kwn is in love with R&B’s intentionality

If you want to understand music the way kwn does, just peep their trademark dance, a twitchy neck movement that involuntarily pops out when she’s really feeling it. The internet immediately latched onto the move, along with kwn’s hair-raising R&B. “If you look at my dad listening to music, you'll know why I do what I do," she laughs when we speak at The FADER offices on June 3, three weeks ahead of her new album and all pride aside. "We listen to music the same way – it's just passion."

kwn – pronounced “kay-one,” not “queen” or “k.w.n.” – is an East London lover-girl who’s been deep into the ardor of R&B since early childhood. Her family had '00s Beyoncé, Mary J. Blige, Pretty Ricky, Justin Timberlake, and Usher on repeat growing up in her Walthamstow, East London flat.

Though a fair share of R&B artists from across the pond have reached stateside popularity, massive success has been more elusive. When it comes to mainstream music, the U.S. decides who charts and who doesn’t, and international artists start at a disadvantage. So kwn’s breakthrough with “worst behaviour” last year felt like breaking a dry spell, from the teaser shooting up to 50,000 views to the single peaking at #15 on the U.S. R&B charts.

“R&B started in America, and we've taken a lot of influence from you guys. And anybody from the U.K. that says we haven't is lying, kwn says when I ask her of the American influence on her sound. Part of the song’s immediate appeal is seeing a masculine-presenting artist deliver a song that immediately feels like you’re a fly on the wall in someone’s bedroom. The track has the DNA of classic R&B but weaves in gospel production and an unusually hyper hook. Even R&B vets like Ty Dolla $ign and Kehlani took notice of the unavoidable smash. Kehlani was tagged in for the remix, making for a full circle moment since kwn had quietly contributed to Kehlani’s music before the fame—and the queer community was left in shambles.

By the time her nine song EP with all due respect was released in June 2025, kwn found themselves seen not only as a singer-songwriter, but also a sex symbol of sorts. The label makes sense when listening to her intimate music, which has some seriously raw lyrics: “Paint your nails the way I like ‘em / I might paint mine too / 'Cause I know a place I can hide 'em / And it's inside you, woah.”

This time around however, kwn took her time figuring out exactly what she wanted to say to the world, herself, and a lover or two on the follow-up all pride aside, out June 26. She shows off her production and melodic chops, flipping Nelly’s “Hot In Herre” for “risk it all,” stripping down her vocals on “idea of love,” and diving even deeper into her true feelings about love.

The FADER sat down with kwn to talk about how she connected with Kehlani, why R&B is the genre that speaks most to her heart, and the biggest question of all —her relationship status.

FADER: What is it about R&B that speaks to you?
kwn: I was talking about this the other day. I think R&B as a genre has the most amount of feeling in it and the most amount of passion put into it. Everything's so intentional. You have to be so clever with your lyric choices and your—even down to like your chord choices and stuff like that. A good R&B record takes time, you know, sonically. I think the complexity of it along with the passion that people put into it is what draws me to it the most for sure.

The "worst behaviour" snippet just immediately hit. Did you know at the time that you had a banger on your hands?

I think so. When I was making it, I was like, yo, this is really special. There's so much good music out there that sometimes doesn't get the reach that it's meant to. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Luckily it worked, and then obviously K [Kehlani] jumped on the remix, and it just took off.

How did you and Kehlani first link up and start making music together?

She followed me on Instagram, and then I met her in LA at her Crash release party. In London, she was like, “I'm working on this new mixtape, I want you to come and help me out.” We did "Border" and "First Life.” Then she was like, I'm missing a sexy song, and I was like, I got the sexy songs. I had made "Clothes Off" a few weeks before that, and I was like, I've got this song, you can have it, but you got to keep me on there.

This album is a B-side to your 2025 album with all due respect. Did you already have the idea for and all pride aside when you made that record?
I really started working on that end of last year. Shit just blew up for me, so I didn't have time to really sit down and put my head down and focus on making the music. So it was just like any couple days that I had, I would just make some shit, see what worked.

On Instagram you wrote that this side of the album is a new side of you, and on the record you're going more in detail about who you are and your feelings.
Because I wanted to show some versatility in my music. I feel like everything that people have heard from me [on all due respect] has been so sensual and so sexy and fun. I found it hard to kind of open up about who I was. But just through the growth of the last year that I've had, I've been able to be like, All right, what do I want to tell people about, what do I want to speak to myself about? At the end of the day it’s kind of like a journal for me.

