Ezra Rubin, the 33-year-old producer who records as Kingdom and runs the influential label Fade to Mind (alongside partner-in-crime Prince William), has been releasing music that draws on sleek house and atmospheric R&B to striking effect since 2010. In recent years, the Los Angeles-based (via New York and rural Massachusetts) beat maker has earned all the more renown for his collaborations with forward-thinking singer-songwriters like Kelela and Dawn Richard. And this fall, he plans to release what despite various singles, EPs, and DJ mixes, will be his debut album.
For now, though, Rubin is tight-lipped about his first full-length. “I’ve got some great vocal features that I don’t want to reveal yet,” he says of the still-untitled LP, “but there’s singers, there’s rappers, there’s unknown artists that we just found. There’s also some very known artists on it. It just finally encapsulates a lot of the stuff I’ve been doing.” In the meantime, Kingdom and the fiercely independent Richard (under her alias D∆WN), recently teamed up for a joint EP, Infrared, which shows the duo can use even the barest of backing tracks to devastating ends.
As Kingdom gets set to open a new chapter in his discography, he spoke with Pitchfork about 10 highlights from his catalog so far. The result is both a listening guide and a behind-the-scenes look at how one innovative producer works.
“Mind Reader” [ft. Shyvonne]
Kingdom’s first single, released in February 2010 via the Acéphale and Fool’s Gold labels, reflected a UK influence he had developed during a long involvement with London’s eclectic Night Slugs party collective. The song also initiated Kingdom’s tendency to work with vocalists who are women, with the New York-based singer Shyvonne—whom Kingdom met by chance via friends—delivering a stunning house-diva turn.
“That was my first record that I really made into something and finished,” he says. “I was listening to a lot of 4x4 garage, which was also being called bassline or niche at the time, which is mostly originating north of London. It has the rolling, thick bass and a lot of the details of UK garage, but it’s got the four-on-the-floor kick, so it makes it sound like a combination of a harder dance music with UK garage and grime. Also a cool thing about that genre was it seemed like all of the producers wanted a sweet female vocal over it. I was really inspired by those records. Also, the swinging snares and percussion were definitely coming a little bit from New Jack Swing, and mixing it with the UK.”
“Fogs”
Six months after “Mind Reader,” Kingdom returned with the more otherworldly That Mystic EP, on Night Slugs. The spacey, synth-spattered urgency of “Fogs,” which manipulates a vocal from Beyoncé’s“Sweet Dreams,” emerged as a standout.
“All of us weren’t really expecting that to be the popular one of the bunch,” Rubin says. “That was just me constantly making my mixtapes and my DJ blends and throwing pop songs over beats that I had been making. That Beyoncé sample, that vocal, was one of my favorites that she did in her middle era. It was really emotional the way she does those lines. The whole theme, with the title That Mystic, was delving into this more nocturnal, darker, bluer realm. And I was still really influenced by what was going on in UK music, which was the crossover from half-time post-dubstep type of textures and then moving into four-four stuff.”
“Take Me” [ft. Naomi Allen]
In 2011, Kingdom released a new Fool’s Gold single, “Take Me,” featuring R&B group Electrik Red’s Naomi Allen on vocals. The song doesn’t seem to have generated as much buzz in real time, but five years later, it fully deserves a place in the Kingdom canon.
“I was a huge fan of Electrik Red,” Rubin says. “With the-Dream and Tricky handling productions for them, there was always this really lush, banging soundscape behind them every time.” He got in touch with them through Fool’s Gold co-founder A-Trak, who had met the group’s members in 2004 while on tour with Kanye West; West was opening for Usher, and Electrik Red comprised Usher’s backup dancers. Rubin met all four Electrik Red members, but he didn’t know then how to arrange for so many vocalists, and they wouldn’t have wanted to put their group name on a project without an official push behind it. Once he realized that the slightly raspy Allen essentially serves as lead singer, he decided to sit down with just her instead.
Rubin came up with a UK grime-influenced beat and presented it to Allen. “It reminded her of Janet Jackson—big synth drums and a lot of syncopation,” he recalls. “We co-wrote the lyrics together and she actually laid that down in my old apartment, the first apartment I moved to in L.A., a little tiny spot.”
Kanye West – “Monster (Kingdom’s Nicki-Centric Edit)”
Nicki Minaj’s show-stealing verse on Kanye West’s“Monster” was a defining moment amid her rise. In early 2011, Kingdom let slip an edit that ensured she wouldn’t have to share the spotlight.
“The Nicki-centric one is somewhat political,” Rubin says. “There are so many songs where the woman is taking a back seat. Part of my whole mission, and you’ll notice on the album, is more presence of women and more lead roles by women—women of color specifically. And I think for me the initial thing of wanting to do [the Nicki-centric mix] is not even super political. It comes also comes from my feeling that what the world needs is more of that voice. I made that Nicki mix in a sense to just give Nicki a front seat in something that she had a backseat on at the moment.”
“Stalker Ha”
In November 2011, Kingdom issued theDreama EP on Night Slugs. “Stalker Ha,” which applies driving sub-bass and vocal snippets from Monica’s Missy Elliott-overseen “Knock Knock” to a sample from the iconic ballroom house track “The Ha Dance” by Masters at Work. Rubin had previously explored vogue music on 2010’s Shyvonne-featuring “Everybody Bleeding (Kingdom Remix),” originally by Night Slugs labelmate Egyptrixx. Plus, the ballroom scene’s go-to DJ Mike Q, whose “Ebony Ha” helped inspire “Stalker Ha,” has released music on Rubin’s Fade to Mind.
