Build a Brand Without Losing Yourself (Kyle Knight)
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Hip hop artist Kyle Knight talks about growing up around music, learning the business side of a creative career, and how branding, networking, and the right team helped shape his career. We also get into his fourth EP, Kyle Knight Rises, and why staying authentic matters when you’re trying to reach a wider audience.
Key Takeaways
A brand is more than visuals. Consistency across your work, image, marketing, and audience helps people understand who you are.
Learning the business side of your craft can make you more confident about the decisions you make and the people you hire.
Networking can help you find opportunities, but character matters when deciding who belongs on your team.
Originality and accessibility do not have to compete. A diverse catalog gives you room to experiment while still connecting with a broader audience.
Careers take persistence. Staying true to yourself and continuing through setbacks can matter as much as any single opportunity.
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Related Episodes
Your Creative Career Needs More Than Talent (Kenny Feinstein from Water Tower)
Kenny discusses artists learning every part of their career, developing a recognizable identity, marketing themselves, and understanding who to bring onto their team.
Persistence Is the Creative Advantage (MADiSON ViOLETT)
Connects especially well with Kyle’s final advice about not giving up and continuing to build a career through consistent work.
Host: Michael Zimmerlich
Post-Production: EarthtoMoira
Music by: Daphne Greene
A podcast by Omelette Prevail, a creative company connecting creators, brands, and ideas through partnerships and collaboration.
Transcript:
00:00 Branding and Creative Identity
Mike Zimmerlich: Hey Kyle, how’s it going?
Kyle Knight: Great. Thanks for having me on the show.
Mike Zimmerlich: Oh, absolutely. My pleasure. I like to always start these interviews by asking a relatively profound question, and a very broad question at that. One of the things I noticed through your bio and your website and things that you talk about is this aspect of branding, because you consider yourself not just an artist, but also an entrepreneur, a creator, and other aspects of things. So I want to ask you, what does branding mean to you?
Kyle Knight: Branding means to me what the actual brand is about. What’s the consistency of the brand? What’s happening in the songwriting, what’s happening in the artist’s image, what’s happening in his marketing, and also what’s happening in his audience. That’s what branding means to me.
00:01 Growing Up Around Music
Mike Zimmerlich: Obviously that’s something that you learned over time, and I noticed that music has been a big part of your life, because I understand that your father was a music producer, correct?
Kyle Knight: Yes, sir. My father has owned a home studio since the ’80s, and he worked with Public Enemy, SWV, and Fonda Rae.
Mike Zimmerlich: Wow, that’s incredible. So obviously being brought up in this household, was that kind of instilled into you at a young age that music was going to be a career for yourself, or did that come a little bit later on?
Kyle Knight: That came a little bit later on, when I was like seven years old, because me and my dad really bonded and connected in the studio. I just really had to wonder as to what was going on, what can I really bring to the table at a young age, and just seeing where I can fit in possibly.
Then I began to learn all the studio gear, how to properly write songs, and really how to deliver a professional recording.
Mike Zimmerlich: Gotcha. So let’s go back to the branding aspect again. You know that this is what you want to do. You want to develop a career in music. I’m always curious about that first step. It’s like, great, I want to get into music. I want to start performing. I want to start writing music. What’s step one?
Kyle Knight: Step one for me was really learning how to write songs properly, and step one for me was really learning how to keep timing up against a track.
Also, because I was so young at that age, another challenge that I had was having to speak with proper diction and really pronounce my words correctly.
Mike Zimmerlich: So how did you work on that? Was it just practice, or did you take classes? How did you work on that?
Kyle Knight: I just really practiced a lot. I practiced my butt off, and things just began to cultivate, the skills and things like that. Also, my father taking his time to teach me how to do these things, and really just studying other artists and studying older records.
At that time, you had Cubase and Logic. People still use Logic, but you really had Cubase at that time, so using a metronome to hear the actual timing of the track.
00:03 Learning Promotion and Marketing
Mike Zimmerlich: Gotcha. So that’s great. Then how did you actually promote? You start getting music out the door, start recording, and then start releasing music. How did you start promoting it?
Going back to what we talked about before with branding, I’m curious. Did you test the market out to see what’s working and what’s not working? Are you a believer in having a plan of action, or are you more about, let’s throw something at the wall and see what sticks?
Kyle Knight: It was a mixture of a little bit of all that, because you’re so fresh and you’re so young at what you’re doing. It was a little bit of all that.
How I started to promote and how I got into promoting was in my mid-20s, when I met Angelo Ellerbee of Double XXposure Media Relations. He’s been publicist for Dionne Warwick, Kool & the Gang, Michael Jackson, and also DMX.
He taught me how to really promote and how to really market. That’s when he began to market me and promote me to places like Music Choice, Hip Hop Weekly, Fuse, and a lot of other places too, like Scope Magazine.
