Two Brothers. One Closet. No Permission Asked.
Killing Field Records is an independent underground hip-hop label out of Lincoln, Nebraska. It was founded by Bryan “Cryptic-X” Jenkins and his younger brother Anthony “Jinx” Jenkins — eleven years apart, raised in North Platte, reunited in Lincoln with a walk-in closet full of blankets and an XLR cable running across the living room floor.
The name goes back to 2002, when Bryan was eighteen and read about the Cambodian Killing Fields and couldn’t shake it. It wasn’t inspiration. It was a warning label — a reminder that the people in charge will lie to your face and call it policy, and the ones who get destroyed are the ones nobody bothered to count. The label officially became an LLC in December 2019. By then Bryan had already been making beats for seventeen years and Anthony had been writing some of the rawest, most unflinching rap ever recorded on the Great Plains.
No one was coming to save us. So we became the label.
The Four Rules We’ve Never Broken
Every decision KFR makes runs through the same filter. It was written by Bryan and Anthony together in 2019 and it’s been the operating system of this label since the paperwork was signed. It didn’t bend when things got hard. It didn’t bend when people left. It didn’t bend when the person who helped write it died on a Monday in May.
Everything else about this label has changed. The code hasn’t. It won’t.
The Book of Colors
The Book of Colors trilogy is the foundation under everything else here. Three albums that tracked one man at war with himself, released across three years. Black (January 2020) is Jinx — depressed, suicidal, the voice from underneath. Sanguine (July 2021) is Sollomon — furious, homicidal, pain turned outward. Gold (April 2022) is Anthony — manic, egotistical, a man on fire performing normalcy for an audience that doesn’t know it’s watching him burn.
Three colors. Three masks. One person trying to survive inside all of them. Anthony wrote the material between 2016 and 2018 during a stretch of homelessness, shelters, and the slow-motion dismantling of our family. Bryan was working inside a maximum-security prison at the time, carrying PTSD from a riot he lived through and won’t forget. We turned all of it into tape. The closet got what the therapist couldn’t.
The trilogy is the reason this label exists and the standard everything else gets measured against.
The Fields
Studio A was a walk-in closet in a Bishop Heights apartment. Blankets taped to the walls. A mic stand wedged between hanging clothes. One XLR cable running like a lifeline across the living room floor. The entire Book of Colors was recorded in a space the size of a bathroom stall. The early Sugar Cones material came out of that closet. The first enemyX tracks were cut there. The foundational DNA of this label was captured in a room you couldn’t fully extend your arms in.
On February 2, 2023, we moved into the current space and gave the studio a real name: The Fields. It lives in Turbine Flats, a Lincoln building full of coffee shops and tech companies where we’re the loud oddball with the bulletproof vests on the walls. The control room has real monitors, real baffling, and a couch that’s seen a lot of late nights. Every KFR mix and master runs through that room, those speakers, and one set of ears that’s been refining this craft for twenty-four years.
Who’s On The Jersey
Everyone on KFR has a jersey. Actual jerseys with their name on the back — captain patches, assistant captain patches, the whole hockey-team metaphor made physical. It’s a team sport here, and the current lineup is:
Populus and BagHeadddd of Sugar Cones were thirteen when they picked up microphones. They’re grown now and they still make music that grown adults can’t keep up with. The full catalog lives in the discography.
May 12, 2025
On Saturday, May 10, 2025, Jinx performed at the Bourbon Theatre in Lincoln in front of the biggest crowd we had seen. Two days later, on Monday, May 12, Anthony passed away from a sudden aneurysm.
He left us with clear direction: finish the album and keep the work moving. That instruction still guides this label every day.
The Work Continues
The Fields is active, the roster is active, and the catalog keeps growing. Sessions are still late, standards are still high, and every release is still built with the same code this label started with.
We are moving forward with purpose, one record at a time.
Legends Are Born Here.
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