How have you grown in the past year?
Just from like the whole lifestyle change that I've had, and the people that I've met along the way, friends I've made. It’s helped me to think about who I want to be outside of Kwn.

Who is kwn outside of music?
I’m living. Having fun with friends, spending time with family. Before this, I would just lock myself away in my room, make music all day, every single day, and not live. I’'m just learning that I need to live a little bit more, otherwise I'm just going to end up writing the same fucking songs over and over again.

Being that a lot of your songs are sex-leaning I’m curious about other things you love about love.
[laughs] I think just having somebody that you can lean on. I feel like all relationships that you have in life are so different from one another. Your family relationships are different from your platonic friendships. And then those two are different from your romantic relationships. I feel like there's a purpose for all of those and I feel like a romantic relationship is a lot deeper. I think in this lifestyle as well, shit gets so clouded and busy, and your head is all over the place at all times, and then when you have somebody that you can go home to and just be like shut off completely and everything else just goes silent. That's beautiful.

How did you make "all fours"? I’m a big fan of Destin Conrad.
That's my brother. Like, that's literally family. And we've made so much music together, whether that's like me writing with him for him, me making beats for him.. So we have loads of music together, but we've never come together on one song before. And then when I got that, I was like, this just sounds like a Destin record for real. I just sent it to him, and he sent me his shit back straight away.

Can you tell me about working with Ty Dolla $ign on “‘til the room stinks”?
I made that with my boy Will Commando, he's a producer in London. And I was like, I really want a feature on this, and Ty had been showing me a lot of love in my comments and in my DMs and stuff. And I've been a fan of him since I was like 17, for real. So I just messaged him, and I was like, Yo bro, I think I got a song for us. He said, "Send it." I sent it to him, couple days later, sent me back his verse. I keep saying, if 17-year-old me knew that I had a song with Ty Dolla $ign right now, they'd be passing the fuck out on the floor, screaming and kicking their feet like.

You have a lyric where you say, "You want to find somebody while you're still on the bottom." Can you explain that?
[laughs] When I wrote that song, I was just like, I know what my life is about to be. And I could already see people coming out of the woodwork like— not even romantically, like just people that like—on the come up, I had reached out to so many artists, so many producers, so many people that I wanted to work with. They aired me, didn't want to give me no time of day. And now, it's like I see them in person, it's like, "Yo family." And the thing about me, I'm remembering all of that. You can't fool me, and I'm not going to just bend down on one knee now bow to your feet. If they admitted to me that they didn't respect me enough when I was on the come up [maybe I'd open up]. But that lyric was also like I'm scared that once I reach a level of fame, it's going to be hard for me to find somebody that truly loves and respects me for me, regardless of all this extra shit.

Being masculine-presenting, do you feel like there's a certain box that you need to fit in?
No, I'm very comfortable in who I am and in my skin. I'm not trying to be nobody else. I guess it's a blessing to be a masculine-presenting female because the music that I write can be relatable from both sides. Females relate to it, but then males relate to it as well, so I feel like I've got a good balance of the two.

As a queer artist, do you ever feel a sense of pressure being placed on a pedestal since there is a lack of representation in R&B, or do you ever worry about being boxed in?
100%. There's only a select few of us but I think it's like I want my music to be accessible to everybody and not just the queer community. I'm always extremely grateful that I'm able to be a representation for people.

I like that you do a lot of acting in your videos.
Thank you. I think it just gives a little taste of my personality. And cuz I don't dance—well, a little bit, but [laughs]—but cuz I'm not busting out in full-blown choreography with dancers and shit, sometimes videos can get a little boring.But I feel like when you have things like that going on, where it's like not just singing all the time and there's always something for you to look at.

Speaking of video. I love your COLORS show performance. I noticed you were getting a bunch of comments trying to figure out if you were singing about someone specific, and then you commented, "This whole comment section is just wrong." How do you know what to respond to?
Cuz it was just getting a bit out of hand and the internet can be a cruel place sometimes. I just wanted to clear that up for my own sake and just so that everybody else could just take a—just take a seat and take a breather. I always want people to take the music for what it is. Everybody's always looking too deep into shit and try and create some sort of narrative that ain't true.

Wait, so are you in a relationship?
I’m [redacted].