Greenroom Magazine (Issue #02 / Spring '14) | Page 12

11

GE

NT

WRITTEN BY
NATE PATRIN

THER

N

N

N

OR

LEM

A

PHOTOGRAPHED BY PETER JAMUS

It’s easy enough to say that Allan Kingdom has style. As a ‘90s
baby who grew up under the era of the hip-hop auteur — emcees
who emphasized their personal aesthetic in evolutionary ways,
through fashion and internet presence as well as music and video
— he’s spent much of his young, yet long-building career putting
together a complete package of self-expression. As a producer/
emcee/fashion plate the Twin Cities resident has already carved
out a spot that owes more to the fluid borders and far-reaching
idea-fusion of internet culture than it does any Minnesota-rooted
hip-hop precedent. But it’s what that style says about him, what
it means, that really stands out. Born Allan Kyariga, the twentyyear-old artist has already put out a succession of EPs (including
2013’s Talk to Strangers) that dig deep into issues of identity,
reputation, and putting on a number of faces to a still skeptical
public. The sound through which he filters those experiences
should be loosely familiar and welcoming to fans of far-flung
indie rap: his production style draws from cloud rap’s synthesized
haze and the liquid fog that permeates the air whenever the lines
between digital hip hop and futurist R&B start to melt away. And
his voice — suffused with hiccupy tics and chatty flow, mixed
in with a singing style that jumps from introspectively smooth
murmurs to space-flight funk drawl puts him in the same league
as artistic, brainy crowd-movers like Open Mike Eagle and
Busdriver. With an upcoming debut full-length, recorded with
the similarly adventurous Ryan Olson (Gayngs, Poliça), he seems
ready to complete the process of finding out where he fits — and
who he can connect to so they can fit with him.