Kanii shares his definition of retro-futurism with exclusive playlist for The Cover

NME’s latest star of The Cover, Kanii, has shared a playlist exclusively to accompany the story’s launch – check it out below.

• READ MORE: Kanii: “I don’t hold back when I express how I feel”

The Washington DC artist is on this week’s (April 8) edition of The Cover, a renewal of NME’s commitment to supporting emerging talent across the globe on a weekly basis. Every week, a rising artist will feature on The Cover – you can read the profile of Kanii here, written by Kyann-Sian Williams and featuring photography by Kristen Jan Wong.

Accompanying the story is an exclusive playlist of songs Kanii has compiled to flesh out his musical vision of ‘retro-futurism’, featuring Steve Lacy, Hall & Oates, his hero Michael Jackson and more. Listen to the full playlist on Spotify below and on Apple Music.

Kanii summed up his retro-futurist approach in the Cover story: “I take a lot of inspiration from the old stuff that I like and I try to put a new twist to it.” Asked why his generation appear to be obsessed with this musical nostalgia, the 18-year-old said it’s perhaps because “our generation isn’t close enough to that era of music so we are showing appreciation to it”.

Though he’s known for Jersey club TikTok hit ‘I Know’, Kanii has also been mining ’80s pop and 2010s jerk music, and recently dropped a collaborative EP with Riovaz and Nimstarr as The Heart Racers. He’s also working on an album: “I’m working on creating the best music that I can and putting my all into it, because I know that real music speaks. So as long as I’m trying my hardest, it’ll get to somebody.”

Find out more about Kanii in the full Cover story here and see who else has been on The Cover here.

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