Kenna is on a global journey.
Grammy Award and Emmy Award-nominated artist Kenna has toured and collaborated with a host of notable music influencers such as Pharrell, Chad Hugo of the Neptunes, Kings of Leon, Nelly Furtado, Lupe Fiasco, JoJo, Linkin Park and Justin Timberlake.
As the first ever One-For-One Artist Kenna is bypassing the traditional music business model and crowdfunding the production of his next album, Songs For Flight. Kenna will be traveling around the world and documenting his journey to encounter those who inspire change in the world. He is also meeting with artists and fans to film the music video for the first song off his new album, Songs For Flight entitled “Sleep When We Die”. With his dedication to better the world through music, up to 50% of his profits will go directly to deserving causes around the world. Kenna says, “This project is about art and music and it’s power to create change.”
To launch this campaign, Kenna is embarking on a worldwide tour to meet with people that influence change in the world. Visiting cities such as Los Angeles, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Mumbai, Chennai, Tel Aviv, Paris, London, New York, Haiti and Mexico City where fans are all invited to come out and participate in filming!
Kenna’s philanthropic focus over the last few years has been in water, women empowerment and the arts. Having supported organizations like charity: water, I AM THAT GIRL and Americans for the Arts, he’s raised hundreds of thousands of dollars and millions in appropriations for causes over the years.
“Sleep When We Die” may be more than just a song for Kenna, it’s reality. We were able to get an exclusive interview with him through the jet lag during his stay in New York. The metaphorical lyrical hacker explains One-For-One and the inspiration for his music. Check it out below!
Was there ever a time where you believed that going commercial was your best option?
Kenna: [ha ha] Sure going commercial is always an option. It’s not necessarily a home though. There are three kinds of people in the world when it comes to music, there are explorers, there are discoverers, and then there are spectators. When you go commercial all you have is spectators and your’e a gladiator at that point and if you don’t kill, your’e dead. People watch the blood sport of it like whatever happens to that record, they love it or hate it, it’s all very whatever but if you make music that has value into forever, into oblivion then you get the exploring people who are actually looking for something with depth and you will find they will tell all their discovering friends who will buy your records and come to your shows and care that you exist on the planet. I can go commercial but then I would be a gladiator fighting for things I don’t necessarily believe in. The answer is sure, but it’s not in my DNA.
As a one-for-one artist you’re not taking the traditional music route for your third album, Songs For Flight, what made you decide to embark on this campaign?
Kenna: I just think that … the time has come. I think music has become very much a gladiator sport. This is personal for me, I’ve always wanted to be a global citizen. I’ve always made my music hoping that it would reach people and be a soundtrack to them [becoming better humans]. My mentors in music [artists that I love] were both Micheal Jackson and Bono. When it came down to Bono it was because he wrote journeys, he wrote songs that just took you on your own path it wasn’t necessarily his. [Micheal] because he did something with innovation and he was pushing things forward. I’m just hoping to be a combination of those two things and being a one-for-one artist is an innovation, it’s me saying we don’t need to rely on an industry that is built on the anthesis of what art is. The industry is built on greed and fear, art is based on being bold and generous and if we spend all of our time chasing the chase like they do no offense to them god bless them for getting their own deals that way and working their asses off to get there . If we all go after that then our chances are way less that we’re ever gonna get there and we live dissatisfied artistic lives because we’re chasing the greed and the fear of not getting that deal why wouldn’t we just be bold and generous and say look my deal is hand to hand combat, I’m shaking hands and kissing babies I’m running for president of the United States of Kenna.
My responsibility is to convince you and anyone that hears of me and hears my music that I’m here to do a great work by my art, by my friendships, my family, by my allies and fans. That’s my community I can’t save the world, but I can save mine . That’s what one for one is about just me being able to get to a point where I have my core audience, my core base of people who are with me and that we together create the ripple effect of my art that may change the world, may reinvent the world. I’ve proven it’s possible, it’s not like I haven’t done this before, with Summit on the Summit Mt. Kilimanjaro climb is literally my third album. People don’t recognize it as that but I wrote it like an album and the features on that album were Lupe Fiasco, Zombie Gold, Jessica Biel, Emile Hirsch and all these amazing people who went up a mountain for me but I went to my then label last. I gave them an hour and thirty minutes worth of music, as far as I was concerned it was a documentary but I also got a sponsor to pay for it and that was the brand just like Apple and Delta payed for my trips across the world for me to be inspired by this whole one for one thing, it’s all very similar. I’m an architect and my responsibility is to do things my peers and my friends may not know to do. I create the world that I hope people would be able to live in and develop in in the future. One for one is the first step to a very big innovation hoping that other artists will come to the table saying you know what I agree with that and I can do something similar like this and that would be this kind of pursuit with those explorers and discoverers.
Is there a backstory as to why you named this album Songs For Flight?
Kenna: Yea, on the last record I had taken a ton of flights trying to finish the album it was taking a long time and I was getting frustrated and I was listening to one of those pre-flight security recordings and they were saying that there will be turbulence ahead but that it’ll pass. They were talking about how you have to help yourself before you help others when your doing the oxygen, all these interesting kind of things that are necessary for your safety in-flight. And it kind of just became a correlation to me, like the rules of life if you want to reach great heights and Songs For Flight just came out. I just wanted to figure out how to take flight, how to actually do it independently how to do it without relying on others and in the sense of the industry relying on the industry, but being able to ally with others but Songs For Flight came from that. I recorded all these like lyrics and I was going to put it in the beginning of Make Sure You See My Face that’s kind of the intro to Daylight but then I kept it.
