NKD Mag - Issue #53 (November 2015) by NKD Mag

NOV. actors:

12 RYAN NEWMAN much more than a pretty face

26 CAMERON BOYCE

goodbye jessie, hello gamer’s guide

38 CAMREN BICONDOVA dancing her way into gotham

musicians: 04 COIN on accidentally starting a band

16 MADISON BEER scooter braun’s notso-secret weapon

22 KALIN AND MYLES from trampoline parks to radio play

36 LYDIA

doing it one album at a time

52 CADY GROVES leaving the majors and finding herself

web stars: 06 BO BURNHAM one of the internet’s biggest hits

30 JORDYN JONES a day in the life of youtube’s darling

48 KINGSLEY on bringing back the community

publisher: CATHERINE POWELL

editors: CATHERINE POWELL NICOLA PRING JENNA ROSS

writers: MERISSA BLITZ JOANNA BOURAS SHELBY CHARGIN BRITTANY LAMBAU STACY MAGALLON CATHERINE POWELL SAMANTAH ROSENTHAL RILEY STENEHJEM TANYA TRANER

photography: CATHERINE POWELL

design: CATHERINE POWELL

COIN Words by BRITTANY LAMBAU Photos by CATHERINE POWELL

If you’ve never heard of the band COIN, here’s a quick lesson. They started at a university in Nashville with vocalist and synth player Chase Lawrence and guitarist Joe Memmel, later adding drummer Ryan Winnen and bassist Zachary Dyke. They’ve toured with artists such as Passion Pit, Walk the Moon and Young the Giant. Their music can be described as a mix of new wave, rock, and indie pop and their lyrics are drawn from real emotions, such as love, nostalgia and looking forward. Oh, and they wrote their debut album with Jay Joyce, a 2015 Grammy nominee for Producer of the Year. Still interested? Let’s take a more indepth look. “In 2012, Joe and I sat beside each other in music theory class at Belmont University in Nashville. A couple weeks went by and we didn’t even say one word to each other and then eventually, I worked up the courage to say hi because I just had no friends. That was my first semester there and it was his second semester. Eventually, it led to the point where we decided to write together, which was funny how it got to that point, but we wrote a song together and it just was not good. It just did not work. And I was like, ‘Okay, so maybe this is not going to work,’ but for some reason, we met up again and we wrote again and we wrote what was the first COIN song,” Chase explains. With a song that they felt confident about, there was nothing holding the guys back, except that Chase had never played a live show before. “That’s kind of how the whole band started. It was just for me to play one show. It was like Joe’s way of giving that to me,” Chase laughs, “So we went on an all out war path to just play one show and the semester ends, but Joe’s like, ‘Before we can play shows, we’re going to need a promoter, we’re going to need band pictures, we’re going to need a band,’ and it’s like, ‘Okay, we’re just starting a band at this point.’” With a focus in mind, the boys knew what they had to do to get where they wanted and even got a little help along the way. “Joe and I had this girl in our class, Kristin, and she was like, do you guys need a drummer? My boyfriend’s a

drummer. She volunteered Ryan, so we all crammed into my dorm room and practiced the first four COIN songs from that EP,” Chase says. “We kept rehearsing together for a couple of weeks and recorded the songs, and then we went home for the summer. We released it and we played our first show - like our first feedback - at school the next semester. One show just led to another show which led to another show and now I’m here talking to you,” he continues. Chase’s one live show turned into dozens of live shows. For a band that didn’t start with a focus on fame, the boys have certainly earned some and have gotten to tour with some of their inspirations over the past few years. “Personally, I really like the bands Talking Heads and The Cure,” Chase says of their influences. “We all love The Killers. Bands that are just new wave/ revivalist. We really like that kind of music.” While their music reflects the sounds of the indie rock and pop bands they listen to and tour with, the boys also enjoy other genres. “There’s also part of us that really loves Drake. We are like really into rap now, especially Drake for some reason. His music is just so planned. Every beat is supposed to be there and

every word is accounted for. There’s no filler. I think we really respect that about his artistry. Every single move he makes is accounted for in the greater picture. We really respect him. Drake and The Talking Heads — the two different artists,” Chase laughs. Along with the influence of the artists they look up to, the songs on their album include sounds from every member of the band. In the beginning, the creative control was in the hands of the only members, Chase and Joe. With the addition of the new members, the band had to find a way to include everyone and make sure the songs had the signature sound that COIN brings. “On this record, we just decided that we’re going to do everything together and write everything together. I think it just starts with a note from me or an idea from Joe and we kind of work those out and refine them to a certain point, and then we come in with drums and bass and play all together. It becomes that sound when we all come together,” Chase explains. “More and more, I find myself so dependent on the other members of the band, which is so interesting. I was so independent when we started the band,” he adds. Dependency isn’t the only change in

the band. Since their start, COIN has been able to tour with Passion Pit and Walk the Moon, giving them a bigger fan base than they could have imagined. However, their experiences on the road keep them grounded and humbled. “There was this one show in Connecticut when we were touring with Passion Pit. We did some headlining shows on a little break we had. We had just added this show in Connecticut a couple weeks before. We showed up, we played, and there were like 50 people there. For some reason, those 50 people knew every word. It was crazy,” Chase recalls. “We had played in Connecticut one time before with Young the Giant and it took us a long time to get back there. We got there and played a show for 50 people who knew every word. It was super humbling and that was at the beginning of this year. It’s weird because we played Lollapalooza where thousands and thousands of people knew every word to our songs, but that night was like, ‘We’re really doing something right.’” With no tours currently lined up, the band is going to be taking a break from their crazy road lives, but are in the process of writing their next album, due to be out early 2016. This is something you don’t want to miss. NKD NKDMAG.COM

BO BURNHAM Words by MERISSA BLITZ Photos by CATHERINE POWELL

“It’s so funny because it’s now insanely, nine, ten years ago,” says Bo Burnham about the beginning of his career as we sit in his dimly lit greenroom at the PlayStation Theater before his show in New York City that night. “I don’t know what part of the story is what I remember telling or what actually happened.” Bo grew up in a little town, 20 minutes north of Boston, called Hamilton, Mass. where his “slightly pretentious” theater director made Bo and his peers perform in classical Greek tragedies and obscure plays like Henrik Ibsen’s five-act play in verse, Peer Gynt. He started writing and performing his ”comedy songs” backstage for his theater friends and in 2006, he started posting his videos on YouTube before it was even popular to do so. “[YouTube] was just like, you can show them to your brother who’s at college if you post them here on this weird site, and I did,” Bo says. The “weird” site that was You6

