Kassra Mobini better known by his stage name “Káss”

Kassra Mobini better known by his stage name “Káss” is a self taught producer, singer, songwriter. Born in Tehran, Iran on December 6, 1987, second son of three to Persian parents, mother a Dentist and father an Engineer. Coming from an academically advanced family, Káss was always geared towards his education, leading him to complete a Masters degree in Pharmacy at the renowned UCL School of Pharmacy in London, UK. To date, he is a licensed and practicing Pharmacist. Despite his success as a Pharmacist, Káss’ passion towards music has driven him to many late night sessions at the studio, leaving him feeling emptiness unless he followed and fulfilled his lifelong passion for music. He lives his life by the slogan “we only get to live one life” thus believes life is too short not to pursue your dreams and your passion.

Káss moved to Toronto as a child and spent the rest of his life in the Six, where he met his high school sweetheart back in 2006 and is now married and a proud father. Káss features his wife, Natalie “Baby Nat” on many of his tracks and they pride their ability to work together on their mutual passion for music, while juggling work and parenthood.

Káss always had an admiration and talent for music and began song writing at an early age. His musical influences were artists like Dr. Dre, Xzibit and Eminem, hence his earlier songwriting was in the Hip-Hop genre, focusing on writing rap lyrics under the stage name ”K.C Mafia”. His first song “my heads clogged up” was recorded back in 2007 when he was introduced to a music producer by the name of Ronni Berco aka DJ Sunquest, a Trance producer, having worked with artists such as Tiësto and Ferry Corsten. From there, Káss and Ron began to co-produce, perfecting their craft and working on dozens of tracks together.

After a decade of production and rebranding, Káss is thrilled to present his work to the world, to showcase his unique genre of music and is excited for the road ahead. Káss has collaborated with many recognized music gurus, artists and producers, for his first debut EP, “Foreplay” which he dropped one month after the birth of his first born son, followed by his second EP “Just Lust” released one year after the birth of his second born son. The two EP’s were considered to be a teaser of his musical taste and flavor and a glimpse of what to expect in the coming years from the multi-talented Káss. Stay tuned and buckle your seatbelts as a lot of excitement is coming your way.

But before we know Káss the artist, I think it’s

important that we get to know more about Kassra the man in charge of this parade.

Káss, in your bio, there’s a part where you are real about how empty you felt while being a successful pharmacist. Tell us more about this constant negative feeling. How long have you felt it?

This matter runs deep in my veins. Firstly I believe we need to make decisions and stick by them, and I do not regret any of my decisions, as I believe everything happens for a reason and we all have a journey to go through and this is my story.

So just to put the matter to rest, I am very glad of all the life decisions I made “no regrets” and am proud of all my accomplishments to date, which have matured me and led me to where I am today. If it wasn’t for my decisions and the “butterfly effect” they had, I may not have been in my current situation with my beautiful wife and be the father of these three little munchkins.

Coming from an educationally advanced family of dentists and engineers, I was always directed to gear towards my education. However I was always a kid with a big imagination for my future and I didn’t quite fit into the box of the education system. Despite my strong creative right sided brain, I tapped into my left side and overcame all my hurdles to go and successfully achieve a masters degree in pharmacy and practice as a licensed pharmacist for 5 years.

However, despite all of the lifelong learning that has come from my decision, I was in a negative state of mind in my previous life, as I believe I had made some of my choices in order to satisfy those around me and didn’t prioritize my own beliefs. The problem with this is you cannot keep your subconscious quiet forever and your inner beliefs will catch up with you and overflow and consume your brain, thoughts and every minute of your wake and sleeping hours.

I was battling with various levels of this negative state of mind since the day I applied to pharmacy school, until the day I decided to put my music and myself first. I remember working on a remix to one of my songs “2nites de nite” on the plane to London, before starting pharmacy school. I kept going with my music on the side to keep myself sane. I now need to taste the fruit from my years of cultivating and nurturing my planted musical seed.

In the course of the pandemic, in which way did this pessimistic thought end up being a motivation for you?

The pandemic and my son catching pneumonia at the beginning of the lock down led to the family needing to take extra time away from work to stay home. This extra time at home gave me time to concentrate on my music and I was banging out multiple track ideas a day and ended up with over 20 track ideas in a matter of 2 weeks. This level of creativity and passion did not help my return to the pharmacy. The first day back just reminded me of how much I did not want to be in that environment (I can still remember the smell of the pharmacy and it smelt like it’s time to go and find a new opportunity).

My pessimistic thought of being stuck on the hamster wheel of the 9 to 5 work life plus the thought of missing out on the opportunity of pursuing my passion, had me walk around with a gray and negative cloud around my head while at work.

Once I left the pharmacy job, I once again found myself at the crossroads, having to make a decision on what to do with my future.

● Open a pharmacy? Which my family wanted.
● Pursue my music career? What my heart tells me
● Help grow my wife’s law firm? What makes sense from an accounting perspective.
● Or just start something new all together? Risky!

As a well-known pharmaceutical specialist, was it something hard for you to stand up for yourself when you finally decided that enough was enough and made the move ?

This was definitely a tough decision for multiple reasons, one being my family and their strong beliefs and influences. Secondly I was leaving behind years of hard work and studies as a professional and respected pharmacist. Thirdly I was about to leave a six figure job to go pursue something that could make millions or make nothing and only feed my soul. Keep in mind I was a father of two at the time, with a wife who just recently came out of a pregnancy and was dealing with postpartum while managing her growing law firm.

You are married and have three sons now, your wife is also your business partner at some point, how do you guys manage it all together?

