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

002 | Allan Kingdom: Northern Gentleman

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That was like the first one I felt like I could relate to. And then Pharrell,
Kanye West, Kid Cudi 1. That was just like a succession of rappers I
ended up relating to. A lot of the rappers I like aren’t just rappers, the
ones I see as idols are people that are just creators, and they happen
to rap. Renaissance type dudes. I never really realized it, but back
then, when I heard them, I just knew
that they rapped. But the more I learned
about them, the more I realized they
were multi-dimensional people.
They had their fashion style and
visual aesthetic...

So how’d you get started?
What pulled you to music?
I started making music from the moment I can
remember — I just started writing. I wasn’t really
introduced to hip hop at an early age like most people
in my generation. My mom is from East Africa, so I
was just listening to a lot of African music, and a lot
of mainstream R&B like Lionel Richie, Bob Marley and
stuff. I always wrote poems and songs, I didn’t really

know what rapping was until about 4th or 5th grade,
about 2002-ish. I just started writing it, but I didn’t
really know what to call it.
One way I got into hip hop, this church, there was
this dude there, his name was Martin and he was a
musician and he played every instrument — drums,
guitar, piano. And there was a studio above the church.
I was like nine years old and I told him I wanted to
rap, and he let me record there. I had a Christian rap

CD when I was like nine. My mom made me cross
out some of the words in my lyrics and put Christian
words in there. That was my first recording experience.
And ever since then I was into it. This was when I first
moved to the Twin Cities.

around town. These days it just pushes you to be a better person,
just to make sure you’re on your Ps and Qs all the time and I really like
that. I think it’s harder in a way, but that makes it cooler.
How did you go from writing to the production side of things?
Was that part of wanting to hold
down all the different aspects of
being a musician?

A LOT OF THE
RAPPERS I LIKE
AREN’T JUST
RAPPERS, THE
ONES I SEE AS IDOLS
ARE THE ONES
THAT ARE JUST
CREATORS, AND
THEY HAPPEN TO
RAP. RENAISSANCE
TYPE DUDES.

Yeah, they had it all down. And it was all
a part of the reason I liked them, too. I
just think visually, especially in this age
and this generation, it’s part of being an
artist. I feel like a lot of people talk about
how things are shallow now because
you have to be incorporating visuals,
you have to have style. But I feel like it
just pushes you to be an overall better
person. The 21st century, everything
that’s happening now with technology,
people want to see and hear everything.
It just pushes you to be on point all the
time rather than, in the ‘70s or ‘60s,
where the singer would just have to go to the studio and just sing
and then leave. And that was their only job. The only pictures people
saw of them were when they had photoshoots and put up posters

Yeah, everything that I did came out of
necessity, of not having things. I st