FUSE TV - Allan Kingdom Q&A: 'Northern Lights,' "All Day" & GRAMMY Noms

On January 6, the day he turned 22, Allan Kingdom dropped a crazy-good free album called Northern Lights, the unsigned artist's first project since appearing out of relatively thin air to burn up Kanye West's "All Day" last spring. Born Allan Kyariga in Winnipeg, Canada to a Tanzanian mom and a South African dad, Kingdom moved to Wisconsin at age eight; he and his mother ended up in Saint Paul, Minnesota, which he still calls home. On "Interruption," one of six Northern Lights tracks he produced (often alongside Kid Cudi/Kanye affiliate Plain Pat), he acknowledges that building a career in a place you rarely hear rappers rapping from is tough, spitting, "I swear this money be coming slow / I'mma just keep on promotin' though."

The record's full of that kind of honesty and positivity, situated inside a kaleidoscope of tasty, unpredictable melodies and pitch-perfect collaborations with people like Jared Evan, D.R.A.M., and Jamaican reggae singer Chronixx. Kingdom spoke to Fuse about his journey so far, being part of the "All Day" GRAMMY nomination and what it's like to write 30 songs in a week.

FUSE: You dropped Northern Lights yourself. What's it like doing this without a label?

KINGDOM: I mean, it's frustrating, but it's definitely worth it. You're your own boss. You just go with whatever feels right. You can go with the energy of the day. You know when you're the most productive and you know when you're not. It gives you a good foundation to build something bigger. Even in the future, when I do decide to sign or link up with someone bigger, I'll already have knowledge of how my own operation runs.

So when are you most productive?

During the day. I'm a morning person. But in general, the more I'm active and doing shows is when I'm most productive. I like to set up my studio times around other activities, like traveling and seeing new places. I just always have a thirst to see new things and experience new things, so whenever I'm going through something new, or in a new place, I always like to set up a couple sessions, either just with me or with any artists in that city that I listen to or fuck with. I like to keep things spontaneous and keep the fun in them. I don't like to just come up with a formula and stick to that.

The no-formula thing comes through on Northern Lights for sure. A lot of people early on really want to come out and show what their "thing" is, but you're showing so many different sides here.

I think that my thing has been evolving into whatever's right for the time and for me. Like you said, everyone tries to come out and be like, "I'm the street guy, so have me for all your street verses," or "I'm the R&B guy." I just kind of feel like I never fit into a box in general, a place or a background or a color in general, so I my art naturally just reflects that. The album sounds like the shirt I was wearing on the cover. It's all different pieces put together to make one thing, that for some reason it's dope, for some reason it works. I just pulled in all my resources; I'm independent, so I took everything I had—the dopest producers I knew, the dopest artists I could get in contact with, my most treasured experiences from when I was younger to now, to my aspirations when I'm older, and put 'em all in one thing.