New York City-based R&B and Soul singer Emily King started off her career in 2004, years after she started to pursue her dreams of becoming a musician at the age of 16 and doing gigs at a variety of restaurants and venues around New York City. She released her debut album through J Records (now RCA Records), in 2007, which was nominated for a Grammy for Best Contemporary R&B album, and has worked and toured with the likes of Nas, John Legend, Floetry, Erykah Badu, and Alicia Keys.
Recently, she released her third studio album, through ATO Records, called Scenery, and has since been supporting her project by touring around North America and Europe with support form Jennah Bell. I knew about Emily King after Toronto R&B singer Daniel Caesar posted one of her songs, Distance, on his IG stories and instantly fell in love with her music since then. As well, once I heard that she was coming to Toronto, it was something that I had to check out and enjoy.
Starting off was Jennah Bell; she performed a variety of songs such as ‘The Phoenix Lights’, ‘Chapter 3: The Hatchet’, and a cover of Eric Clapton’s ‘Nobody Knows When You’re Down and Out’ from his 1992 MTV’s Unplugged album. Her performance was quite well-astounding, since she came quite unique with her own performance delivery, from song-to-song; she managed to maintain crowd enjoyment from her distinct vocals and sound, in which it brings much more of a blues and bluegrass drawl whenever she sings.
Up next, Emily King came to deliver an astounding show when she performed some cuts from her new album, such as ‘Remind Me’ and ‘Can’t Hold Me’, and cult classics like ‘The Switch’ and ‘Radio’. One thing that I liked about her performance is her ambiguous and high energy whenever she performs for the crowd, and it is quite distinctive through her body movement, and how she emphasizes on her charisma. Another interesting aspect was when she brought angelic vibes with her vocals and pitch range, which can definitely appear as she performs very well as a vocalist; furthermore, she seemed to enjoy performing and it is quite evident when she did a dance during ‘Can’t Hold Me’ with her background singers.
Emily will still continue on her tour up until May 5th, 2019 at Woodstock, NY at The Colony. You can keep up with the schedule at https://www.emilykingmusic.com/tour/.
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Jennah Bell
Emily King
By: Joshua Habtwold | Exclusively for @Music, Why Not!
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