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Tube ended up being the platform where Bo gained his popularity, and he got popular faster than he expected. “I went ‘viral’ or whatever, and that was even right when that term was entering the vocabulary and weirdly I got an audience before I started performing,” Bo says. At that point, it was his goal to learn how to perform in a way that he thought would justify him having the audience that he did. He ended up deferring from NYU for a year, where he was going to go to study theater and focus on his comedy. He found success in the path he had taken and has been focusing on his comedy ever since. Bo is known for his witty, extremely detailed, fast-paced, and usually crass comedy songs that make fun of everything from math to the disparities between men and women. When he first started out, Bo included a lot of jokes in his songs that could be taken as offensive to some and received his share of backlash. When he was 18, Bo was performing a show at Westminster College in Fulton, Miss. when a group of 15 students decided to protest his show. The group, including members of the GayStraight Alliance, Black Students Association, International Club and the Cultural Diversity Organization, held signs outside the show saying things like “Gay bashing is wrong,” and “Ignorance is not amusing.” “I will be the first one to apologize for my earlier stuff,” Bo says. “I think it was like, trying to be too edgy and maybe it was offensive but [the Westminster College protesters] were clearly over reacting.” Over time Bo’s need to be edgy subsided. “You know, everyone is edgy, Geico commercials are edgy,” Bo says. He was doing comedy for himself, not to make anyone else happy. Some comedians, and entertainers in general, get upset when people don’t like the way they perform, but, as Bo points out, people’s 10

opinions are subjective and “that’s the whole point of it.” “People that don’t like my stuff I’m like, I totally get it, it’s more when people get furious about not liking it, it’s like, ‘no just don’t like it, just watch something else. I never told you that you had to like my things,’” Bo explains. Currently, Bo draws his inspiration from things that piss him off and from people that don’t inspire him. “I think my generation is a generation that’s continually inspired and trying to inspire each other and it’s all sort of empty and doesn’t mean anything to me,” Bo says. That’s why he’s presently focusing on making fun of the entertainment industry as a whole and making fun of different types of performance. “[I’m focusing on] what it means to perform for people and what entertains people and why does it entertain you and when are people manipulating you to be entertained when you shouldn’t be or when are people being honest with you,” Bo explains. He suggests that the way entertainers relate themselves to their fans is by being an inspiration and trying too hard to connect with everyone in some vague way, as he expresses in his song “Repeat Stuff.” “It’s all about positive energy and relating to the fans and I kind of want to pop that a little,” Bo says. “I kind of want to go against that because it just seems really just sort of gross and sycophantic to me.” Experiencing a Bo Burnham show is unlike any other comedy show – mixing jokes with song, dance, poetry, sound effects, lights and an overall dramatic theater performance. “A lot of my show is just trying to squeeze theater elements into the show,” Bo says. “It’s me just trying to Trojan-horse it kind of.” In his previous show, what., Bo was experimenting with new elements like backing tracks and lighting cues. He is now on his Make Happy tour where his goal is

to perfect the use of those elements in his show. He wants to give his audience the show they paid for. “Sometimes I watch a comedian in a big theater and I might as well be listening on CD. I know this is great but we’re in a gigantic theater and you’re not really taking advantage of the space,” Bo says. With such a theatrical performance comes different reactions from each audience and the show is bound to be a little different

each night. Bo’s favorite part about performing is connecting with each specific audience and creating a special moment between them. “Hopefully every night, a few things happen where it feels like, ‘Oh this is something new that only we’re experiencing,’” Bo says. “If you feel like you’re grooving with the audience, if you feel like you guys are like a band and you’re like in sync with each other, then it works.”

As Bo finishes up the second half of his tour in December, he’s making plans to film another special. Similar to what he did with what., Bo hopes to release this special online, and hopes it will be as popular as what. “I got lucky [that what.] was released right during a snowstorm on the East Coast, so everyone was inside watching stuff [and] it was on the front page of Netflix while everyone was inside,” Bo

says. “So, hopefully there will be a snowstorm in June when this thing comes out.” For Bo, comedy is a fun form of art. “It’s sort of a leech, sort of a barnacle, just sort of making fun of other stuff,” he says. “It’s not necessarily from my heart.” Bo says that he might just be kidding himself that his material is anything but “fart noises and dick jokes” but in his fans’ eyes, he’s a genius. NKD NKDMAG.COM

RYAN NEWMAN Words by SAMANTHA ROSENTHAL | Photos by CATHERINE POWELL

It only takes one look at Ryan Newman to get hooked on her bright smile and even brighter blue eyes, but she is not just a pretty face. Now 17, Ryan was ready to take on the world and start living out her dream when she was just 2-years-old. “I started begging my parents to let me act when I was two and a half. After a year of persistence, my parents let me start with modeling,” she says. Her career took off immediately, but Ryan knew she was destined for more. However, her parents were a little more apprehensive than excited about pushing her into acting. “My parents were very skeptical of the industry and my being a part of it, but after a great deal of persuading from my agents and me, my parents let me start auditioning for commercials,” she says. She did not have a difficult time transitioning into commercials, quickly booking role after role. “I booked the first commercial I ever auditioned for and that kind of showed my parents that I was ready. I loved acting and there was no doubt about it. It was all I wanted to do. I would ask my parents every single day ‘Do I have any auditions today?’” she says. Ryan continued to work toward her dream, loving every second of it. She would go skipping into her auditions and skipping out with a huge grin on her face as many of the other little kids cried or acted out in the waiting room. “I didn’t understand that. I would hear the moms bribe their kids with toys or say, ‘We can go get a treat after this if you stop crying and go audition,’” she recalls. As for Ryan, it was quite the opposite scenario. “To me, the treat was getting to audition. If I would ever get in trouble or I was acting up, 12

not getting to go to auditions or work was my punishment,” she says. As she grew up, her career did as well. “It didn’t take long for me to get into movies and television after that,” she says. Ryan guest starred in Disney Channel shows such as Hannah Montana, The Suite Life of Zack and Cody and Good Luck Charlie. “I loved getting to work on the shows that were always playing on my TV at home. I was definitely never star-struck or intimidated though, just excited,” she says. Soon after, Ryan booked a series regular role on Nickelodeon’s See Dad Run. “Being on a show for an episode or two versus for three or four years is very different. When you are a series regular, you become a family with everyone on set,” Ryan says. Following her television success, Ryan snagged the role of Claudia Shepard in Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No, the latest of the Sharknado movies. “I had heard of them, of course, but I had never actually seen them. When they offered me the role, I immediately went home and watched the first one and then when I got to Florida to film, they handed me the second one the night before shooting and said, ‘You need to watch this before tomorrow,’” she says. Despite her recent step towards film, Ryan’s latest role brings her back to Nickelodeon. She recently joined the cast of The Thundermans as Allison. “The producers had been trying to find the right role for me on The Thundermans for a while and when this role presented itself they called and offered it to me. I was actually supposed to go to Comic Con for Sharknado the week it filmed but I chose The Thundermans arc instead,” she says. The role is a perfect fit for Ryan, whose on-screen boyfriend is played by her off-screen boyfriend, Jack Griffo. “Jack and I actually met three years ago when he guest starred on See Dad Run. We met on a Monday and were officially dating by Friday. I was 14 and he was 15, so we have really grown up together. He’s my best friend and he would do anything for me, just as I would do for him,” she says. When she’s not on set, Ryan is

spending her time working with Heifer International or working on music. “I actually had a family friend that had a friend that worked with [Heifer] and they asked her to reach out to me as they were looking for a new ambassador. I was immediately interested when I found out what they do and how well they do it,” she says. Heifer is a nonprofit working to eradicate poverty and hunger through community development. “After I met with them, I did some PSA’s and interviews, and it wasn’t long until I decided to go to Cambodia with them to see their work firsthand,” she says. As for music, Ryan is still in the very early stages of working on original material. Although acting comes first to her, an album is definitely something she has thought about. “I would love to put out an album someday. I have always loved music and it has always been a part of my life. However, acting really is my priority and passion so I’m focusing on that first and foremost. But I do believe I will explore the music scene one day. I’m just waiting for the right time and opportunity to go for it,” she says. She would love to do a project with a music component to it and has big dreams of working with Ed Sheeran, Maroon 5 and Coldplay. Between her acting, charity work and music, Ryan still keeps education as one of her top priorities. “I will be staying local for college so I can stay in the industry, so we will see where I end up. I will be studying psychology and business,” she says. Balancing a career in entertainment and an education would be difficult for most, but Ryan keeps positive about it. “It will definitely be a challenge and it always has been, but it’s important to me and I know I can handle it. People have done it before so I know I can do it too. It just might take a little longer than four years but I’ll just have to kind of play everything by ear and see how it all unfolds,” she says. As for the rest of the year, Ryan will be filming a few more episodes of The Thundermans and begin working on a few different indie films. If it’s up to Ryan, she’ll never stop working. NKD NKDMAG.COM

