KING Discuss Their New Album, Being Discovered By Prince And More On NPR
Cali based trio KING talks the creative process, influential artists, new music and more in an interview with Life + Times. The chat is the latest from the group as fans anticipate the release of their forthcoming We Are KING LP and musical contemporaries continue to sing their praises. During the discussion, the ladies of KING discuss their meteoric and somewhat magical rise and dig into the philosophy of quality over quantity, which ultimately guides their singular sound:
Life+Times: You seem very frugal and particular when it comes to releasing music. Talk about your approach to recording and releasing music, putting out really, really good stuff instead of just flooding the internet with music.Paris Strother: I guess we would call our music carefully crafted. We definitely spend a lot of time making it exactly how we want it to be. We’ve never really felt too much pressure to put out too much content that didn’t represent us fully. So, what we try to do is everything we do put out, we have it fully represent the spectrum of what we do musically.
L+T: You’ve gotten the respect of many of your peers from Questlove to Erykah Badu to Prince and it’s been a pretty organic process. The music seems to speak for itself, is that what you all have noticed.
Amber Strother: That’s all you can really hope for, to put music out and have it so well-received by people you respect and admire. We really are just putting out music that we love, so to have that translate and to be able to release music, it really means the world to us. First and foremost, that people are paying attention to the music and there’s not a lot of fluff around it, it’s just songs that we love. It’s amazing and there’s nothing more you could ask for as an artist.
L+T: The mood and instrumentation of a lot of your music is reminiscent of Stevie Wonder. Who are some of your influences and how have you tried to channel them?
PS: Our influences are so wide and varied. Stevie Wonder was a huge one. Really, all the storytellers, all the great-feeling music. We love Steely Dan, Joanie Mitchell, Quincy Jones, a lot of jazz. Duke Ellington, classic jazz up to the modern stuff. A lot of music that travels and takes you on a journey from the beginning of a song to the end. I think what we’re finding, the three of us all have similar tastes, but we all have our own flavor. All of these influences come together in a melting pot and what comes out as KING is just a collection of our experiences and the stuff we loved in the music when we were growing up.
L+T: Your EP came out in 2011. How have you grown since then and what message and story do you want to get across with your full-length LP, We Are King?
PS: Since the EP, it’s been really fun. That was our introduction to the world, but also kind of to ourselves. It’s been awesome to see how all the songs have grown. We feel like all the songs on the album even go a little further in depth to represent who we are and what we do musically. It’s been really exciting not only to create in a way where we don’t have any boundaries, but also to see where it goes. It’s pushing us melodically, rhythmically, in many different ways. We’re really excited to share it.
Click the link below to read the full interview via Life + Times. Stay tuned for more from KING.
>>>Click Here To Read The Full Interview With KING via Life + Times<<<
