Allan Kingdom - LINES

Pitchfork 74

So much of Allan Kingdom’s work is about collapsing borders. He is a sing-songy rap alchemist turning signifiers across genres into something radical. His voice melts into slippery flows that seep into the cracks on any production. He was born in Canada, the son of South African and Tanzanian immigrants, and spent much of his life in Saint Paul and Minneapolis, shaped by a small creative community of “dirty, hippy artists…grinding in the middle of the forest.” His last project, Northern Lights, was a sporadic opus molded by the host of cities in which it was made, including the trip to London for the blacked-out BRIT Awards performance of Kanye West’s “All Day.” These cues give hints about the sprawl of his sounds, which rest at a nexus of the African diaspora and the modern rap internet. His work is fueled by spontaneity—sudden bursts out of pockets and slinky jumps in and out of compacting phrases. His unique milieu is a guide to his chameleonic sonic identity.

“I am from Canada, I am from Africa, I am from so many states,” Kingdom raps early on LINES, a debut studio record that stretches his stylings further than they’ve ever gone before. It is a project that goes a long way toward fleshing out the personality of the man behind these eclectic mixes. While exploring a wide array of compositions from collaborators like Cadenza, Dro, and Jared Evans, he offers appraisals of life after a Kanye co-sign, rap as a tumultuous path to escaping the middle class, and how being a nonconformist can be alienating. It’s a study in individuality, where the subject seeks a connection—or more specifically, to be drawn to something.

Aside from the literal “Feeling Magnetic,” which illustrates his pull and his longing to attract plainly, there’s a more subtle desire to bond throughout LINES. Loneliness, and the push for companionship have been constant themes in Kingdom’s songs, but many moments on this album examine coupling closely. The full-throated, crooned descender “Down for Me” requests undying devotion. On the watercolor-ish “Vibes,” he tries to close the distance with a lover, citing a shared energy. The island-flecked title track shares a similar sentiment. Conversely, the disgust in his voice is palpable when a clinger feeds on proximity to his celebrity on “Astounded.” He longs to be close to someone in a meaningful way, but can’t. The closer, “Loner’s Anthem,” feels like a rebuke of the rest of the album in that way: it turns inward, finding solace in his work.

Allan Kingdom cares deeply about craft; he wouldn’t open his debut with “Perfection,” a song about honing his skills amid slow payoffs if he didn’t. It explains why so much of his music is about originality, avoiding negative energy, and protecting his sound from the posers trying (poorly) to replicate it. But the latest entry into his ever-growing technique-sweating pantheon, “Leaders,” is an interesting twist on the series, conceptually and sonically. The flute-led, scuzzy-riffed jam is an everyman dispatch from an emerging phenom that asks peers and fans alike not to follow his lead, on account of his own personal demons. A great deal of the album plays out in a similar fashion: humanizing an eclectic artist who is often inaccessible. On “Questions,” he mentions an absentee father and lost friends as asides in a life recap, providing clues into a fragile mindset. Each cadence in each stanza is selected to strike just the right tone. With stringy flows and a voice that naturally carries melody, he puts into practice his distinctive mechanics.

Though it doesn’t quite reach the highs of its predecessor, LINES is constantly in motion, full of exhilarating lyrical exercises (“Feeling Magnetic”) and sweeping sound installations (“The Fusion”). Ideas tumble one after another, often overlapping at the joints, as on “Don’t Push Me”: “I’m from the land of the lakes/I knew that she wanted to fuck me and she fell in love when she saw me with Ye/I used to save all my shawtys when I was a shorty, I lost all the capes/Tony the Tiger but covered in apes/Back in the day no one thought I was great.” The cadences and inflections spring outward, widening the scope of his sound. With each passing breath, Allan Kingdom strives to expand his universe, creating safe spaces for outcasts in the process.