that has come to be his signature. “Nobody is talking about what I’m talking about and if they are, its just entertainment, they didn’t really live it like I did. My experience is real, the KKK tried to kill me. You don’t think that would happen in 2005,” Casta says. His dual persona of living in both worlds of Rock and Hip Hop has catapulted him to stay ahead of the game at all times. “Martin Luther King and Malcolm X changed the world and died for their cause, I’m trying to address it but not die from it.”

With methodical flows and calculated metaphors, Casta’s objective is to not only have you feel his pain but to celebrate his survival as someone who lived to tell about it.