Kendflow, In His Own Words: Coming Back to the Roots

For Kendflow, returning to the beginning does not mean starting over.

It means recovering the instincts that were there before careers, projects, industries or expectations entered the picture: experimentation, loud electronic music, unexpected combinations, obsessive attention to sound and the desire to make something simply because it felt different.

Born and raised in Ciudad Bolívar, Venezuela, and later shaped by years in Chile and the United States, Kendflow’s story has moved through several identities and roles — DJ, producer, songwriter, creative director, artist developer and, eventually, the person behind Cabilliant. But underneath those changes is a relationship with music that began much earlier.

A Life Surrounded by Music

Cabilliant: How did you first get into music?

Kendflow: I’ve lived my entire life surrounded by music. My dad was considered by many one of the best DJs in the late ’80s and ’90s, and music was so important in his lifestyle that it became the soundtrack of our lives.

Through him I was exposed to disco, house, techno, ballads and pop from an early age. I grew up hearing stories about his life as a DJ and watching him DJ. Being around nightlife and music felt natural to me.

At the same time, my taste was all over the place. I was listening to Black Eyed Peas, Wisin & Yandel, Justin Timberlake, Madonna, Kesha, Fergie, Britney Spears, Lady Gaga, Metallica, Sean Paul, DJ Nelson, Ñejo & Dálmata, Skrillex and Zedd. There was something I connected with in a lot of those records: they felt futuristic, electronic, sometimes cold or dystopian.

Around 2010 I started experimenting with Virtual DJ and Traktor, making mashups, bootlegs and live-recorded versions of songs. That quickly escalated into production software, where I felt much more comfortable because I could actually create the versions I was hearing in my head.

My dad supported the interest quickly. He gave me my own DJ mixer and CD players. Around the same time, Derek Romero was showing the same obsession with music. We were neighbors and spent thousands of hours playing music at each other’s houses.

I started producing my own tracks in FL Studio and putting them on SoundCloud. At school, I would show them to friends and most people did not really understand what I was making. I wasn’t trying to make pop music. I was experimenting — moving through dubstep, electro house, hardstyle and whatever else interested me.

Before Kendflow, There Was KEND

Cabilliant: Where did the name Kendflow come from?

Kendflow: My name is Kendrick, and growing up people called me Ken. When I started producing, I called myself KEND.

KEND became the name I used through most of my early development as a producer, roughly from 2012 until 2020.

In 2020 I started working around DJ Nelson and Flow Music. People around us gradually started calling me “Ken Flow.” At the same time, my life had changed completely. I had left Venezuela, spent years in Chile and was now experiencing another cultural shift through Orlando and Puerto Rico.

It felt like the same KEND with a new flow. That is how Kendflow became the name.

Kendness

Cabilliant: What period was most important in forming your own sound?

Kendflow: Definitely around 2014. I was coming directly from hardstyle, so my workflow, sound design, synth choices and samples were all influenced by it. Then I moved very quickly into moombahton.

Those worlds started colliding in a way that became recognizable enough that people around me started calling the sound “Kendness” — a play on KEND and madness.

That idea still describes a lot of what I like. Vocal chops, detuned oscillators, pitch movement, portamento, harmonies, hardstyle kicks, high-pitched leads, huge reverbs, glitches, crowd sounds, distortion and futuristic textures. I like things that feel exaggerated.

The same mentality carries into DJing. Quick mixes, mashups, loops, scratches, effects, unexpected combinations and high energy. Experimentation is probably the most consistent thing between the producer and the DJ.

How Cabilliant Started

Cabilliant: What role does Cabilliant have in your own story?

Kendflow: My friends, family, community, life and meaning.

It started because I wanted somewhere to represent music that was being left outside the traditional system.

Someone from Gregor Salto’s team had suggested that I make a mixtape around one of our releases. I was only supposed to include officially released songs, and I quickly realized that many of my friends from the SoundCloud and bootleg community were missing. They were making original music, but giving it away online rather than releasing it through places like Beatport.

So I started creating different mix-show concepts. Kend Show was for the experimental and harder music that reflected my personal taste. Peppare was more house and minimal. And then there was Cabilliant, which was for my friends.

The name came from “cabilla” and “civilian.” Cabilla is the ribbed steel used to reinforce concrete. In our group of friends, we used the word for something hard or heavy — hard music, underground music, something intense.