MADISON BEER Words by STACY MAGALLON Photos by CATHERINE POWELL

16-year-old singer Madison Beer may as well have it all – a record deal, a boyfriend and three million Instagram followers. Surprisingly, one of her biggest dreams has yet to come true. She grew up in Long Island with a little brother named Ryder, and started homeschooling in seventh grade so she could focus on her singing. She had begun taking singing lessons a few years prior, and posted her first cover on YouTube when she was 12. Not long after, Justin Bieber and Scooter Braun were offering her a record deal and she relocated to Los Angeles. NKD: When you started getting messages from Scooter Braun and Justin Bieber, did what that meant register right away? MADISON BEER: It was a very slow process. I was still working up to a level of fame, and it didn’t happen overnight. I might have been 12 or 13 but I was totally blown away that I had Justin Bieber’s recognition all over social media. 16

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NKD: What was the move to L.A. like for you? MB: It was hard at the beginning. But over time, I made friends, I got my boyfriend and I finally have a cool little family here. NKD: Was L.A. a place you wanted to move to prior to your career? MB: No. I had no desire to do that until my career took off. I had a friend who lived there and I would always ask her if she would see famous people. I was so blown away, but now I see that it’s not really like that. NKD: Why did you choose “All for Love” as your new single? It’s been awhile since “Melodies” came out. MB: The second I started working on it, I was obsessed with the song. I wanted to show everyone that I’ve matured a lot as an artist. I wanted people to see my sound was coming together and it was a really awesome way to transition into my real artistry. NKD: How would you describe the sound you’re going for? MB: A pop and R&B mix. NKD: What has it been like trying to find your voice in a new sort of way? MB: I recently started songwriting and you’d think it’s easy, but it’s actually really hard. You can’t only think about what you like, but you also have to think about what other people like. It’s difficult to think for millions of people. Once you start getting into it, you realize that when you really love something and are confident about it, other people will love it too. 20

NKD: What’s on your agenda for the near future? MB: I’d love to open up for someone on tour. NKD: Who are you dying to open for? MB: I’d love to open up for Ariana Grande or Justin Bieber, if he did another tour. Any chance I get to perform, I’m down. NKD: You have a huge audience on social media. As a young girl, do you feel pressured to be a role model? MB: It’s not a negative pressure, but it’s a good kind of pressure. I love having an influence on people, and the fact that I can reach so many guys and girls is a blessing. I’ve always wanted to be a role model and it comes naturally to me. It’s more about the fans than it is about me. NKD: How do you deal with having so many people being interested in your life? MB: I have found a balance. It’s important to read into hate because so many people read their comments all the time and all it does is bring you down. There’s bad sides and good sides to it, for sure. NKD: Are you interested in college at all? MB: Not really, I’d rather focus on singing. NKD: What are some of your goals, short term or long term? MB: Touring is my main goal. I want to tour so bad. NKD NKDMAG.COM

KALIN AND MYLES Words by RILEY STENEHJEM Photos by CATHERINE POWELL Hip hop due Kalin and Myles – comprised of Kalin White and Myles Parrish - have been big making strides in the music world. After finding success on YouTube, they signed to Universal’s Republic Records, and are set to release their debut, self-titled album on Nov. 20. The Bay Area natives started out making music individually. Kalin spent most of his childhood focused on playing basketball, but he always enjoyed singing. “I would always sing around the house, and in the car,” he says. “My mom would mention sometimes, she’d be like, ‘Oh, that was a good note!’ and she was like, ‘Can you sing this song for me?’ I ended up singing ‘Pretty Wings,’ a lot, by Maxwell, to her, because that’s one of her favorites.” Thanks to her encouragement, he eventually explored music more seriously. “I was a little goofball in high school, so when it was time to try out for the basketball team, and I ended up getting kicked off the team for clowning around too much,” he recalls. It worked out in his favor, though, because shortly thereafter he posted his first and only cover on YouTube, and started making music with Myles. Myles was also in high school when he first got into making music. “I had a friend in one of my classes that was making beats and rapping, and he would put songs up on Myspace, and somebody told me about it, and I was really interested in that,” Myles recalls. At first, he just started with making beats and rapping for fun with his little brother. 22

“Then I made this song with this girl from my school called ‘East Dublin’ that was pretty much about the city that we’re from,” he says. “It got a cool response within our school, so we were like, ‘Hey, let’s make some more songs too and just have fun with it.’” After they graduated, Myles started doing more electronic stuff on his own, and ended up making a song for a YouTube makeup artist. “It’s not my typical thing, but I would watch her tutorials because I had a crush on her, so I made this little intro song for her,” he explains. “She saw it, and she shouted me out and would use it in her videos. That’s when I got my first following

on YouTube. Then I was more excited, and I was like, ‘Ok, there’s kind of an audience here.’” The pair started working together when Myles saw Kalin’s cover of “Sure Thing” by Miguel and reached out to him about collaborating on a project. “For whatever reason, I don’t remember him hitting me up, but I guess I was dodging him for a couple months, and it wasn’t until we met at a movie premiere in our local town…” Kalin says. “Myles came up to me and was like, ‘I’ve been trying to hit you up on Facebook and you should come through.’” Shortly after, they went into the studio together. “We made

our first song that day, the next day we shot the video, and the day after that we released the video,” Kalin says. “The response I was getting from just the people I was sharing the video with on my Facebook was just like, ‘Wow.’ They were like, ‘Dude you should keep going with it, you guys sound good.’” The timing could not have been better for Kalin. “At that point in my life, I had no idea what I wanted to do,” he explains. “I had just got cut from the basketball team, my mom was working all the time, school was stressing me out, so when I was getting this love I was just like, ‘Dang, this is dope!’”

