Knxwledge

Knxwledge stands among the lo-fi hip-hop scene’s most inventive and rule-defying figures. From his first releases in 2009 onward, the extraordinarily productive beatmaker has issued a vast catalog of digital albums, EPs, and beat tapes alongside scattered vinyl LPs, singles, and cassettes. Most of these pieces contain short, enigmatically named cuts built from distorted, unbalanced rhythms and chopped samples. After steadily gaining listeners in the first half of the 2010s through his own material and collaborations with underground rappers such as Blu and Joey Bada$$, he reached a wider audience in 2015 when Stones Throw issued the album Hud Dreems and one of his productions appeared on Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly. Additional notice arrived through his work as one half of NxWorries alongside Anderson .Paak; the pair’s first full-length, Yes Lawd!, came out on Stones Throw in 2016. That relationship with the label continued with the solo album 1988, released in 2020.

Glen Boothe, who grew up in New Jersey, first adopted the Knxwledge alias for experimental hip-hop productions in 2009 and began circulating the results on MySpace and Bandcamp. At the time he was part of the Klipmode collective that also included Suzi Analogue, Mndsgn, and Devonwho. His glitchy, abstract instrumentals quickly drew notice within the global beatmaking community, leading Dublin-based All City Records to release the debut LP Klouds in 2010. A steady flow of further Bandcamp projects followed, and he collaborated with artists including Exile, Shawn Jackson, and Iman Omari. After moving to Los Angeles, Boothe connected with Matthewdavid’s Leaving Records, which put out the Buttrskotch cassette in 2012 and the double-cassette Anthology—later reissued on vinyl in 2015—drawn from his many online recordings. His second LP, Kauliflowr, appeared on All City Records in 2013.

In 2014 Knxwledge supplied beats for Stones Throw artists Homeboy Sandman and Pyramid Vritra. The following year he contributed to Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly and simultaneously issued the beat tape Hud Dreems on Stones Throw. Additional production work for Ghostface Killah, Earl Sweatshirt, and Hodgy surfaced in 2016, yet the year’s most prominent release was Yes Lawd!, the debut NxWorries album on Stones Throw. After the 2017 remix collection Yes Lawd! Remixes and another wave of self-released digital material, Knxwledge returned to Stones Throw as a solo act with the 2018 EP Gladwemet. A further series of independent projects preceded the arrival of 1988 in 2020, his second solo Stones Throw LP, which includes brief guest appearances from Anderson .Paak, Durand Bernarr, and Rose Gold.