That’s how I really got my hands dirty in terms of promoting, through Angelo Ellerbee and, at that time, an A&R executive who I hired. His name was Kevin Goins. I really just studied what was going on in promoting and what new can I bring to the table.
Image was very important in terms of promoting myself and promoting my brand, definitely my image and my sound.
Mike Zimmerlich: I can hear how, from the get-go, it sounds like you took it very seriously. Like, okay, I’m going to learn how this all works. I’m going to learn how the industry works and continue.
Do you find that, because I know there’s that dichotomy with artists where they go, okay, I’m going to learn everything. They crave everything. I want to learn everything about this industry. I want to learn it inside and out. I want to learn how I need to promote, how I develop my branding, how I get the music out there, the production behind it, how I promote on social media.
Then some are like, I don’t want to deal with social media. I don’t want to deal with anything. I just want to write and record music.
Do you find it’s a detriment to creating your craft, or do you feel like it enhances it?
Kyle Knight: I feel like it definitely enhances it. Really just getting behind the mixing board and really diving into things.
You wanna write the best song that you can. There’s really no rush for things, so you just wanna take your time to write the best song that you can.
Also, I did an interview yesterday with Danielle. She brought up a very interesting point, having the right team behind you. It is very important, having the right source and the right team behind you to become successful.
00:05 Finding the Right Team
Mike Zimmerlich: So how do you find that right team? Obviously a lot of it has to do with the chemistry, right? But how do you find that chemistry? How do you find the right team members to be part of your project?
Because you can also blast people all day long and be like, “Hey, can you join my team?” But how do you find the right team members to be part of your project?
Kyle Knight: How you find the right team member is definitely by getting out there and meeting people at these get-togethers, at these networking events. Keyword, networking events.
Really just diving into these people’s testimonials in terms of what they have, looking at their websites, looking at their social media pages, and also just getting to know these people, because there’s a lot of snakes and a lot of sharks out there.
Just seeing and watching people’s character, because that’s very important. People reveal to you who they are.
You definitely just wanna see people’s character for who they are so that you have the right people behind you, so you’re not dealing with a bunch of sharks and a bunch of snakes. It’s very important that people focus on what’s going on in terms of the people who you’re working with, because it’s very important in this industry.
Mike Zimmerlich: I completely agree with you. There have been lots of events, organizations, and conferences that I’ve been to over the years, and that’s how I’ve been able to build my network.
I ran an independent record label for about 18 years, so that’s how I was able to build my network also, just meeting people at these different events.
I can always tell my story about how I started, but I’m curious for you. Those networking events that you discovered, how did you discover them? Did you find them online? Is it somebody that you knew who mentioned, “Hey, you should check this event out or this conference”? Or was it, “There’s this meetup happening”?
I’m thinking about the person that is just starting out. “I don’t know anybody in this industry at all. How do I find them?”
Kyle Knight: A mixture of both. On social media, but then also what happened with me is I’m a member of ASCAP. So I was able to find networking events through ASCAP.
Then I was also able to find networking events through my publicist at the time, Angelo Ellerbee. Nowadays I’m even able to find these events through my publicist, Danielle.
It’s really just diving into things and looking at social media, seeing where the networking events are happening, and taking a safe approach and approaching the events.
Mike Zimmerlich: Just for context for those who don’t know, ASCAP is a PRO, a performance rights organization. If you are a musician and you’re writing music, you should definitely be part of a PRO. The top two are ASCAP and BMI, so you definitely should be part of either of those organizations.
00:09 Kyle Knight Rises and Staying Authentic
Mike Zimmerlich: Let’s talk about your music. I understand that you released a single not too long ago, “Don’t Change,” as well as your fourth EP, Kyle Knight Rises, so congratulations on that. Can you talk a little bit about those projects and the things that went behind them?
Kyle Knight: Thank you. Kyle Knight Rises is talking about facing tribulations and circumstances and rising to the next level. For me, it’s rising to the next level in my career.
We have a song on there called “Don’t Change,” and “Don’t Change” is talking about staying authentic to who you are and not changing for people, because you have circumstances and situations out there where people want you to change, and they want you to be who they want you to be around certain individuals, which can get finicky and fake.
So “Don’t Change” is saying to stay who you are and to not change for anybody else, and to stay who you are in your love relationships too.
When you find yourself in love, you don’t have to change for a person, because you want that person to accept you for who you are. So that’s what “Don’t Change” is saying.
Then we have one of my favorite songs that’s on the EP. It’s called “Perfect Date,” featuring my buddy Gary Carriero. He’s great.
What “Perfect Date” is talking about is really just the perfect ideal date, and it’s really significant for me because I feel like it’s the way how I treat a woman on a perfect date.
Mike Zimmerlich: I love that.
Going back to the concept of “Don’t Change,” one of the things I did notice too is that you love going to schools and talking to kids and providing positive influence, which is amazing, by the way. I really admire you doing that type of work.