Their first song was just a collaboration; Kalin and Myles, the duo, hadn’t come together yet. “You could tell we weren’t a thing yet,” Myles says. “It was kind of cool that the response that we got, we both were just blown away by it. We weren’t trending, or worldwide, but it was just enough for us to be like, ‘Whoa, we should try to make another one.’” And they did make another one, and another one. “We just started setting up little goals for ourselves, and thankfully, obtaining the goals, and just kept going,” Kalin says. After releasing their third song, they made themselves more official, and tried to find managers and

decide on a name for the duo. Most of their first shows were played at a local trampoline park. At first they were just DJ sets, but then the guys asked if they could play their own music. “We would promote the shows on Facebook and push them out to everyone we know and it would take like three hours, thousands of clicks,” Myles says. “When we would see certain girls that would keep coming back, and know the songs, and be into it, and some would make their own t-shirts. This was within the first five months of us dropping the song. People were coming from a couple hours away, that was pretty legit. I think that, too, inspired us to make it work.” About a year and a half later, they started playing bigger shows, and found their current management. Myles remembers, “We were hungry for it, at first, we wanted to just try to play wherever we could, whoever would let us play.” Their first big show was headlined by Austin Mahone in Nashville. “He pretty much had the place sold out, so that was our first time performing in front of a big crowd like that,” Myles says. At that show, they found a solid fan base who helped them get another big show. “We got to know these girls really well, and they helped us get a really good show back home,” Myles explains. “It was a summer show for one of our local radio stations, and the program director, almost last minute, he was like, ‘Hey, are you guys free? Because there’s a group of girls tweeting the station saying that [we] should let Kalin and Myles play.’” They ended up getting connected with their managers through the concert’s program director, and sold out their first headline show in their hometown following the success of the radio show. Now years later with a major label on their side, Kalin and Myles released their first single off their debut album, a song called “Brokenhearted”. It was produced by Sermstyle, who has also worked on Kesha and Pitbull’s “Timber.” “This was the first beat that he played for NKDMAG.COM

us, it was our first session with him, and instantly we were like, ‘Oh wow, this is crazy.’ It sounded different to us, but it had this pop feel that we were all into. Immediately, we were like, ‘Don’t play anything else, let’s do this,’” Myles says. The single is a new sound for Kalin and Myles. “I wouldn’t say that this single represents the album as a whole,” Myles explains. “Me and Kalin, we always have been down to try different vibes. There’s a couple different sounds on the album, and this is one that we have always wanted to take a stab at.” The album itself is a mix of a lot of different influences and inspirations. “Just the way that people listen to music these days, I don’t feel anybody’s stuck in one genre. I feel like a lot of our inspirations are coming from a bunch of different genres, and I feel that it’s natural for it to translate that way when we’re making music,” Myles says. The guys name Eric Bellinger, the HBK Gang, E-40 and Keak da Sneak as big influences. They got to spend some time working with Eric Bellinger on a song called “Curfew Overtime.” “That session was really special to me, because that’s a dude that I’ve been looking up to for a couple years now, vocally, and when you’re around him he’s just such a great person and so positive,” Kalin says. “I learned so much from him, and it makes me want to work harder.” In addition to the other influences, Kalin adds, “Maybe a little bit of Kalin and Myles, just crafting our own style.” Kalin and Myles are on tour now, and hope to hit the road again after the album drops. They’ve also expanded their yearly Christmas show, “Crazy for Christmas,” to Orlando and Los Angeles, in addition to their original location in San Francisco. Their main goal is to just keep making music. “We don’t want there to be another 10 month period of no new music, so I think on top of touring and pushing the album, we want try to stay in the studio as much as we can and just keep creating,” Myles says. NKD NKDMAG.COM

CAMERON BOYCE Words by SHELBY CHARGIN Photos by CATHERINE POWELL

Starting out, and he says, dancing “in the womb” Cameron Boyce grew up loving the spotlight. From his early days of getting into dancing, to being cast as the lead of his own Disney series, his journey has been one to watch. To the rest of the world, his progression seems almost effortless, however, to Cameron, this was not always the case. “I was auditioning for a lot of things when I was a kid. What a lot of new actors don’t understand is that the ratio of booking to not booking is such a wide margin, and it can be hard at times, not booking things, and your confidence goes down thinking you’re doing something wrong,” he says. “You

can’t really let it get to you, or take it personally, you just [have to] keep going,” he says. He applied this to his audition for Jessie, the show that really kicked things off for him. Going into an audition for a show with actress Debby Ryan was something he was excited about, but Cameron didn’t want to get his hopes up too high for it. “I just kept going in and going in, and I had a feeling that they liked me a lot.” Throughout this audition process, Cameron was able to showcase his talents with another actor who he would soon share a screen with – Karan Brar, who plays Ravi. “We ended up having to impro-

vise about video games and stuff like that. We just ended up like improvising for 10 minutes together and that’s where our chemistry kind of sparked from, and we’ve been best friends ever since, and I’ve been on Disney ever since,” he says. Disney provided Cameron with many opportunities, including working with Debby, and now his own lead role on a show filled with new actors. Much of his learning experience that he’s able to share with the cast of Gamer’s Guide To Pretty Much Everything came from working with Debby. “I could always ask her because she’s very talented and she knows a lot about sitcoms, so NKDMAG.COM

I saw that as an opportunity to just ask as many questions as I could, just try to get as much out of her as I can,” he says. He took advantage of every opportunity to ask questions, and be proactive about improving his own skills at every level. “I’ve kind of been thrown into the same position now that she was in at the beginning of Jessie,” he says. Debby’s influence on him definitely resonated. “It’s funny they learned a lot faster than we did,” he says, laughing about the casts on Gamer’s reminiscing about how the cast of Jessie was a bit more crazy in the beginning of his career as they learned. The background story behind Cameron’s success is easy to love, just like Cameron. From his easy going nature, to his dedication to doing what he loves, he has all the qualities that turn young actors into successful adult actors. “I knew that I had worked really hard on Jessie,” Cameron says. “I was trying to make a good impression on any future employers. So when they came to me with a show I felt flattered but I felt so relieved and I knew that I had done my job well enough on Jessie to make a lasting impression on them.” His state of mind was always working towards something bigger and better than his previous venture. The constant need to keep pushing and keep gaining momentum as an actor puts Cameron ahead of the game in this industry. Although traditional college isn’t something he’s thinking about right now, he feels he has a pretty good grasp on the life lessons you learn along the way. “I kind of think of what I’m doing now as a college course anyway. I can talk to people who have been in this business 30, 40 years, and they’re happy to spread their knowledge to the younger generation. So I think right now for me it’s about living in the moment,” he says. It’s a bridge he’ll cross when he comes to it, but for now, college is something he can always go back to. “I think for now, I’m just really trying to stick to this course,” he says. His dedication to acting extends into film. With the summer premiere and huge success of the Disney Channel Original Movie The Descendants, 28

Cameron got to step back to working in feature films. “TV shows and movies are kind of hard to compare, they’re very different. People don’t think they’d be that different but they really are. I can name a lot of differences that an actor has to think about,” he says. His innate understanding of these differences only adds to the professionalism displayed throughout his work. “I like to say that a TV show is really great for the family vibe and just going and having fun, and then a movie is more for an actor. It slows down and gives you one scene a day instead of seven scenes a day,” he says. While working on The Descendants, Cameron learned a lot by working with legendary director Kenny Ortega. “It was the biggest moment,” he gushes. “It was something that I couldn’t describe for a long time because I look up to so many people that he’s worked with, as well as him, so it was one of those things where it was just kind of unreal for a long time.” Cameron is adamant about not getting caught up in who he is working with, but being able to learn as much as possible from them. It’s the type of humility that exists among actors who understand how lucky they are to do what they do, and value the people, like Kenny, that they get to work with. “It was surreal for a long time,” he reflects, “He’s one of the most amazing choreographers and directors that has ever done it.” And while he is anxious to start work on the recently confirmed Descendants sequel, he’s still feeling the high of the first one. “It was the most amazing experience.” Beyond Disney, Cameron sees a full future for himself in the film and TV industries. “Debby made a joke when she was kind of graduating Disney college. She said her age in Disney years was like 80 and she’s only what, 22? But her Disney age is like elderly, so I’m getting up there too right now. I’m probably 50 or 60, especially considering how long I’ve been going,” he jokes. The five years that he hopes turn into seven or eight years have provided him with so much learning experience that he’s hoping he can transition into roles for more mature projects. “That’s always kind of the thought for an actor because acting is not the

