KnowaKing found a moment of clarity in the Peruvian Amazonia. Going totally off the grid, the Tyryone’s Jacket frontman took a plane, a motorcycle, and a banana boat before hiking further into the forested region. Little did he know how cathartic and beautiful his experience would be. Learning customs of indigenous peoples, and realizing how much he’d taken for granted as a first-worlder, he took some ayahuasca, an entheogenic brew native to Peru, and soon underwent a journey of self enlightenment.
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“It’s a healing process. Some perceive it as a drug, and it’s most certainly not. It’s been going on for thousands and thousands of years. It puts a mirror up to your soul without the ego of trying to rationalize,” he tells American Songwriter over a phone call last month. “You have to go through the flame in order to be reborn.”
Alongside dear friend Grant Chambers, known professionally as electronic music producer Resurrector and also Liberation Movement founder, KnowaKing emerged from emotional ash like a phoenix. “I can’t express how different it was there.That space and time starts to transform. There’s alchemy there,” he continues.
He also drank some ayahuasca-based medicine, a totally contrasting experience altogether. “It’s intense, gnarly, world-changing stuff. It’s not a magic pill you take and you’re fixed. If you’re willing to walk through the door, it will present it to you.”
KnowaKing had long struggled with alcoholism, and such a life-affirming trip shifted his entire world view. Among many things, he came to further appreciate “a sovereignty I have to the process of this existence,” he says. “I feel it’s been that way since I was a kid. I learned to nurture it as my elders have encouraged it. If you look at the course of history and what we’ve done to reality and this earth, it’s insane and bizarre.”
“I like to go to the market and I have a TV, so I get it. Especially now, we’ve reached a tipping point. This sovereignty I speak of, I genuinely feel at its core the spirit within us has an umbilical cord to the divine and the universe.”
KnowaKing seeks balance in all things, and with his bandmates The Grateful Carl (vocals, guitar) and Ry Toast (DJ), he funnels such high-frequency awareness directly into the work. The trio’s self-titled debut record, out today (November 6), rises out of personal turmoil, as KnowaKing confronts matters of the heart, from heartbreak to addiction and mental health.
Tyrone’s Jacket sharpens their songwriting pencil with stunning specificity, owed in large part to growing up on lyrical hip-hop. In his formative years, KnowaKing learned to lean into evoking a strong feeling in his songwriting, discarding superfluous phrases or clunky imagery in order to hit directly at the heart. “It’s about using less words and more feelings,” he muses. “People are going to be able to interpret [the song] to fit their situation, anyway.”
KnowaKing’s transformation into an undeniable vocalist is also palpable on the record. In working with producer King David, he was able to sculpt his approach with rich and wholly unique inflections. “King David is everything. He’s a savant, and he’s been really patient with me,” says KnowaKing, who spent plenty of time adjusting various vocal parts in the studio.
“There is a lot of subtlety going on. I’m trying not to rely on tricks necessarily,” he continues. “He’s really coached me and encouraged certain things. Sometimes, I get into a bad emotional headspace in the booth. There are parts I have to go over a bunch of times to get it right. Then, I get into my head.”
“Can’t change the narrative / So I’m forced to endure this place,” he weeps over barebones piano with “Ghost in the Hallway.” Among the set’s most visceral, it soon erupts with KnowaKing’s inescapable rasp and a plea for healing. “I really struggle with his reality. I don’t want to go as far as suicide, but I can’t lie,” he admits. “I find this reality freaking insane.”
Whether he’s confronting reality as a Black man or wrangling his inner demons, the performance gives him agency to feel seen, exposing his deepest scars for the world. “I recommend this for anyone with mental health issues: you need to do the exercises. You can’t just get through it. You need to go for walks, do stretches, talk to people. It requires behavior in order to make a chemical change to deal with some of these feelings and thoughts.”
“I was literally in that moment. I was at my wit’s end. There was a time when we were playing a show, and when it was done, I had to leave and go find some isolation. I was not sure how I was going to go on in the flesh anymore,” he says. “It’s like if you go insane, so reality starts to become not about any of the things you’d normally prioritize. The mathematical concept of infinity is bizarre. It absolutely means eventually this exact moment will happen again.”
With “Sleep,” KnowaKing details the moment he “put the liquor down,” he spits, and new-found freedom in sobriety. “Life is for the living,” he later raps. And to say he’s living more today than he ever has is an understatement. “It was undeniable when it came. When you know, you know. You can [become sober] for other people or other reasons,” he says. “At a certain point, when you don’t want something, you don’t want something anymore.”
“The emo person I am, when I had gone through a difficult breakup, one I wasn’t expecting or wanting, I dwelled on it for way too long. I was defined by it,” he adds. “Naturally, you put it into song. The reality is my alcohol abuse was the reason everything fell apart. You learn so much after the fact when you step away.”
The son of William King, founding member of legendary soul/funk band The Commodores, KnowaKing once stood in the shadow of his father’s legacy ー even early on when he didn’t quite understand what that even meant. “When you’re a youth, your understanding of things is naturally different when you’re older. I understood that he was famous, but I didn’t really know what it meant,” he remarks. “I knew a majority of my teachers found it to be a big deal, but it was so normal to me. I couldn’t relate to why. He was just my dad.”
“It desensitized me, and that’s played into how I am as a person, in general. Looking back, it was certainly bizarre. My dad was on the road eight to 10 months out of the year. Now, as an adult, it made this kind of lifestyle tangible. It was not preposterous for me to think I could do things of that nature, even if it wasn’t specifically music. It gave a level of normalcy to it.”
Armed with a debut record, Tyrone’s Jacket certainly steps into the spotlight all on their own. KnowaKing culls his father’s influences into his work, but across 11 songs, he flies into the sun as a true artist. In conversation with GhettoBlaster earlier this fall, he had to reach a point in his career, complete with stumbling blocks and countless failures, before he could receive any sort of wisdom from his father.
Three years ago, the band opened for Dirty Heads on a national tour. While passing through Atlanta, KnowaKing’s father came to a show, and it was there everything clicked into place. “It had been some years since he had seen me play. In that context, he saw how professional things had become,” he recalls. “I always use the analogy of professional sports and how you see the transition from a collegiate to professional team. There is a difference.”
King passed on sage advice about timing, stage presence, and allowing for an emotional and psychological bookend to any live show. KnowaKing has never been the same. Now, he blossoms into the artist he was always destined to become. Tyrone’s Jacket will be his legacy.
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