Was that something that was always instilled in you early on, or something that you discovered later that you were passionate about?
Kyle Knight: That was instilled in me early on because Angelo Ellerbee had me going out to colleges in South Carolina and speaking to people at the colleges, people who wanted to get into music.
Then I was also on tour, so I went to at least two colleges down in the South and spoke to a bunch of kids in the auditorium, followed by a performance, which was really great.
There was a huge audience there. I was able to give a performance and then speak for about five or 10 minutes. It was just a lot of love.
Then also, I did the Teen Summit. This was in Cleveland, Ohio, with Dennis Cash. Shout-out to Dennis Cash, man. He’s really been a significant part of my career.
I was out in Cleveland, Ohio, speaking to kids in the middle schools and high schools, those who wanted to get into hip-hop or get into music, and telling them to stay authentic to who they are.
You wanna follow what’s going on in mainstream hip-hop, but then at the same time, you wanna have a level of originality so that it doesn’t sound synthetic.
Like the song “Don’t Change,” you’re not changing who you are. You’re just giving a mainstream sound that’s original and that’s authentic.
Mike Zimmerlich: It’s a delicate balance, right? Because you want to release original music, but it also has to be something that people are familiar with too, right?
When it becomes a little too far out there, you’ll still find people that might enjoy it, but it’s going to be a select few.
If you want something that is going to be appealing to the masses, you have to have something in there that is going to be familiar to the masses, that they’re going to at least recognize.
But then what is your take on it? What’s your spin on it that is going to make you stand out amongst everybody else that’s creating something similar in different ways?
00:12 Diversity and Final Advice
Kyle Knight: I feel diversity is really the key. You might have a lot of independent work, and something that doesn’t apply to the masses. That’s okay because I have a few tracks that don’t apply to the masses, but I have a lot of mainstream tracks.
I feel that having that diversity in your catalog is very important so that you have a well balance of what you’re putting forward, heart and soul, and then also what’s happening on a mainstream radio level.
To answer your question, I feel diversity is key.
Mike Zimmerlich: I 100% agree with you. And you never know what’s gonna hit, right?
How many times have we heard throughout history that there would be songs that artists have written that they thought would never make it in the world, and that ended up being the song that they’re known for? There are tons of examples out there.
I agree. I think it’s one of those things where it’s both. Let’s make sure that we have something out there that people would appreciate and recognize, but then also throwing those curveballs out there too.
Some other songs are not necessarily going to be the traditional formula, but something that we experiment on. Sometimes that’s what actually gets people really excited. It’s like, “Oh, I really like this song. This song got me in, but this is really interesting.”
You just don’t know until you try things out. I agree with you. Having that diversity of a catalog of music, because you just don’t know what’s gonna actually resonate with people. I think that there’s a greater respect for artists that do that.
Kyle Knight: I definitely agree with that 100%. Drake is really good with that because he does pop and he does different genres. Prince was really good with that. Also Michael Jackson was very good with that.
There are a lot of artists who are very diverse in that field and who can really touch different types of categories in music. I feel it’s incredible, and I hope that I could be one of those artists at some point.
Mike Zimmerlich: Absolutely. All right, so I do have a couple of fun questions for you to wrap things up.
The first question I have for you is, what was the very first concert that you ever went to?
Kyle Knight: A Prince concert.
Mike Zimmerlich: Oh, that’s great. I love that. Wow. The first concert you ever went to was Prince. That’s a good one.
Kyle Knight: Yeah. This was back in 1998, and this was at Madison Square Garden. The first concert that I’ve been to was a Prince concert.
Mike Zimmerlich: That’s incredible. Second question for you is, what is a go-to artist that you’re listening to right now?
Kyle Knight: Me, I listen to a lot of Kendrick Lamar. Then I listen to a lot of old-school rap. That’s what I’m into.
Not all the stuff on the radio I agree with. I’m an up-and-coming artist and I have a certain level of national exposure, so I listen to a lot of myself too.
Mike Zimmerlich: No, fair enough. I get it.
All right, last question for you. If you’re only able to give one piece of advice to somebody else, what would that one piece of advice be?
Kyle Knight: Keep the faith and never give up, because once you give up in this industry, your success is right around the corner, but you already gave up, so you weren’t around. You weren’t there to go around the corner.
So you never wanna give up. Always follow your dreams and stay true to yourself.
Mike Zimmerlich: I totally agree with that. I really appreciate it a lot, Kyle. Thank you so much for joining me on the show.
We’ll make sure that in the show notes people can check out your music and so forth. Amazing work. Keep up the good work, especially not only with music, but also going to the schools as well.
We need more people like you giving a positive influence to students, so keep it up.
Kyle Knight: Thank you, sir. Everybody can find me at Kyle Knight Music, kyleknightmusic.com.
Thanks for having me on the show.
Mike Zimmerlich: Thank you.