So we have three boys under 3 (crazy busy life) and I won’t lie, sometimes we it is not easy to handle everything that we have on our plates, from the kids to family life and being entrepreneurs and managing our growing businesses, however I think the fact that we have each other and that we are a great support system for one another is the only way this is somewhat possible and manageable.

My wife and I met as high-school sweethearts and she is not only my life and business partner, but she is my rock that I lean on. We do it all together from rocking the parenting world to the business world to rocking world stages together. She is my inspiration and motivation to keep going and to better our lives everyday. She is the only reason I don’t regret any of the decisions I’ve made in the past, as those decisions have kept us together for so long.

Back to the time when your decision wasn’t final, how did you handle both, your passion for music and your day-to-day job?

So for me to be able to pursue my music, I learned a lot of the trades in the music world from arranging my own music to recording and mixing of the vocals, etc. Every house I lived in, I had created myself a small yet professional home studio to let me escape and let out my creativity.

After a 10 hour shift at the pharmacy, I would come home to wifey and the kids, eat and hang out and just when everyone went to sleep, I would show up at the studio around 12am

and work away sometimes till 2, 3 or 4 am and till I had no energy left. Then hit the bed for a quick break and start the morning again with one of the babies waking cries.

It seems like thinking of a married working dad and the type of music that you play now, are from two different worlds. How are you tackling this topic?

This is definitely a challenge that I am trying to find the median and balance of who Kass the father/husband is vs. Káss the singer/songwriter. Coming from my background of street rap with explicit and sexual content, I am really trying to clean up my songs to the best of my abilities to suit my current lifestyle of fatherhood. However, everyone has their unique style of singing and songwriting and some of my songs definitely are more on the explicit side, while some keep things slightly PG.

Your song “New day living” references the slogan “Take it slow” as THE MESSAGE you’re trying to send to the younger generation. What do these 3 simple words mean to you?

The new generation, including all of us stuck in the middle, are just in a rush to achieve different levels of greatness, only looking at achievements as the final destination, rather than the beauty of the journey on the way there.

This leaves us always looking for the bigger and better things that’s happening on the other side of the fence and not being happy and satisfied with what we have. Yet those who get to the final destination in mind, they feel shallow and empty as they still don’t feel satisfied, since they don’t know what it was they were chasing to begin with.

So you could say that my message to our generation and the next, is to take it slow and enjoy life and everything it has to offer. Enjoy all of those people in your life and celebrate your existence. Enjoy the part of your life that you are in right now as one day you were striving to be here. Life is all about changes and changes will come without a doubt, but live a mindful life and love and embrace yourself and everything you are and stop chasing the monetary and valueless THINGS in this world as there isn’t ever enough time, energy or money to buy all the things and you will live your whole life chasing THINGS.

Where did your mainstream music passion start? You were more involved in the hip hop & rap era in the beginning, how did you get that transitioned?

I was always very heavily into the hip-hop and rap genre, focusing on writing songs with long rhythmic and flowing verses. I moved towards the pop genre when I connected with a great producer friend of mine “Ronni Berco” who mainly produced electronic and house music. I guess pop was where we met in the middle to bring my vocals to meet some of his electronic productions. From there the friendship was just fluid and kept growing.

I always had the ability to come up with lyrics to any song in any genre. You could put on a beautiful classical song and I could start coming up with lyrics that would flow with it, all the way to House music, Reggaeton, Pop, Christmas songs or Persian music which is my mother tongue.

You see, for me music is a way of meditation and getting closer to myself and transferring my energy to a different form through audio notes and songs that I could sing back and enjoy and relive those moments of my life. That is the reason that I tap into so many different genres and languages. I don’t necessarily think it is important for an artist to stick to one genre or style of music. If anything my abilities to sing/rap and perform in so many different genres and styles is crazy impressive and shows my versatility as an artist.

Does the fact that you are a dad have anything to do with the message you’re trying to send to the actual new generation? Where does this envy to “make a change” come from?

Fatherhood definitely does open your eyes to things from a different perspective. As a parent with children born in this new generation, I am concerned about how social media will affect their lives in the future. However I know many people just like myself, have suffered or are still suffering from different levels of anxiety and depression looking at fake and tailored snaps of other people’s high points in life and feeling like shit about their accomplishments. I hope my message helps ease the pain that many are suffering.

We as the human race need to be more mindful of firstly our selves and secondly those who we influence greatly. This influence can be directly to your children, friends and colleagues, or in the case of social media influencers, to all of their followers across the world.

We have a responsibility to get rid of the negative message we are portraying by just showing filtered life of high points on our social media channels and influencing the poor teenager that doesn’t understand or comprehend this world any better than what they see on social media channels, from following their favorite celebrities and influencers. So next time you want to make a post, think about those you are influencing and not those you are trying to impress. Be better than that.

We talked a lot about New day living, and its controversial message. Would you say that most of your songs have a similar tone or message to them?

My music is all over the place and very rarely do you find two of my songs have a similar tone or message.

The first EP named “ForePlay ” was just a tease of some of the music I can bring to the table. The second EP is called “Just Lust” referring to the fact that this EP is also just a mixture of songs to give my audience a further taste of my music. I think each EP/album will bring its own flavor and focus on a specific genre of music. Each song within the album has its own message to give to the audience.

As mentioned, my music is completely a reflection of my vibe and feeling at the time of producing or recording it, so there generally won’t be a situation where you will hear constantly similar or same sounding music from Káss. If you are looking for that artist with the consistent sound with the exact same product line, then Káss would be a source of disappointment as I promise nothing but new and fresh music and styles every single time I touch the pen, I sing the mic or press the keys on the keyboard.

For now turn on your speakers and put on your headphones and just enjoy the music coming your way from my studio.