It's mid-afternoon on a Saturday, and there are strange electronic beats coming from the basement.
Singer, rapper, dancer and fashion designer Kenny Nevermind, otherwise known as Ken Upshaw Jr., junior in international business, is hunched over a keyboard less than a foot from his bed, rhythmically tapping at low-end notes with two fingers until he settles on a pattern he said he likes.
He pushes delete.
"For everything new that I make, I don't want it to be in the same category," Nevermind said. "All that stuff that you might've heard, that might have been electro for that time; but now I'm in this whole neo-soul pop thing. After that, it might be Western music, and after that, I might start working on Techno or whatever inspires me at the time."
Nevermind changes concepts and ideas like he changes his limitless wardrobe: as often and however he feels. The mastermind behind the music and fashion label LoveLess, Nevermind hopes to cultivate an artistic renaissance within Auburn, beginning with himself.
"At first, I didn't think it was gonna work," Nevermind said. "A rapper-singer-dancer-producer? Nobody's doing it. But I'm just being myself and that's the best way to be."
A blend of Prince, Michael Jackson and Kanye West with influences as diverse as Bobby Brown and G-Dragon rub shoulders in songs such as "36-24-36" and "Hello."
The simmering, funk-rap "Not My Lady" has all the sinister emotions of a Prince song but the wisecracking self-defense of Jay-Z.
"I let my emotions out through music," Nevermind said. "You probably won't see me get too mad or too sad or anything. Everything I'm feeling, I make sure I sit down at a piano and play it out."
Nevermind said endless traveling across the Midwest he and his family did when he was young is the inspiration for his album "Eternal Travels."
"Travels" is the next level of the neo-soul hip hop Nevermind has been building. You can hear Nevermind's past collaborations as KMNZ on Nevermind's self-titled SoundCloud page.
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