Troy Kingi still remembers the first time he listened to “cool cat” Lenny Kravitz. He was eleven or twelve, and listening to “Are You Going to Go My Way” with his cousins in Kawerau in the Bay of Plenty.
“I was jumping on the bed and pretending I was playing air guitar…we were going to the social, and imagining we were playing that in front of everyone, and everyone was thinking, man, we’re so cool,” he recalls.
Now, the multi-award-winning Kiwi multi-hyphenate is supporting Kravitz at his Spark Arena show in Auckland this Saturday (November 15th). This will mark Kravitz’s first-ever tour in New Zealand, so it means a lot for Kingi to be selected as his special guest.
“It’s full circle being able to stand on the same stage as Lenny. He’s always been a gangster guitarist. He’s got such a good tone, and he’s got a good feel,” he tells Rolling Stone AU/NZ.
If Kingi bumped into the legend backstage, though? That’s another story.
“I’ll be tongue-tied. I hope I don’t meet him, because I’ll make a fool of myself. That’s just kind of how I am,” he laughs.
You wouldn’t know the intensely humble musician had a wealth of music accolades to his name: from the Taite Music Prize to the APRA Silver Scroll Award, not to mention Aotearoa Music Awards and Māori Music Awards gongs, Kingi has been recognised for a multitude of albums released under his 10/10/10 project he began in 2016. He’s now gearing up to release his ninth studio album, Night Lords, later this month.
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Credit: Abe Mora
Night Lords is a collaborative record featuring a selection of acclaimed hip-hop artists from Aotearoa. Featuring names like Tom Scott and Lucky Lance, Night Lords will be Kingi’s first-ever hip-hop-inspired album.
His latest single, “Afters”, features Wellington-based rapper and singer-songwriter MĀ.
“MĀ is the only rapper outside of Auckland that ended up on the album,” Kingi reveals. “She’s one of those characters who are in the same vein as Lenny Kravitz. She’s super cool, mysterious, everything she says, everything she wears, her music — everything is just super dope.”
Describing himself as a kaumātua, a knowledge keeper, a mentor, and an “old head,” Kingi says having an artist like MĀ jumping on the track gives some much-needed mana to the album. “It’s one of my favourites,” he adds. “It just bangs, it’s really cool.”
Inviting a selection of artists from Tāmaki Makaurau and beyond, Kingi has curated a list of collaborators who fit his vision for the record.
“I basically just DM’d them on Instagram. Most of them I’d met, but there were a few, like SWIDT, I hadn’t met before. I didn’t know if they were going to say yes. I just sent out the email, and within 24 hours, everyone had said yes.”
He sent out a playlist like a vision board, briefing his collaborators on the way he wanted the album to sound. What they did with that brief, and how close they stayed to it, was up to them. Booking one day with each artist in the studio, the challenge was to have a track by the end of it, “for better or for worse,” Kingi says.
“I was lucky that everyone I picked complemented each other. They worked together on the same album; it’s not a mish-mash. It’s just a super cohesive album, and it feels like we were all in the studio at the same time working on it — even though none of them actually saw one another,” he continues.
“People listening to the album will think it just sounds like a cool party, everyone’s sitting around smoking vapes and eating pizza, and waiting for their turn to jump on the mic.”
Night Lords is part of Kingi’s 10/10/10 series, a challenge he set himself to produce ten albums over ten years that explore ten different genres. It began with his debut album, Guitar Party at Uncles Bach, in 2016, and features titles such as The Ghost of Freddie Cesar, Time Wasters, and Leatherman & the Mojave Green.
Kingi’s first venture into hip-hop hasn’t come without people’s two cents.
“I was having a lot of conversations with a lot of people who were like, ‘Why didn’t you get so-and-so on that album, or this person, or that person?’ I’m like, man, I’m not the be-all and end-all of hip-hop. Don’t try to pin whatever it is on me. I’m just doing something for me, first and foremost. I’m doing something cool that I enjoy.”
Making music for himself is who he makes music for first.
“I’ve always been like that,” he explains. “It’s something I’ve learnt from other artists that I love.” One such artist is Josh Homme, the vocalist and guitarist in Queens of the Stone Age.
“[Homme] talks about that all the time. You have to write for yourself first and foremost, and you have to be selfish in order for your music to be authentically you. You can’t be making it for specific people; otherwise, it’s really going to water down everything, because you’re not being able to be true to yourself.
“You have to do it for yourself, otherwise you’re not going to enjoy what you’re doing — and you’re not going to believe in [it].”
When asked what he would say to his younger self — that 12-year-old boy jumping on the bed — now that he’s about to share the stage with Kravitz, Kingi just laughs and says “nothing.”
“[…] I wouldn’t be where I am today without all of the peaks and troughs of life. You have many lows, but I wouldn’t change those lows because they teach you the skills you need to get through adversity. You learn so much more from failing, and when things don’t go right, you learn so much more about yourself.
“I wouldn’t change a thing,” he says.
Ticket information for Lenny Kravitz’s New Zealand shows is available here.
