“Pushed Right Through It, Now I Feel Like Black Panther”: Chillaa On His Recovery From Cancer In A Pandemic

In August 2020 the Mississauga rapper, Kamal Palmer, better known as Chillaa, was diagnosed with cancer. After six rounds of chemotherapy & 20 rounds of radiation he was successfully able to overcome the disease to tell his story.

Chillaa says he fell in love with music when he was in mother’s womb.

“I got into music before I was born. My mom, she used to bump a lot of old school reggae songs really loud. And while she's playing music, I'd be beating her stomach to the beat. So like, I was pretty much born with this before I even started making music, you know, and my dad's a reggae artist,” said Chillaa.

Everyone in Chillaa’s family is in the music industry. His father is a reggae artist, Terminal DG, his mother is a manager and his sister is a DJ known as DJ Rosegold.

He was born and raised in Mississauga and feels a deep connection to his neighbourhood.

“It means a lot. It's home. You know, there is a lot of love and support here. So like, no matter what, I always rep sauga, you know, no matter where I go, I always think of the city and tell people to come and check it out. Because no matter what, I'm always going to be here, you know, home,” said Chillaa.

He describes his sound as very versatile.

“I would say that I'm a hybrid. I'm able to adapt to any sound that I think is cool. And will make people gravitate towards it and make people feel something. So I can't say I'm hip hop or I can't say I'm dancehall, R&B, because I can do every single one of those genres just as well as I can do any genre,” said Chilla. “I could do rock. Anything. So I'm a hybrid, but I like to make people dance overall and that's, that's why I like to do music for the most part.”

Chillaa has worked with other local talent from the Greater Toronto Area as well, one of them being Nav.

“We did that together downtown. And it was a really good experience. We dropped it (On My Own) and we just watched the numbers go crazy from the get go. Right now, it’s at  40 million streams, I think, across all platforms. So it's good to see how it's grown over time, and how people have still been able to resonate with it,” said the Mississauga rapper. 

While some people solved their boredom by listening to music, watching movies and getting into art during the onstart of the pandemic, Chillaa was going to face more than just isolation and boredom. He was going to face twice as much uncertainty in his future. 

After feeling exhausted and ill for months, he went to a doctor, only to be told that there was nothing wrong and he could go home. Afterwards, he fainted during a studio session and was rushed to hospital again. This time, the doctors found out what it was, Stage two Diffuse Large B Cell Lymphoma cancer. 

“What was my reaction? So the first thing I just said to myself is, ‘okay, so how do we get rid of it?’ Like straight away I wasn't like, scared or nothing. I'm just like, if we do, let's just get straight to it and move past this,” said Chillaa. 

“I asked the doctors at the hospital how long the treatment would take and they told me six, seven months and I just said, okay, so that means by January next year —which has already passed — I'll be done with this. And that's exactly what I did. You know, I just put myself in January and just put my mind in January.”

Now, Chillaa is in remission. He has no more treatments as there is no trace of cancer in his body. He monitors his body and makes healthy choices. He didn’t stop there. He teamed up with 'Makeship' to release an exclusive Chillaa plushie toy that was only available for 21 days and a percentage of the proceeds was donated towards Lymphoma cancer research.

Chillaa’s story touched thousands of people around the world, including Complex, who asked him to be on their live streamed show on Twitch after hearing his music and story. The show, Type Beat Battle, is a competition where two producers are given sounds on the spot that they have to make a beat with, within 40 minutes. He was the first Canadian producer to win four times in a row.