“This is sounding flat,” Kwn says, barely 30 seconds after pressing play on the first track of her highly anticipated second EP, ‘With All Due Respect’. We’ve joined her in her Shoreditch studio – a polished sanctuary she’s never let outsiders into before, where sunlight floods through glass doors onto pale wood floors. After fiddling with the knobs and dials, she sinks into her seat, hunching over and letting the brim of her pearl-bedazzled cap shadow her face as freaky R&B tunes flood into our ears.
“There’s no fun stories in the studio because I pretty much made every song in my bedroom,” the East London singer tells NME a few days earlier, laughing. The bedroom is the perfect setting for ‘With All Due Respect’ – the EP throbs with a raw, sapphic pulse, sex colouring every track. “I like writing sexy, feeling-myself kind of music because it’s fun to make,” she says. “I think that’s why I find it hard to be vulnerable with my music, like, ‘Here we go: another sad song, another thing to make me feel sad again.’ I just want to feel good.”
Kwn’s ability to make not just herself but her listeners feel good is undeniable. It’s why she’s scored team-ups with the likes of Kehlani and Jordan Adetunji, and landed a place on the NME 100 for 2025, in which she was heralded for her “confident, free-roaming interpretation of modern R&B”. Every move Kwn has made so far has signalled an artist with indisputable potential.
The path to Kwn’s seductive sound, though, has been long and winding. The Walthamstow native fell in love with music aged five, when her step-grandad would gently wake her by playing piano each morning during the holidays, and went on to teach herself the instrument when she was older. Percussion has always had a grip on her too, ignited by trips to see Stomp with her dad. “They’d make music out of just random things – brooms, newspapers, pots and pans,” she says. Timbaland making beats with nothing but his voice was another revelation: “That made me fall in love with the process, with all the little intricacies of production.”
“I like writing sexy, feeling-myself music because it’s fun to make. I just want to feel good”
Before she unlocked her now-trademark AutoTuned-vocal style, Kwn (pronounced ‘kay-wuhn’) first dabbled in rap. Early demos oozed with the same swagger that’s remained even after she ditched the bars. Eventually, she landed a deal with Black Butter, the label that launched the careers of J Hus, MNEK and Bakar, where she was able to build her own foundations and make music her day job. She poured herself into her 2022 debut EP ‘Episode Wun’, a genre-blurring introduction packed with shadowy synths, woozy vocals and a sharp lyrical bite, making her the newest alt-R&B force to watch.
But soon, the dream soured: despite being signed, she was creatively frustrated while struggling to make ends meet, and had to take on a second job. “That was humbling,” she admits. “I didn’t feel like anybody was hearing me. I wasn’t making the music that I wanted to make. I was almost there, but I knew I could push it a lot further.” Eventually, she parted ways with the label – a breakup that gave her a new sense of freedom where she was able to “just be [her] true self”.
While working on new ideas, Kwn experienced two eureka moments. ‘Eyes Wide Open’ – her breakthrough ethereal ballad about that blurred line between lust and love – was the moment she “cracked” her sound, unlocking her love for choral textures (a nod to her college choirmaster), and earning her her first viral moment. The introspective, gospel-inspired ‘Lord I’ve Tried’, meanwhile, provided a much-needed lesson in vulnerability. On the day she wrote it, the artist had been “feeling really down” and hoped to lift herself up by writing “a little sexy something”. But writer’s block hit, and the AutoTune that usually blankets her songs was on the fritz, pulling away the smoke and mirrors she usually hides behind. Kwn’s despair was on full display as she purged her emotions at the piano.
“It was a big weight off my shoulders,” she recalls now. “I struggled to be vulnerable and speak about my emotions, so to get that out in a song, I cried the whole way home listening to that. Finally, somebody’s heard me and that somebody is me.” Only a “very, very, very select few” get access to that vulnerable version of her, let alone the whole world.
While the end of her record deal was a liberating time, it also brought its difficulties. She no longer had the resources of a label at her disposal, leaving Kwn and her manager to navigate the choppy seas of the music industry alone. At times, they needed to get creative to make things work – including when it came to the track that would give her her launch into the mainstream.
While on Instagram Live one day, Kwn made ‘Worst Behaviour’, a fresh yet nostalgic “old school, Timbaland-y feeling” track. But without funding, she couldn’t afford to get it mixed or mastered. So she took a leaf out of Nipsey Hussle’s book, inspired by his 2013 Proud2Pay campaign where he sold 1,000 copies of his ‘Crenshaw’ mixtape at $100 apiece to prove that fans will back what they believe in.