most predictable profession,” he says. Cameron knows that he just has to “keep thinking about the next thing” in this world. “That’s me right now. I’m just thinking about what I want to do, and what I want my career to pan out like,” he says. His future is whatever fits best for him, but he wants to get back into film. “I want to get better, I want to learn a lot, I want to travel the world,” he says. It’s a set of big dreams for someone who seems to already be living in one. The push is always there, and Cameron’s always ready for it, even if right now he is already doing what he loves. Although he knows that coming out of Disney may be difficult, Cameron’s not too phased by the previous Disney stars who have done some crazy things to get past that “good kid” profile. “Girls on Disney are way bigger than boys on Disney, in my mind,” he says. “I think about girls coming out of Disney and they’re just huge stars. Boys kind of have to work a little harder to break out of Disney and still be in the limelight.” But Cameron’s example and reflection is surprisingly refreshing. “I think about a guy like Shia LeBeouf, he hasn’t had the best offset stories, and he’s gotten in trouble or whatever, but I think the way that he – just strictly from Disney to feature films – just the way he transitioned is kind of what all Disney guys look to try to do. They try to break out of the mold and really get into the more serious and the more mature,” he says. The difficulty of it doesn’t intimidate him, he continues to live by “you just hope for the best,” even when the future can be so uncertain. Between learning how to let people know he’s alive on social media, and understanding the balance needed with the Internet, the past few years have allowed Cameron to grow in many ways – but 2015 still holds many big things for him. “This year I want my Lakers to get more than three wins,” he jokes. Cameron’s love of what he does extends into his whole life, and his future plans for this year and beyond. Between wanting to write, and constantly pushing forward in what he’s doing now, Cameron is always set to go forward, and it’s not hard to want to watch and come along for the ride. NKD

JORDYN JONES Words & Photos by CATHERINE POWELL

There’s no more denying that web stars are now a crucial part of pop culture. Many have gone on to write bestselling books, act in feature films or sell platinum records. Some stick to their YouTube channels while others start podcasts. But Jordyn Jones? She’s pretty much up for whatever. She’s currently a dancer, singer,

model and vlogger, but in the four hours I spent with her she expressed interest in acting, designing phone cases and collaborating with major brands. I followed her around BeautyCon NYC and saw first hand how much influence a 15-year-old with 1.4 million Instagram followers has on young girls. During her first meet

and greet of the day, a mother of a girl who couldn’t have been older than 10 thanked Jordyn for being such an inspiration for young dancers. Fans gave her gifts, mobbed her on the convention floor and posed for more selfies than I’ve taken in my entire life. It’s a digital world and Jordyn may be on her way to ruling it.

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LYDIA Words by TANYA TRANER Photos by CATHERINE POWELL

If the three branches of U.S. government can have checks and balances, why can’t Lydia? On their latest album, Run Wild, released this September, the three members of this indie rock group unintentionally took this concept to a whole new level. Ten years ago, Lydia was a completely different band. Vocalist Leighton Antleman started the group when he was just a kid. The group has lost and gained many members over the years, and evolved, finally landing on the current, and most successful, line-up with the addition of keyboardist Matt Keller and guitarist Justin Camacho five years ago. The group doesn’t see the turnover and changes in the band as a bad thing. “I can look at it, I guess, a little bit different than the public,” Leighton says. “A lot of times they like to say you have so many member changes like it’s almost a negative thing, but I think it’s cool to play with different people and experience different ideas. It keeps it not stagnant. I look at it as a positive thing.” Matt says the member changes stemmed from young guys going through a lot in their lives. Things weren’t great, there was no clear goal. But he says it’s different with the three of them. They know exactly what they want from this project. “We just want to be able to do this for as long as we can,” he says. This extends to making records and writing songs. All three of the members contribute to the writing process “and when we come together, it’s not a battle of egos.” Justin also thinks they mesh well because there is no clear hierarchy of writing. The bass player doesn’t have to write the bass parts. The guitar player doesn’t have to write the guitar parts. If Leighton has a better idea for keys, even though he is a singer – the group hears

him out, and that might be what ends up on the track. “It’s kind of like an open slate for us, writing,” Justin says. And here is where the checks and balances come into play. In fact, the group has never collectively sat down and tried to write a song from scratch. “I’m sitting at a piano. He’s sitting at the guitar. He’s sitting in front of a mic,” Matt says. “And it’s just like, ‘Well, what do we do with these things in front of us?’” Instead, the three songwriters write complete songs and bring them to each other. They might do their own thing for months at a time when it comes to songwriting. Eventually, they regroup — usually at Matt’s studio — and have a little show and tell. “And we dissect them and tear them apart,” Matt says. When it came to Run Wild, the guys each say they had only a few simple rules. Leighton believes that writing comes down to one thing: Who has the best song? Matt’s guideline is to just keep on pushing and keep on moving forward. “Don’t rest on the easy ideas,” he says. “We’re always trying to push ourselves to make a new, more interesting record.” And for Justin, it’s simply “don’t do what you did last time.” For Matt, that last part is the constant struggle. “As a songwriter, it’s your nature to do what you do,” he says. Forcing themselves out of their comfort zone isn’t an easy task, but the guys say they hold each other accountable to step outside of the safe zone. “We all see the bigger picture,” Matt says. “It’s not one of us trying to assert authority over the other, it’s like, ‘Hey, I think this can be better.” They took checking themselves even further by using two producers on this album: Colby Wedgeworth and Aaron Marsh. They worked with one for half the tracks, and one for the other half, and definitely feel like the differences and vibes resonate between the two. “Which is exactly what we wanted,” Justin says. “We didn’t want to put out 11 songs that were all just kind of repetitive.” “I mean, Colby’s a pop guy,” Matt adds. “And Aaron is not a pop guy at all. And the three of us kind of fall somewhere in between.” The guys think the producing styles being different was really beneficial, with Colby being a more straight forward “vocal guy,” and Aaron encouraging them to be more instrumentally experimental.

The band elected against splitting the songs up by producer, “Side A, Side B” style as is tradition, and instead, mixed them all together on the record. “We didn’t want it to be some sort of half and half gimmick thing,” Matt says. “We just wanted people to like the record.” As many bands do, the guys also looked to their friends and family for opinions. Leighton had as many people listen to the songs as he could for feedback. “You’re so into it, and you’ve heard it so many times in the studio. I don’t think a lot of people realize that when you record a song you hear it so much that you’re almost sick of it,” he says. “It’s kind of like when you repeat a word over and over and suddenly that word feels like it’s lost all meaning, or you suddenly realize how funny sounding that word actually is. This is why an outsider’s opinion is so important, they can pick up a subtle nuance that you’ve missed, or help you remember why you liked something so much to begin with.” Ultimately though, the guys know their writing process is personal. “At the end of the day you just have to write what you’re into,” Leighton says. “You can’t just think ‘Are these people going to like it?’ If you do that you’re really going to drive yourself crazy. You just have to write what you really believe in, not to sound too cheesy.” The guys know this record is darker than their past ventures. This isn’t to say that they find themselves in a gloomier place, though. They have just matured and are able to write about a broader range of things together. They trust one another more, and can call each other out when it’s needed. They stress that there are definitely upbeat songs on the record as well, there is just more variety. They also wanted to make this album more real. One of the songs features a live symphony rather than generated strings. They even hired someone to play a dulcimer, though it didn’t make the record. It seems like all of this hard work is paying off for Lydia. At the time of our interview, the album had only been out for two weeks and Matt remarked that people were already singing along to the songs during their tour. For a band ten years in the making, Lydia certainly seems to have grown into a well-oiled machine. NKD

