By: Nora Kalaja, New York, Prishtina/

KAS (Kastriot Preteni) after the successful runs of two hit releases “Imma Get My Piece” and “Till Death Do US Part” has now released a new music video. Both videos have received extraordinary views totaling to 65,000 views on yotube. The new video “Product of Society” was released on 04 January 2013 and is getting great reviews.

“After ‘Product of Society’, I’ve gotten a lot of great responses, and requests from many famous artists. One in particular is one of the most lyrically respected artists from the Albanian hip hop supergroup TBA, Kobra aka Helmusi. He hit me up and gave me compliments on my music. Shortly after that, we decided to make a track together titled ‘Goodbye’, which was released January 27th on YouTube. The song has gotten great reviews, thus far, and I’m hugely satisfied on the final result. I’ve also been invited for a TV21 interview on the ‘Relax Show’ in Kosovo, taking place either the 13th or 14th of February, in which I will be attending to also celebrate my mother land’s 5th year anniversary,” said KAS.

Product of Society is an independent video, directed by Ufollow Movement and KAS. The shooting of the video started in November last year and the song is currently available on iTunes, Spotify and YouTube.

“I’ve had this imagine in my head for a while, and I believe sometime in October I decided to order all of the equipment needed to complete the project (40 plain masks from China, etc), which I funded by myself. You gotta pay some, to earn some. We started shooting early November, and finished late December. This video took me longer to make, due to heavy snow, at times. We managed to block an entire street just for the sake of a major scene, which we gathered over 50 people to stay in the background as extras,” added KAS.

KAS carefully considered the final message of the song during the conceptualization of the project and in its lyrics the song states the following:

“The song pretty much tells us that we all are a product of society, in both positive and negative ways. Everyone feels like they have to act/think/feel a certain way, or whatever, to fit in. That’s why everyone wears a mask in the video. I’m not trying to pull of any conspiracy theory or anything, ‘cuz I don’t really believe in that kind of stuff, but we do live in a scary world, hence the horror theme. Society places demands upon us and structures our time. It makes some choices easy and others hard.
While we are theoretically free to make any choice, we will often make the easy choice. Thus society has influenced our choices. Thus society has, in effect, chosen for us. To this extent, we are a product of society. Society has made us what we are. The message of the song is that we all should try to think out of the box sometimes, and not just be walkin’ around like living zombies, agreeing to everything just because of a silly trend, or a norm that tells us how today’s “normal” youth should be: “You operate your face when the world don’t think you’re pretty.” Don’t be afraid to be yourself; “Pull your mask off and show your face.”

KAS is planning on releasing a new video in Kosovo by this coming summer and hopes to bring “a fresh concept that makes people think”.