Taking a circuitous route, “Stalker Ha” may be Kingdom’s best-known track, thanks in large part to its inclusion on Flying Lotus’ radio station for the Grand Theft Auto 5 video game. “If you drive around in Grand Theft Auto 5, you can hear ‘Stalker Ha’ playing,” Rubin says. “So that got some people into it and just wondering what the hell it was. And then it ended up on ‘So You Think You Can Dance,’ that dancing competition show. I still see videos of Vine little viral clips of people vogueing to it.”
Ciara – “Goodies (Kingdom Remix)”
In December 2012, Kingdom released the VIP EDITION EP, a set of offhand edits he wanted to collect before realizing his next project, via his own Fade to Mind. They mainly followed the theme of taking pop-R&B and pushing it into a more chopped-up, ominous space, but the “Goodies” remix also had a larger significance.
“The Ciara edit is actually somewhat the inspiration behind the work I did with Kelela’s ‘Rewind,’” Rubin says. “There’s this dark, electro, booty bass vibe to it that I think ended up translating over to some of the booty bass influences that were on the Kelela ‘Rewind’ production.”
Kelela – “Bank Head”
It’s fair to call “Bank Head” a turning point for Kingdom as well as Kelela. He created the pillowy R&B instrumental long before the finished song surfaced. “When I made it I was like, ‘I wonder if I can get Ciara to sing on this,’” Rubin recalls. “That was my innocent thought.” The instrumental appeared on a Night Slugs compilation in January 2013. What really blew minds, though, was a version with Los Angeles-based singer Kelela, which appeared first on Kingdom’sVertical XL EP in May 2013 and then on Kelela’s own Cut 4 Me mixtape. By November 2013, the Kelela-led “Bank Head” had ended up on Solange’s memorable Saint Heron compilation, alongside tracks from Jhené Aiko, Cassie, Petite Noir, and Sampha.
Rubin met Kelela after fellow L.A. DJ and artist Total Freedom booked her to sing at a party, about a year before her Cut 4 Me mixtape would be released and subsequently fuel her rise. Rubin remembers Kelela sitting on a couch, singing along to instrumentals off her phone. “I was loving what I was hearing,” Rubin says. “She just seemed cool and she kind of understood what we were doing in a way that other singers hadn’t. She was always already trying to get a little weird with it. She basically just freestyled her vocal right over the beat. It was this perfect chemistry.”
Kelela – “Rewind”
Kelela has wisely taken her time to follow up Cut 4 Me, returning briefly with last year’s Hallucinogen EP, led by “Rewind.” The song was constructed more like big pop often is these days, with Kingdom serving as just one of many producers and songwriters (including perpetual favorite Ariel Rechtshaid, plus another longtime Kelela collaborator, Girl Unit).
“That one is part of Kelala 2.0 in a way,” Rubin says. “She’s executive-producing her own records now. She’s always known exactly what she wants to hear, but even more today, she’s taking control of her music. So this is a case like that where she actually had this super rough beat by another producer [L.A.’s Nugget], and she had a little vocal done on it.”
Rubin says Kelela had heard him plays Miami bass tracks—B-sides of So So Def All-Stars, for instance—as part of his DJ sets, so she wanted him to bring out the “booty bass vibe” that was in the demo. “The way the outro flows was something I designed, how there’s this lull and then this turnaround and then it drops back in really heavy,” he says. “I just wanted to make it sparkle and be authentically booty and have thicker 808s. And I added some atmospheric stuff, and shreds of vocal samples and sound effects, and just made this beat have more of a story and a texture to it. I wanted the whole outro to be as if you’re hitting into the remix, the way an old Timbaland beat would switch at the end.”
“Shox”
Kingdom didn’t stop working on his own music throughout these periods of collaboration, and in March, he released “Shox” and B-side “Punished” on Fade to Mind. It’s a ferocious, blaring, mid-paced track that would again sit well alongside UK grime in a set, and had input from Night Slugs’ Bok Bok.
“I’ve been working with vocalists more and more and sending beats over to different rappers and singers and stuff like that,” Rubin says. “I made these beats in that phase, but then they transformed into instrumentals on their own. So it’s a bridging of the two universes. A lot of people are like, ‘It sounds like there should be a rapper on this,’ and I agree there’s space for a vocalist. But I thought it was interesting to make a club track that has that space but can also function on its own.”
D∆WN – “Honest”
In April, Dawn Richard released this gorgeous single produced by Kingdom. A month later, it turned out “Honest” was part of a collaborative EP between the two, Infrared. The two met through Jacky Tang of the fashion brand Opening Ceremony, who had played Richard some of Kingdom and Fade to Mind’s music.
“The moment she walked in, she already had ideas for the songs,” Rubin says of Richard. “It just came out of her so naturally. After we had a meeting and she did a little singing over some beats, she took ‘Honest’ home and recorded and wrote that one on her own. She had a really specific idea for it.”
Kelela, as it turns out, had freestyled over an earlier version of the “Honest” instrumental that Rubin describes as “more half-time, like a full-on slow jam.” But Rubin ended up preferring the “clubbier” form with breakbeats and thicker bass, and that’s what he brought to Richard. He says another songwriter, Tim Kvasnosky, had the idea to make the hook (“I’m not over you”) in a call-and-response. “That’s what finally made it the song that it is now,” Rubin says.