Cabilliant meant, in a way, “cabilla civilians.” I still think that describes who we are.

From a Mix Show to a Culture

What started as a show attached to Kend quickly became something larger.

By 2014, Cabilliant had moved from being a show by Kend into a platform where Kend happened to be the DJ. It reached local radio in Ciudad Bolívar. By 2015 and 2016, Cabilliant was releasing music, developing its website, visual identity and early merchandise, and reaching radio outside Venezuela.

Living in Chile changed the project again. Between 2017 and 2019, Cabilliant moved closer to culture itself: underground artists, folklore, native music, museums, painters, photography, cultural gatherings and events became part of the environment around it.

By 2020, the accumulated experience had moved behind the scenes. Cabilliant became involved in artist and project development, production, image, marketing, PR, management support, events and creative tools.

Today, Kendflow sees that evolution as a circle rather than a straight line. The intention is increasingly similar to where Cabilliant began: use what has been learned over more than a decade to support emerging artists, build useful tools, create experiences and document the culture around the people involved.

The Latin Chapter

Cabilliant: Your earlier history is heavily connected to remixes. How did that evolve into the Latin period?

Kendflow: Remixes were there almost from the beginning. KEND was heavily invested in the remix and bootleg community on SoundCloud.

In 2018, Cabilliant artist Alejandro Armes became connected with DJ Nelson, and around 2019 we returned seriously to that remix mentality, this time focused on the Latin urban scene.

That period eventually opened a completely different side of my career. Working around DJ Nelson, Babywine and the wider Flow Music circle gave me opportunities to learn, grow and participate in much larger artist and project environments.

The Story Behind “Crush Contigo”

Cabilliant: Which release has a story people do not really know?

Kendflow: Crush Contigo.

The song was born in my studio with Babywine. I recorded, directed and composed alongside her, and the original idea was to fuse Changa Tuki and Sound Car influences with electronic guaracha.

I wanted it to contain references to music that had marked different moments of my life. A lyric like “How did you know, ’cause I never told, you found out I got a crush on you” helped lead us toward “Yo tengo un crush contigo.” “Caracas de Noche” helped inspire “Esa noche en Palomino.” There were pieces of my early production history, Venezuelan electronic culture and the experiences I was living at the time all meeting inside one idea.

The original concept was called Palomino and was intended for a Kendflow EP. It sat unfinished while other projects took priority.

Later, while DJ Nelson was preparing De Camino a Palomino, I felt the song needed to reach him. He responded immediately, previewed it, and the project evolved into the record ultimately released as Crush Contigo.

What Represents Kendflow Now

Cabilliant: Of the music released as Kendflow, what represents you best?

Kendflow: No Cap.

Experimental. Hardstyle. Underground. Dark. House. Bass. Aggressive. High-pitched leads. Vocal chops. Euphoric. Hard.

Those contradictions are important to me. I don’t really want Kendflow to fit inside one clean genre definition. Hardstyle, electro house, house, moombahton, Jersey club, urban music, underground music and experimentation have all appeared at different times.

The Work Nobody Sees

Cabilliant: What is something important about you that cannot be learned from Spotify or social media?

Kendflow: I work a lot behind the scenes. I express myself through several different kinds of art, but I keep a very low profile.

Ninety-nine percent of it is not seen. That is intentional.

DJing, production and songwriting are central to Kendflow, but they exist alongside years of visual work, creative direction, design, artist development and building projects for other people.

That creates a strange relationship with an artist catalog. The releases document one part of the story, while much of the actual life around them happens elsewhere.

Coming Back to the Roots

Cabilliant: If somebody finds the Kendflow archive 20 years from now, what do you want them to understand that the releases alone would not explain?

Kendflow: This stage is about reinventing myself — doing what has worked for me, doing what I have enjoyed the most and coming back to my roots.

This stage is self-development.

That may be the clearest way to understand the current Kendflow chapter. It is not an attempt to recreate 2012, 2014 or any other previous era. It is about recognizing the parts that survived all of them.

The experimentation. The hard electronic music. The obsession with DJ culture. The visual world. The people around it. The impulse to build something when the existing structure does not quite fit.

After years spent moving between those roles, the next version of Kendflow begins by bringing them back together.