Much like hip hop, Kid Daytona was born in the Bronx, NY, and is currently experiencing the affects of taking his music global. After spending 22 days touring in Europe earlier this year, the smooth-flowing MC collected a wealth of experiences, which he poured into his latest project, Summer Games. Featuring international vibes and novel-like imagery, Summer Games is further proof of Daytona’s gifts as an artist. BET.com spoke with the featured Music Matters artist to learn more about his career progress, getting respect from other artists and his new collaborative project with Gym Class Heroes front man Travis McCoy.

BET.com: As a New York MC, that Jadakiss feature must have been big for you. How did that come together?

Kid Daytona: The whole Jada collabo, I had put “Low” out like last year just by itself, with just me. Me and [Harry] Fraud had did it, and Peter Rosenberg was playing it on his show and I guess Jada just so happened to be listening to a show and he had wanted to work with Harry Fraud anyway. They had talks of just working together; and he had asked Peter, “Yo, what’s that song?” then Peter sent him the instrumental to it and I just know two weeks later I had a 16 from ‘Kiss… I was listening to Jada in seventh, eighth grade, all throughout high school. So that to me was really big right there and it’s definitely a highlight of my career so far.

You also worked with some storied producers on the project including Bink!, 9th Wonder and the Rockwilder. It’s great to see their names again. How did you link with them?

Bink!, we been working together quietly since, like, 2009. He always showed love to what I was doing and I think we got like eight or nine records that nobody ever heard before. He’s somebody that’s always been in my corner and always been supportive of me. But the records that we was doing was so crazy that at that time it just wasn’t ready to just come out. 9th is somebody that I met through the whole LRG situation. We went on tour last year with LRG. Me, his artist Rhapsody and Freddie Gibbs and that’s actually when we had did those records. And Rockwilder, I had just met Rock last month. He came into the studio session I was working in, he was in the other room, and he came in my room and started playing me beats. That’s how that happened.

The cover of the tape has some very interesting images. What are you trying to say with that visual?

I was in Europe for, like, 22 days, and those pictures are all pictures that I took on my trip. Just this kid from the Bronx coming and seeing different parts of the world. We did Paris, Brussels, Oslo, Venice, Florence, Rome — a whole bunch of places. And it’s just crazy for me, just out there in the world and I’m from the South Bronx. The biggest thing for me as a kid was walking past Yankee stadium every day. And now, just getting to see all these different monuments, eat this different food and meet different people, it was just something I wanted to capture on the front cover just to let people know what it was like. These are the things I’m seeing in order to create these lyrics and create these records. And that’s basically what it was.

How will fans see your experiences overseas in the music?

It just helps me paint better pictures. It’s not like I’m just saying words that rhyme, I want people to close their eyes and kind of like be right there with me in the experience. I’m somebody that takes in everything. I wasn’t just out there doing shows, as soon as I got to every different city, we went out and we went sightseeing. And then we went to the venues and to the shows. Met with the people, talked to all the DJs and radio stations out there. And with me, man, I just take all of that, everything I saw, everything I heard, and just put it in my music.  

What’s next for you?

The next thing for me is just more work. The “Low” video is coming out next week, and then I got a whole bunch of — we shot nine videos in Europe. And that’s why I wanted to give (Summer Games) a book title, like, The Kid With the Golden Pen, I just thought it was dope. And after we put that out, I’m putting something out with Travis McCoy from Gym Class Heroes. We already three songs in and we going to Miami next week and we just gon’ finish the whole thing.

What is it about your chemistry that made you guys want to do a whole tape?

Travie is somebody I’ve been cool with for a minute, and it just so happened at the top of the summer we were hanging out a lot when he was here in New York. We were just talking about one record that we were gonna do, and when we did that record, it was like, “Yo, we might as well just do a whole tape.” He was on tour and we started going back and forth with different ideas that we had. It’s gonna be dope. Gypsy Cab Confessions.

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(Photo: Kid Daytona/Facebook)