CAMREN BICONDOVA Words & Photos by CATHERINE POWELL Hair & Make-Up by JESSI BUTTERFIELD Styling by H&M

It was less than two years ago that Camren Bicondova auditioned for the part of a young, orphaned, homeless thief who was good at “cat movements”. Five auditions later, she was in New York City filming the pilot for Gotham and is the seventh (and youngest) person to play Selina Kyle – a.k.a. Catwoman. She’s only 16 and the pressure is on. I meet with Camren at her Manhattan apartment on a rare off day from shooting Gotham. Her two cats – Savvy and Mr. G – roam the living room as a playlist of danceable pop tracks plays through the speakers. There’s a Gotham poster in the corner. New York is a change of pace for Camren, who was born in San Diego but has called Honolulu and Los Angeles home as well. “I’m an Army Brat,” she says proudly. “My dad’s in the Navy.” While the prospect of moving was always a possibility in Camren’s life, that didn’t stop her from getting involved in activities at a young age. She joined her first dance class when she was five 38

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and spent the first six months of it sitting in the corner. Eventually, dancing started to grow on her and when she was 10 she assisted at The PULSE On Tour – a traveling dance convention featuring some of the nation’s top choreographers. She scored a dance agent shortly after. “I had known I wanted to be a dancer when my mom took me to see Movin’,” Camren says. “There was no singing, just dancing to Billy Joel music. And I really appreciated that because I didn’t need to hear them speak or sing to understand how they were feeling.” She appeared in various music videos, dance films and dance competition shows before gravitating toward acting. “I think dance and acting have more similarities than differences,” she says. “The main difference is that one you talk, and the other one you don’t. Camren has always wanted to act, and feels that technically she has been acting through dance, but wasn’t sure how to get started in television or film. But a few years ago, a character breakdown came out for “Lucy,” an orphaned street thief. The breakdown stressed that the actress must be good at cat movements. Camren’s first thought was that the character sounded a lot like Catwoman, but the project she was auditioning for was not specified so she didn’t think much of it. After five rounds of auditions, Camren booked the role and only then was told that her intuition was right – she would be playing a young Catwoman. “At the testing, I choreographed some cat movements. And three long days later – it felt like three long days – I found out and I was in shock,” she says. Camren

believes her background in dance helped her book this role, because dance has made her more comfortable in her own body. “Growing up I was really shy. I’m legally blind in my right eye, so I was this awkward kid with this long hair and glasses,” she says. “People called me ‘Four Eyes’. I just didn’t talk much and then I started dance and with the music I was able to communicate.” Going into the first season, Camren was intimidated by her extremely experienced, well-respected cast-mates, such as Jada Pinkett Smith and Ben McKenzie. “I put a lot of pressure on myself, I think,” she says. The first scene of the first

Throughout the first season, an unlikely (but obviously expected) friendship begins to form between the street kid, Selina Kyle, and the rich kid, Bruce Wayne – a.k.a. Batman. “This is the first time we’ve ever seen Selina Kyle at this stage in her life, so it’s amazing. I’m pretty sure David feels the same way about playing Mini Batman,” she says, laughing. After giving Bruce his first kiss last season, it’s clear that Selina does have some tucked away feelings for him. Camren believes Selina will come around to Bruce, mainly because after Oct. 26th’s episode where Selina is informed her childhood friend Birdget has died, (though the audience knows otherwise) and she feels alone. It creates an interesting dynamic between the two, because Bruce’s caretaker, Alfred Pennyworth (Sean Pertwee) does not approve. Selina is known for being savvy on the streets and using her relationships to get what she wants. Her relationship with detective James “Jim” Gordon (Ben McKenzie) is no different, and Camren really enjoys their scenes together. “[Ben]’s the leader of the whole cast. He’s the dad. He’s always making sure everyone is doing well and feels great,” she says. But when filming, Selina is almost always doing or saying something to bruise Jim’s ego. “Selina’s always telling him off or saying something snide to him. She’s pretty much smarter than him, and he knows it and she knows it, so she utilizes that,” she says. “There have been times when Selina says something really mean to Gordon and at the end of the scene Ben’s like ‘You’re mean!’” As much as Jim tries to lookout for Selina, Camren

“SELINA’S ALWAYS TELLING [GORDON] OFF OR SAYING SOMETHING SNIDE TO HIM. SHE’S PRETTY MUCH SMARTER THAN HIM AND HE KNOWS IT AND SHE KNOWS IT, SO SHE UTILIZES IT.” episode shows Camren running through the streets of Gotham after pick-pocketing a wallet. She finds a hiding spot in an alleyway and witnesses the murder of Bruce Wayne’s (David Mazouz) parents, thus setting up the plot of the entire first season. “At the premiere, people came up to me and were like, ‘You opened the show! How do you feel?’ and I didn’t think much of it,” she admits. “Now I think it’s really cool.” Camren spent the entire first season building up her confidence as an actress and when it came time to start season two, she felt relaxed and ready to go.

doesn’t think Selina sees him in any sort of fatherly light. “She views him as more of a toy. If a cat doesn’t want a toy, it’ll totally disregard it. But if it wants the toy, it loves the toy and utilizes the toy for its own advantage,” she says. While sometimes Selina is just taking Jim down with her words, other times she’s pointing a gun at him. At the end of the first season Selina joined Fish Mooneys’s (Jada Pinkett Smith) kid-army for a short time before Fish fell to her (supposed) death. Though the partnership was short lived, and somewhat unexpected for many viewers, Camren feels like it was a longtime coming. “I feel like cats and fish have this very interesting relationship in real life, where the cat kind of manipulates [the fish] but kind of likes it at the same time. So I thought that would be really cool,” she says. Getting to work with Jada was a bonus. Being one of few kids on set, Camren is used to bonding with adults at this point. “I’ve been told that I’m an old soul, so most of my friends are older than me. I tend to relate to adults more than kids my own age,” she says. She notes that it’s especially easy on the set of Gotham because everyone is so cool and easy to be around. “It’s interesting seeing the show air, because Gotham is so eerie and dark, but then on set it’s just this really fun, go-getting atmosphere,” she says. “I think it’s really ironic.” Selina is also constantly surrounding herself with adults – always finding pockets of people to low-key rely on even though she stresses that she’s fiercely independent. In the first season alone she finds shelter at Barbara Keen (Erin Richards) – Jim’s ex-fiancé’s apartment, Bruce’s mansion and Fish’s hideout – all which are results of her lack of parental figures. While there have been subtle comments about Selina’s estranged mother, later this season Selina’s backstory will be fully explored. “I’m like ‘Yes! New material!” Camren says. Barbara was arguably the most motherly 42

