Artist Spotlight: Aaron Knight

Straight from Sunnyside Queens, Aaron Knight is a versatile artist and songwriter who’s taking over the NYC Hip-Hop scene with his freestyle skills, as well as his ability to sing soothing acoustic R&B verses. Most recently, Aaron dropped his newest single I'm Just Trynna Stay Alive following his last successful drill track Way Before Drizzy. This also follows his R&B hits I Tried and the viral track Swim that boasts almost 1.7 million streams. The track was so successful Quavo, has hopped on the remix anticipated to drop sometime this year.

Track after track, Aaron introduces his high-wattage charisma and ability to switch up his cadence and delivery, keeping listeners coming back for more after every release. Aaron draws musical inspiration from Michael Jackson, Eazy-E, Ed Sheeran and Ty Dolla $ign.

He grew up exposed to different genres of music while going back and forth from his mother's to his grandparents home. With his father not in the picture and his mother facing adversities of her own, he turned to music and basketball. While traumatic, Aaron looks upon that time period of his life and rejoices saying, “I'm what the Crack epidemic era made.” In an industry where it can sometimes be hard to stand out, Aaron has sure made a name for himself as an independent artist.

We sat down with Aaron to get to know him better and to get an insight on his recent release and future projects.

Introduce yourself! Who’s Aaron Knight? What’s your background and upbringing?

I’m a singer, songwriter, and just everything and anything music. I grew up in Sunnyside, Queens. I was raised by my grandmother and I had to grow up fast. I had to learn how to level up by myself. And that’s who Aaron Knight is, the level up.

How did you get into music? Has it always been your goal to make a career out of it?

I got into music after I finished playing ball. That wasn’t working out so I was like let me jump into music because I always wrote poems and stuff so the transition was pretty organic for me cause that’s always been a talent I had that I never honed on until I sat down and was like, what am i going to do with my life? To be honest, I didn’t plan on making a career out of music.

Tell us more about your latest single, Movie. How did this project come to life?

Movie is a song that I made because of my lingo. I've been saying “movie” for so long cause me and my boys just always talk like that. Like everything’s a movie.. “that party is a movie, everything is a movie.” So when I made “movie”, I just thought of the most natural word that comes to me to describe something being lit. It felt so easy.

What - and who - inspires you the most when it comes to your craft?

When it comes to my craft, other artists inspire me. Other artists working and putting out great music, it’s like I have to work and put out even better music. So everyone in my field, everyone in my genre inspires me to keep being better, keep pushing the evolve, keep creating something different.

Are you working on any new projects? When can we expect to see something new? I’m working an album, I’m working on a full length project.

I haven’t dropped a full length project in about 3-4 years, so one is due. It’s a next level project so that gotta be dropped with the perfect rollout. So that’s what I’m working on. Finding a home for my project where it could hit the world, not just my immediate fans or community. I want it to be global.

Follow Aaron on Instagram | Spotify