I INVENTED A PART FOR CADILLAC. THEN I STARTED RAPPING.

Somewhere in a General Motors factory, there's a sealer I helped create being applied to Chevy Malibus and Cadillac XT4s rolling off the production line. Real cars. Real product. My name attached to innovation at one of the biggest automakers in the world.

And I walked away from all of it to rap.

I know how that sounds. But the path from chemical engineer to rapper wasn't a detour — it was the only honest direction I could go. The music was always there. The engineering was the detour.

THE DEGREE THEY DIDN'T THINK I'D FINISH

I started at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in their honors program for chemical engineering. 4.4 GPA in high school at Blue Valley West. Everything was on track. Then at 19, I caught a felony for selling weed. Thrown in jail. Kicked out of school. The thing that got me arrested was medicalized the very next year.

Most people would have given up. I transferred to a community college, took ballet and music production, rebuilt my foundation, and transferred to the University of Kansas. I graduated with a chemical engineering degree with a felony on my record. Nobody thought I'd finish. I didn't just finish — I got hired at Ford and GM.

"Success was harder for me than everyone else. That's not a complaint — it's a fact that built who I am."

THE INVENTION

At GM, I worked across materials engineering, quality testing, and R&D. The sealer I developed went into production on two major vehicle lines — the Chevy Malibu and the Cadillac XT4. Most engineers spend their entire career trying to get something they built into production. I did it with a felony on my record that the system tried to use to end my career before it started.

But here's what nobody tells you about having a successful engineering career: it can feel like you're living someone else's life. Every morning I'd drive to the plant and feel further from who I actually was. The notebooks I carried weren't full of equations — they were full of bars.

THE PANDEMIC CHANGED EVERYTHING

When COVID hit, the factories shut down. Supply chains collapsed. There were strikes and picket lines. I was in Kansas City, alone, depressed, ending relationships that weren't going anywhere. My best friends literally dragged me to Huntington Beach to work from the beach for a month.

That trip changed the trajectory. My parents had moved to the Bay Area. By what I can only describe as divine timing, they bought a house the same week I drove up to visit. I moved everything from KC to California that summer with my dad.

New state. New chapter. And finally, the space to stop being the engineer everyone expected and start being the artist I always was.

THE ENGINEERING BRAIN NEVER LEFT

Here's the thing about being an engineer turned rapper: the engineering brain doesn't shut off. I think in systems. My content calendar is a production schedule. My music release strategy has more in common with a supply chain than a playlist. I use AI-powered tools to automate distribution, generate analytics, and optimize every piece of content.

The discipline that got me through a chemical engineering degree with a felony on my record — that same discipline now drives a 7-day-a-week content machine. Engineering taught me how to solve problems under constraints. Music is just a different set of constraints.

THE NAME SAYS IT ALL

KLYPKUT was born in that community college music production class — the one I took after getting kicked out of UIUC. I was clipping and cutting audio clips to create beats. The K's in Kunal Kshirsagar were the identity I wanted to keep. Now the name means something bigger: taking fragments of a life that didn't go according to plan and cutting them into something new.

The sealer is still in production. The music is just getting started.