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Kellen

@soundslikekellen

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Songwriter.
🕰️👑 - NYC
Formerly:
Director, Client Experience & Rolex - Frank Adams
Director, Client Experience & Rolex - CD Peacock
GM Retail, Notre

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When I was sixteen, my family and I moved to Playa del Rey, California, and I attended my second high school out of three total. Our apartment faced an indoor courtyard, and I would open my windows and play Pandora through the speakers of my Casio keyboard while the smell of the communal pool's chlorine floated into my room.

I remember hearing D'Angelo's "Lady" for the first time, and thinking it was curiously novel to me, I started a new radio station based on the song. "Playa Playa" came on, and irreversibly altered my life. That afternoon is tattooed in my memory with how significant that moment is to my life.

R&B was something that I had to learn on my own, albeit with the help of friends, and my only previous points of reference were two songs my mom would play around the house: "Never Too Much" and "Till You Come Back To Me/Superstar". Since hearing D'Angelo for the first time I've been insatiably, almost desperately on a personal crusade to discover, understand, learn, and ultimately write a legacy of work in the image of the titans of the greatest American art form, soul. I know, intrinsically, it's my purpose to create something from these years of enrichment that hearing D'Angelo for the first time led me to pursue.

When he died, I cried the entire day. Uncontrollably. And I still can't think of the artist that changed my life so meaningfully, or hear his work, without breaking down. That night friends reached out to me as though I had lost a family member, knowing D'Angelo's meaningfulness and impact in my life.

I wrote this song over the course of a month or two in 2017. It's the most significant to me in dozens of songs I've been striving to write in the perfect intersection of meaning, lyricism, simplicity, and complexity. The exact right words, the exact right syllables, with melodies deliberately condensed to be infectious, that exist simultaneously in songs of enduring substance.

Continued below - by @soundslikekellen

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10 months ago

Tax the wrist.

Pick a slide. taken in Manhattan, New York by @soundslikekellen

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2 months ago

Trying to erase the worry lines taken in Manhattan, New York by @soundslikekellen

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2 months ago

Oh y'all thought I was done? taken in Manhattan, New York by @soundslikekellen

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5 months ago

Proof of life taken in Lake Placid, New York by @soundslikekellen

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5 months ago

In no particular order taken in Upstate NY by @soundslikekellen

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5 months ago

Inside of you there are two tigers taken in Syracuse, New York by @soundslikekellen

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6 months ago

Fix me a plate. taken in Manhattan, New York by @soundslikekellen

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7 months ago

NY in yellow taken in Manhattan, New York by @soundslikekellen

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7 months ago

December in beige. taken in Balthazar by @soundslikekellen

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10 months ago

Almost time. taken in Albany, New York by @soundslikekellen

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a year ago

Buy one get one taken in Upstate NY by @soundslikekellen

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2 years ago