STORY/ ERICA HAWKINSÂ
PHOTOS / CHRISTIAN COLEMAN
Kevin Rhomberg, a.k.a. Knox Fortune, is humble and creative to a fault. He is somehow both a Grammy award-winning artist and a down-home kid from Chicago who makes soup and cracks jokes during our interview.
âThereâs a humbleness to coming from the Midwest. Iâll go to LA and New York and Iâll enjoy them for a little bit, but Chicago is definitely always home and the people here treat each other differently. I think through the music it kind of comes out in a sense of being genuine and some of itâs almost a little more Americana and sloppy sounding. Thatâs something I definitely attribute to the Chicago music scene as opposed to the LA music scene, with its clean and pristine and warm and sunny. I think that the people of Chicago are what make it really special because the weather is not great a lot of the year.â
Those months inside avoiding inclement weather have paid off, most notably in the release of his debut album Paradise, producing Joey Purpâs mixtape iiiDrops, and taking home the âBest Rap Albumâ Grammy for his vocal contribution on Chance the Rapperâs âAll Nightâ. So how has winning a Grammy impacted Knox Fortune’s career? âI think it maybe caused a little pressure because I never had even considered the potential of winning a Grammy, that was just not why I got into music. It wasnât like âIâm going to get Grammy and have a no.1  songâ– it was just like, Iâm enjoying making this stuff, so getting the Grammy was almost like opening my eyes to a [different] level of possibility. That was really exciting. Actually, itâs been a huge motivation because now I definitely do hear things in the way of like– this is a Grammy award-winning song or this is not Grammy award-winning song.â
When we spoke I asked his predictions for the 2018 Grammy nominees. He nailed it, proving that he is not just an artist/singer-songwriter/producer, but also a psychic.
âCTRL probably for a lot of stuff, 444 by Jay-Z is probably going to get nominated for a lot of stuff. You can definitely hear it. You just know, this is what they look for…The Grammys were never any indicator of talent to me growing up. It wasnât something where I was like this is the most excellent taste in the whole world. Itâs super cool to get an award from them, itâs just not why I do it. So it wasnât too much pressure. Initially, it was a little bit because now my parents think Iâm just going to be winning Grammys all the time. My parents are like, âI saw Chance was on Ellen, you should go on Ellen.â Iâm like ‘Well, thatâs a little different. Ellen [Degeneres] doesnât really let people do that shit’. Although she did dance to âAll Nightâ on the show.â
I joked that dancing with Ellen is the real notoriety worth chasing. âThatâs totally it though, thatâs what Iâm saying. Itâs like those sort of things are maybe not cooler, because the Grammy night was one of the coolest nights in my life, but itâs just you realize with stuff like Ellen dancing to it or Coldplay covering it in Chicago when they came here, just singing the hook part– I was like, this is kind of strange how full circle these things come.â
His sound, unlike the artists heâs known for working with, is poppy–literally–not just in the sounds-like-pop sense. Paradise is flowery, colorful, is occasionally sedate, and is full of perennial influences: David Bowie, AndrĂ© 3000, Kanye West, The Beach Boys, The Beatles. At first glance, this list seems like a grab bag of artists with little in common, but he clarifies their draw/overlap, specifically in their common ability to reinvent themselves and have people take them seriously while still maintaining a certain playfulness/sense of humor. And the result? âTheyâve [all] been able to age nicely and create a career out of their insanityâ.
âFor this project specifically [Paradise], because it was my introduction essentially, I wanted it to be about a character. A lot of the initial editing of the album was looking at about 150 songs or so and saying like, âWhatâs more genuine?â I make a lot of different songs from different perspectives and for this, I just wanted to make this my own perspective and not another personâs story that I thought was interesting. So, that was a big thing for me in the editing process, just picking out what was truly genuine to me. I thought that âKeep You Closeâ âHelp Myself,â and âLil Thingâ all were songs that had kind of the style Iâve been wanting to do forever and I was getting there but I was also not fully finalizing it for myself. For other artists, I have no problem just going in and being like ‘Do your parts’ if Iâm producing it and being like âItâs finished letâs push it outâ. For myself, it was no one helping me with them necessarily so sometimes they just fall by the wayside… those were three [songs] that I was pretty proud of, they kind of matched what I had in my head perfectly.â
Since his recent storm of success accompanies his collaborations, I was curious to know if he initially hesitated when going solo. âI was ready, I think I had a couple moments while I was looking at a playlist of hundreds of songs that I made where I was like âWhat am I doing? Why am I doing this? This makes no sense, Iâm either going to release these, or Iâm just a weird art hoarder, whose just creating things for personal consumption and not sharing it with the world’. Iâd play it for Joey [Perp] or Vic [Mensa] or somebody and theyâd be like, âWhen is this coming out, bro what are you planning right now ’cause you keep showing us songs, and we donât know if you have a plan?â Thatâs around the time when iiiDrops by Joey came out and âAll Nightâ came out so there was just more of a demand, I think, for some sort of solo thing and it seemed like the time was just right.â
âWorking for myself is limitless in that Iâm the only one who can tell me no. When I work with other artists there is a lot more of a give and take which is really good for some creative situations, but sometimes you just want to be the boss of the situation. Thatâs the perk of producing for yourself instead of other people.â
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