To really answer that question though as I thought of it while I was taking flight I decided that I will create a runway to an album that I was going to call Songs For Flight and I created the Land 2 Air Chronicles series and that was basically the runway and each one of those EPs came out to teach me how to do what I’m doing now so I learned a lot about what you put on a record and when you use the social world and the digital world, what happens when you just put it out, what happens if you’re an independent artist, as you do what would happen if you work with digital companies or this or that or brands or whatever and I literally built those EPs so I could learn a great deal so I can launch this so all the music from the Land 2 Air Chronicles which I’m still finishing. I’m just going to finish that before I go to the next album and that’s the runway for Songs For Flight. Songs For Flight is about putting your dream into reality and that’s what this whole thing has been, how do I take flight, how do I help the world while I do it, how do I inevitable find myself being heard.
There’s a level of complexity in your songs that keep fans interested. Where do you draw the inspiration from for your music?
Kenna: Honestly, that comes from something greater than me. I consider myself as something Pharrell said in the studio once that “I kind of just adopted and stolen from him” but he said “that we both agreed to be co-creators that there is something greater than us that’s partnered with us” and for him he writes in a very conversational way and he takes it from day to day life and he partners with the universe in conversation … For me my partnership with the universe is a little more broad … and you and I might have this conversation, and you might say “I will be heard” and I’ll say “From your lips to God’s ears” and then I will find in this conversation that the universe is saying that “I will be heard and a lyric might be heard” and another lyric might be from your lips to God’s ears. For me it’s something that becomes tangible in a very broad sense of what it means to be on a journey. The answer to your question is I have no idea but I’ve been trying to figure out where it’s coming from but I will tell you this much when I tap in it’s like a hacker or a coder when they plug in and get the headphones on and they’re blasting whatever in their ears I’m gone, there is no pulling me out of it and I will only come out when I have written that code … My first two albums, I have only written exactly the amount of songs that are on those albums and whatever else I’ve released as singles are really just a couple of extra songs here and there. Most cases every album I have written to about 15 songs, the Land 2 Air Chronicles series windup being 15 songs, the next album will probably end up being 15 songs and I literally do not write any more than those 15 songs. I don’t write a 100 to figure which 15, I write 15 songs so it’s very much a gift that’s been given to me, the music is a gift and the songs when they’re done, there usually a gift.
What is your preferred method of writing and creating music?
Kenna: That’s the thing there’s no formula for me. I might walk into a room and someone could be playing something that inspires me or I might build off of a melody that I’ve come up with in the car and I’ll write it out and then go in the studio and work around it. Most cases it’s me and a piano, it’s something that just comes from just me being able to kind of pull my self into whatever the zone is. Piano is the default.
You do a lot of activism work around the world. Are there any new initiatives you plan to be apart of?
Kenna: One For One is my focus right now because I think there’s a way to bridge the gap where I can do well and be well and I can actually make my philanthropy an everyday part of my life without me having to go to a chicken dinner and fund raise on weekends and you know, have to climb mountains all the time. I want to just be kind of natural and everyday and the people involved with me know when they are supportive of me and my music and the world. That’s what the premise is, this is my main initiative, this is the main thing that I’m working on. I constantly am building different things . I’m working with someone right now who, I’ve been helping her develop a program that just got instituted into every high school in Texas and helped her kind of build the program it’s called ‘Protect Her’. It’s basically a curriculum for athletes in school (high school to colleges to major sports) to educate them on how to be a better man and how to be a protective man for women and empowering men to be protectors of women. I work on things like that, I’ll help develop programs like that. I’m apart of the Arts and Policy Round table for Americans For The Arts , I work with advocacy of the arts, I work with the UN Entrepreneurs Council, and development of ways to shift the world that we live in through social entrepreneurial ideas like one for one. I’m involved in a few things all the time I just keep it as a part of my life but right now I have to make an album and I need all the focus to be on writing.
What are the best songs you’ve heard recently?
Kenna: You said your saving the hardest question for last? [ha ha] Mura Masa – Lovesick Fuck, Rationale – Fast Lane, Theophilus Martins – Leaving for Fordham, The Physics – Sleeping Alone. But here’s the thing when I started this whole conversation, I was talking about explorers, discoverers, and spectators. I’m an explorer and I try to find great music, the problem we have is that there is so much information, there’s so many people making so much music now, and anyone can make it on there laptop. I think it’s something crazy like in the mid-2000s’ like 8,000 albums were being released per week in America domestically, now its like something crazy I don’t know the exact number but I’ll tell you it’s probably in the realm of 70,000 albums released in America per week. How is anyone supposed to know who to listen to and quite frankly when you get to the radio, radio is like we don’t even know where just gonna play the ones the major companies tell us to play and we’re gonna double down on it. It gets really hard for artists that are great like the ones I just named, to be heard. So the other reason I’m doing One for One is because if you don’t know who to listen to and you don’t necessarily listen to the radio and you’ve gone back to buying vinyl and your collecting vinyl all day of old ass records, wouldn’t be great if you could know that at least there’s a world of people where dope artists were actually doing something great for the world at the same time. That maybe you could just happen to back? And that’s my idea at the end of the day, I just wanted to differentiate my music from everything else that’s out there. That doesn’t mean it won’t rip, it doesn’t mean that I won’t be reckless with what I’m making.
Watch the recap of his LA, Tokyo, and Hong Kong trip below:
To learn more about Kenna and how you can be involved, click here.
Listen to Kenna’s new single, “Sleep When We Die”