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figure in Selina’s life last season and there were some very sweet scenes between the two before it was discovered that Barbara is a murderous psychopath. “Selina wanted to like her, but knew that Barbara has issues. When it comes to alcoholism, Selina doesn’t mess with that,” she says, “The last time Selina and Barbara were together, Barbara was drinking.” Whether those feelings relate back to her biological mother or not is still up in the air, and Camren reveals that as of now, Selina and Barbara have no scenes together yet this season. As much as Selina tried to stay away from violence in the beginning of season one – only participating in petty crimes – the fourth to last episode of the season shows Selina gets her first kill when she pushes Reg, Alfred’s attempted murderer, out of a window. The experience impacts her greatly and takes a huge toll on her relationship with Bruce, who was present during the killing. “Selina has a different perspective on right and wrong than Bruce. She’ll do the wrong thing for the right reason, but Bruce, if it’s wrong, he won’t do it,” Camren says, “Bruce stepped away and insinuated that he wanted nothing to do with her because of that.” On the ever-growing list of incredible co-stars, Camren’s favorite might be New York City itself. “I feel like New York is the place that this show needs to be filmed. Nowhere else,” she says. “Gotham is New York. New York has the nickname ‘Gotham’ for a reason.” She loves getting to film here and loves the different people she meets every day. “It’s an amazing atmosphere,” she says. There’s still a lot of storytelling left for Camren to do on Gotham, and if ratings are any indication, those stories won’t end anytime soon. Which is great for Camren because she’s fortunate enough to be playing a character she’s interested in, in a city she loves, surrounded by a cast that feels like family. The longer the journey, the better. “I’m just having fun,” she says. NKD NKDMAG.COM

KINGSLEY

Words & Photos by CATHERINE POWELL

Before there were networks and schedules involved, YouTube was a place where King Russel – better known as Kingsley – would post videos of himself talking about things he hated, like birds, and things he loved, like pop culture. Now, his video rants are his main source of income and he is a frequent guest at various webbased conventions and panels. But sometimes, he misses how things used to be before he and his peers became staples in the media. Kingsley was born in a tiny town in Arkansas but moved to St. Louis when he was 6. Despite his age, he understood how big a change this big city was from his hometown. Following high school, he studied journalism at the University of Missouri - Columbia. His interest in journalism peaked in high school when he joined the school paper, and was named editor-in-chief his senior year. He turned the paper into a pop culture magazine and gave his celebrity-obsessed brain an outlet. Before he moved into college, he started his YouTube channel to continue expressing himself. “It’s been overwhelming,” Kingsley says of the increase in popularity YouTube has seen over the last few years. “It went from being something I have complete control over, to being this business-structured, brand-involved, scheduled thing.” He’s extremely proud of how much his community has 48

achieved, but he’s a little sad about the whole thing because YouTube started out as “the alternative to traditional media” and now it’s become a crucial part of pop culture. A few weeks prior to our interview, the fifth annual Streamys were held in Los Angeles. Web stars from all pockets of social media got glammed up, walked the red carpet and attended after parties, which confused Kingsley because the YouTube community used to pride itself on not being a part of that culture. He thinks the lack of celebrity YouTubers had in the beginning is what brought audiences in because they could easily relate and engage with them. “I’m torn between being proud of it and being like, ‘WTF?’” Kingsley admits. Kingsley believes that the rise of other social media platforms has increased the celebrity value of YouTubers – but he loves using Twitter and Instagram. “I prefer to use them as a way to engage with people as opposed to promoting things,” he says. It was around 2013 when Kingsley could feel the shift in content on YouTube go from very spontaneous to more formulaic. Creators were constantly posting collaboration videos to get themselves in front of new audiences, and subscription numbers began skyrocketing. “I’d been consistent [with posting] because my videos were always topical about pop culture, so if anything ever happened it was just like, ‘turn on the camera, react to it,’” he says. “But around that time when collabs were becoming popular, I started to feel pressure.” While he was skeptical at first, Kingsley has embraced the collaboration trend and genuinely enjoys working with other creators to make fun, unique content. Though Kingsley joined YouTube in 2009, it wasn’t until the end of 2011 when he moved out to Los Angeles that he felt like being a creator was his career. “That’s when I was really around that industry. I was going to meetings, having creative discussions with teams of people and having to structure and promote things,” he says. He recalls his first brand deal – with a movie called Mama – as a double edged sword. On the one hand, he was

making more money, but on the other that wasn’t why he started making videos in the first place. His move to L.A. was mostly based on the fact that as a gay man, he didn’t feel like Missouri was the place for him anymore. “I knew in L.A. there was a diverse culture. Not just with homosexuality, but with so many different ethnicities,” he says. After living in L.A. for a few years, Kingsley has been able to use the city’s entertainment resources to his advantage. He started a podcast last fall with his friend Miles Jai as a way to have extended discussions about pop culture events or with celebrity guests. “You can’t just be on YouTube in a video for an hour. With a podcast it’s something they can just turn on,” he says. He feels that he’s more natural on the podcast because he’s not worried

about how he looks or how long he’s talking about one subject. Because he does pop culture commentary, it gives him a chance to tackle a lot of topics at once without feeling rushed. KIngsley and Miles are able to get more personal and talk about things like what happened when they got drunk last weekend, or speak completely unfiltered. Because Kingsley doesn’t post personal videos on his channel, the podcast allows him to talk a little bit more about himself without him wondering if he’s boring people. “There’s no barriers, it’s just a discussion,” he says. “’Freedom’ is the key word of podcasting.” As far as season two goes, the reason it hasn’t picked up yet is strictly politics. “I’m ready,” Kingsley says. “I’ve wanted to do it. All I need to do is sit in a room and record it and upNKDMAG.COM

load it,” he says, “but there’s so much going on that I don’t understand about getting sponsors and ad money.” The business side of it all is of very little interest to Kingsley, and if it were up to him it wouldn’t matter. He’s hoping the podcast will be back before 2016. As YouTubers become a bigger part of pop culture, Kingsley is having trouble finding a balance with his video content. Because he’s so interested in pop culture, he keeps up to date on the mainstream triumphs of his peers, but he doesn’t want to be a YouTuber who’s just talking about other YouTubers. Because Kingsley’s videos are so blunt and sarcastic, he doesn’t want his fellow creators to feel like he’s tearing them down, but he also doesn’t want to have to sensor himself. “But I know that the audience cares about creators,” he says, “so I’m trying to find that balance so I’m not alienating anyone or making them feel attacked.” He stresses that his content is not nearly as harsh or negative as someone like Perez Hilton’s – but it is all opinionated. “If I like a song, I’ll praise the song. But if I’m doing an album review and I don’t like two songs, I’ll say I don’t like them, but I’ll explain why,” he says. “I’m not just going to say ‘This is shitty.’” If he were to do a book review on a YouTuber’s book, he would never trash it, but he also wouldn’t want the people in his community to think he doesn’t like them, just because he didn’t like something they wrote. “It’s a really, really weird thing to tiptoe around,” he says. “But I do want to cover that because I think it’s exciting.” Prior to YouTube, Kingsley was hoping his journalism degree would lead him to writing for Entertainment Weekly or doing movie reviews. With the launch of his new website last month, “King of Culture,” Kingsley has been able to apply his formal training to a more traditional medium. Writing is Kingsley’s first passion and he’s happy to finally have an outlet to showcase that. “I’m not trying to think of a jump cut or a joke or how to sum something up,” he says. “I can write my opinions articulately and it makes sense. There’s no confusion.” Before its launch, Kingsley was extremely ner-

