Remember Berkeley rapper 100s? His 2014 release IVRY, despite the sometimes juvenile lyrics, was hands down one of my favorite releases from ANY genre last year. He had such unbelievable bravado and smooth flows to go with his classic-funk-meets-space-age beats that I was completely hooked.

Well, forget all that. As he hinted at the end of the video for “10 Freaky Hoes”, 100s is dead (at age 21, no less) and a new persona, Kossisko has taken his place. Here’s some additional information on the transformation via his management:

“The truth is 100s was supposed to be more of a player than a pimp a G funk/soul record for the times,” he said. “Everyone around me said I needed a follow-up record and I wanted to please the supporters I had who enjoyed the 100s stuff so I recorded the IVRY project and that’s when the press really ran with the pimp thing which became a distraction for me and took the humor and alter ego aspect out of things. I began to realize people were taking this character way too seriously.”

In 2013, Kossisko was performing live at an outdoor festival when he looked into the audience and noticed a father and his two sons in the crowd. The man was visibly upset by the lyrics as he ushered his kids out of the crowd and away from the performance. “I felt I could no longer put those messages out to people in general and most of all kids. However, I was already committed to Fools Gold to release IVRY.” At SXSW in 2014 he played the song “Middle Of The Night“ which features him singing and the response was so good he felt completely free to move on and reinvent himself. As a final goodbye to the character of 100s, he ended his last video under the name with a note to his fans introducing Kossisko and acknowledging he will no longer be rapping.

There’s no word on a full release or shows as of yet, but here’s his first release as Kossisko, the dark new-wave pop “This May Be Me”:

And just in case you didn’t catch it when it came out, IVRY is below. While he’s a fine singer, I’ll be holding out hope that he’ll be rapping again soon.