“At first, I was like, ‘Oof, I don’t know about this. This might make us look a little bit desperate.’” But Kwn eventually decided to sell ‘Worst Behaviour’ direct to fans in order to make money for distribution. Her manager stayed up until 3am for weeks, building a website and securing licenses, making sure she was legally covered. When the project launched, she sold over 12,000 copies, used the funds to get the track mastered and uploaded the finished version online. Then, “it just went bow. All that hard work paid off.”
“If the queer community [feel like they have] someone to say, ‘Just be yourself’, then amazing. But I’m not like, ‘I am president of the gays’”
The song set the R&B world ablaze, the flames stoked even further when Kehlani jumped on the remix. The US star had previously taken Kwn on tour with them before collaborating on the steamy ‘Clothes Off’ – a song that would set the tone for their partnership to follow. The pair lock lips in the ‘Worst Behaviour’ video, starting a frenzy among fans who now ship the duo together. “Maybe we shouldn’t have put it out on Valentine’s Day,” Kwn jokes. “We be sending the memes and comments to each other back and forth. It’s very humorous to us.”
The thirsty reaction signals a hunger for authentic queer representation and while Kwn doesn’t want to ignore that, she also doesn’t want to be boxed in by it. “I’m just a woman that likes women,” she says. “If the queer community [feel like they have] someone like me to be that push and say, ‘Nah, just be yourself’, then amazing. But I’m not gonna be the person to be like, ‘I am president of the gays’.”
‘With All Due Respect’ is the perfect reflection of the 25-year-old just being herself. There’s a softness to her voice on the record, adding an ethereal element to her spacey-yet-racy style of ‘Fxck!n’ and featherlight harmonies to her glitched-out, honeyed croon on the FLO-assisted ‘Talk You Through It’. Even on ‘Back Of The Club’, she hopes to “bring bridges back”, reliving shimmery after-hours warmth influenced by the likes of Angie Stone, Joe, D’Angelo and more.
That softness, though, isn’t always expected of masculine-presenting women like Kwn. The world often sees masculinity as hard-edged and assertive, and while the musician does have that side to her, she’s not here to perform a toughness she doesn’t feel.
“I already know what I’m capable of, and it’s more than this”
“A lot of masculine-presenting women put on this front like they’re the toughest beings in the world,” she explains. “But behind closed doors? You’re just a teddy bear. I’m the same – I’m still emotional, I’m still sensitive, I’m still soft.” While others feel pressured to pick a side – masculine or feminine; hard or soft – Kwn doesn’t iron herself out for anyone. Her emotions stay tangled, like her bedsheets: messy, honest, and all hers.
It’s an authenticity that has set Kwn up for a bright future – a worthwhile pay-off for restarting from the ground up, fuelled by self-belief and grit. “I manifested all of this, and I knew everything was going to be OK,” she says in a moment of quiet reflection. “I just had to keep telling myself that every single day, no matter how hard it got, no matter how many days I sat there and cried in my bedroom, I had to keep going. Because I knew something great was on the way.”
With ‘With All Due Respect’, she’s satisfied she’s reached those heights. “If you didn’t take me in then, you’re going to take me in now,” she remarks confidently. “In the least big-headed and most big-headed way possible”. Recognition of her greatness is only growing, too. Earlier this month, she was nominated for BET’s Best New International Act award – something she describes as “incredible” and “insane”. It’s unlikely to end there, either, as Kwn refuses to slow down. “I don’t want to take my foot off the gas,” she says. “There’s no ceiling on this thing, and I just wanna keep breaking through.”
Back in her Shoreditch studio, she turns her attention to what might be next. “I really wanted to call this EP ‘This Is Not My Album’ because I already know what I’m capable of,” she declares, eyes burning with conviction as she stares down the small audience in front of her. “And it’s more than this.”
Kwn’s ‘With All Due Respect’ is out on June 20 via RCA US.
Listen to Kwn’s exclusive playlist to accompany The Cover below on Spotify or on Apple Music here.
Words: Kyann-Sian Williams
Photography: Hannah Cosgrove
Makeup: Alice Lawson
Styling: Jojo Vandalkidd
Label: RCA US
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