vous because he knows people don’t read as much as they used to. But he’s trusting that his audience is mature enough and old enough to embrace it, and he stresses that the writing will still be in his voice – “It’s not the Huffington Post or anything,” he says. Even though writing is where his heart is, Kingsley has absolutely no interest in hopping on the train of YouTuber book deals. “I don’t mean to be shady or anything, I feel like some things make sense,” he says, citing Hannah Hart, Mamrie Hart and Grace Helbig as YouTubers whose books were super on-point for their brands. But in terms of memoirs, he can’t get on board. “Like, we’ve lived, don’t get me wrong, but what are we reflecting on already? We’re still figuring out what we’re doing,” Kingsley says. “We’re still trying to figure out the space that we supposedly work in. I would never do anything like that because to me, it seems really self-serving.” He stresses that it’s to each their own, but at this point in time, he’s hyper aware that something like that does not make sense for him whatsoever. Looking forward, Kingsley’s main focuses are “King of Culture” and the eventual release of season two of his podcast. But he’s dabbling with the idea of starting a sarcastic interview series with other creators – much like the “Between Two Ferns” series on Funny or Die. “I think that’s a way to kind of jump on this train of discovering everyone as talent,” he says. He wants to be the person who gets exclusive interviews with creators about their upcoming books or movies, because he joined YouTube to connect with people, and that would be another way to connect with his peers, while giving them an outlet to promote their projects. KIngsley hopes that no matter how successful everyone gets, they will remember where YouTube started and the people who got them where they are. “I want people to remember that at one time, the word ‘community’ was the key component,” he says. “It really is cool to see what everyone is doing, but I just hope everyone stays humble, nice and focused.” NKD NKDMAG.COM

CADY GROVES Words by JOANNA BOURAS Photos by CATHERINE POWELL

It’s no surprise that it’s difficult to make it in the music industry, even when everything in your life is going well. But when facing loss at all angles, focusing on one’s career can be even more taxing. Cady Groves was born in Kansas but moved to Oklahoma when she was 3 years old, so she considers it her home. Being the youngest of seven — five of her siblings being brothers — Cady describes herself as, “kind of a dude.” Coming from such a large family, she learned young that she had to find a way to make herself stand out. After dabbling with sports for a bit she ended up finding her way into music thanks to her stepfather, who was “a drummer with 52

a mullet.” Both she and her stepfather were left-handed, so he made a promise to teach her how to play the drums. Cady wanted to be just like him. She only learned four beats before her ADD kicked in, but she will never forget being four-years-old and receiving a blue drum set on Christmas morning. Writing music, however, was an accident. She always loved to read and write and would regularly win poetry writing contests in school. She yearned to have someone sing her songs, however she never intended to sing them herself. Cady was published in a children’s digest in third grade. “Reading and writing

was my thing,” says Cady. At 10-years-old Cady finally drew up the courage to march up to her mother and tell her that she was going to be famous. After her mom told her it wasn’t going to happen, she then wondered what else she was going to do with her life. Looking back, Cady says her mom’s reaction was, “a dose of reality because the number one thing you hear when you try and be famous is no.” So she went to high school for a few years and then skipped a few grades and went straight to college. She went to culinary school to become a chef and ran her own deli at only 17. She then went for her Associates Degree in business school.

After a bunch of time and money spent, Cady realized that culinary arts weren’t her dream. “What was cool was that I wasn’t even 18 yet and I already had a degree and a half,” said Cady. She decided to go to Southwestern Oklahoma for another degree in Mass Communications. This is when Cady‘s life really changed. After spending a year there and spending time with her brother, he passed away. “That was the beginning of everything being super emo,” says Cady. That wasn’t even the brunt of it — two weeks later her dad passed away. “I was just so confused because I had never had to lose someone and let alone two people. That whole year I can’t

remember,” she says. The last conversation she had with her brother was about how much she loved to write songs, and he encouraged her to pursue it. She thought she owed it to him to go for it because she had given him her word that she would. To deal with her emotions, Cady began writing and messing around with her friend Evan who played guitar. They would make songs for fun because it was what they both loved to do and together they eventually wrote her first EP. That summer she moved to Kansas City where she was looking to do anything to keep herself occupied, so she moved in with another one of her brothers. After that summer she moved back in with her mom and worked delivering pizza. She was working three jobs at once when she decided she was going to seriously pursue writing music. She called Evan and got him on board. “I knew he knew people and I didn’t know anyone,” she says. After saving up some money, Cady moved back to Oklahoma and moved in with another one of her brothers. “I got in my car with all of my possessions in my trunk,” she said. She worked with her brother cleaning out evicted houses, which she said was very disgusting. “That’s why New York City doesn’t phase me, the smells — you don’t even know,” Cady laughs. Cady found someone on Craigslist to sing her songs because she didn’t sing and at this point was just trying to make it as a songwriter. Cady and Evan had five songs ready to go and the singer never shows up. “This is when I was faced with the reality that I’m going to have to sing my own songs and I thought I flopped,” Cady says. When she got her first song back — titled “Refrain” — she was pleasantly surprised with how good it came out. She uploaded the song to MySpace in hopes of landing a publishing deal, but ended up being offered much more. “Within a couple of weeks every major label has messaged me and wanted to sign me and fly me out to New York to meet me. I was like ‘Y’all heard the song right? Like, heard my voice?’” she says. The labels got into a bidding war over Cady, and eventually she chose RCA and went on her first tour with Third Eye

Blind, Good Charlotte and more. “I fangirled so hard when I met Hanson,” Cady laughs, “I was like a little girl in a candy store.” Every band on tour adopted her as their little sister, and she performed on stage with Third Eye Blind, Simple Plan and All Time Low throughout the tour. “I was so emo I was basking in it,” she laughs. After the tour ended, Cady moved to Los Angeles to start work on her first full-length album. The label had setup sessions with multiple producers for Cady — one being Kristian Lundin, who has written songs for Britney Spears, NSYNC and The Backstreet Boys. “I was so nervous to meet him, I was like, ‘What’s Britney Spears like?’” Cady says. It took a long time for her to complete the album, but eventually her first single “This Little Girl” was released. Hearing her song on the radio for the first time was an amazing experience. She was in the car with her family in Oklahoma, driving to dinner when she heard her voice on the station she grew up listening to. “It was such validation because no one thought I would pull it off,” she says. As the single continued to grow, Cady jumped on tour with acts like Hot Chelle Rae and Carly Rae Jepsen, and performed at multiple radio stations across the country. But there was still no album date, and every date the label was telling her kept getting pushed back. Eventually, Cady got out of her deal with RCA, but lost the songs in the process. “The album didn’t come out. I had made an entire pop album and it wasn’t out,” Cady says. Cady believes she would have had more success if the album came out when it was supposed to, but in the end she’s glad it didn’t. The pop star route wasn’t for her and she hated having to wear fake hair to compete with other singers in her genre. Now, she rocks a short, pixie cut. “So I chopped off all of my hair and started recording all the time,” Cady says. She signed to Vel Records and just released an EP that Cady feels reflects her better than any of her past releases. Cady is in a good place right now — both in her career and her personal life. It may have taken a few extra left turns to get there, but Cady is finally on the right path. NKD NKDMAG.COM

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NKD Mag - Issue #53 (November 2015)

Articles inside

Bo Burnham