Kenna

Kenna Zemedkun, known professionally as Kenna, is an Ethiopian-born American musician, philanthropist and technology creative.

With the release of his first single in 2001, "Hell Bent", Kenna gained moderate popularity and an underground following of fans who eagerly awaited the release of his debut album, New Sacred Cow.

After many delays and swapping of record labels, the album was finally released under the Sony imprint Columbia Records in 2003.

A subsequent North American tour was launched in the Summer of 2003 with Depeche Mode front man Dave Gahan.

The album, which was co-produced by Chad Hugo of The Neptunes, contained elements of electronica, synthpop, post-rock, and house music.

Two singles, "Sunday After You" and "Freetime" followed the release of the album; the music video of the latter, along with "Hell Bent", appeared sporadically on MTV2.

"Freetime" reached #19 on the U.S. Dance charts.

In Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink, which is about the way people judge and make decisions in their lives, a portion of one chapter focuses on the stops and starts and difficulties that Kenna experienced in getting his music accepted by the general public, despite the tremendous reception and enthusiasm that music executives, other musicians and a small, loyal fan base had when they heard his music.

Kenna's second album, entitled Make Sure They See My Face, also co-produced by Hugo, was written over the course of three years, finishing in early 2007.

The album was originally set to be released on June 5, 2007, then pushed back to June 19, 2007, finally being released on October 16, 2007.

Kenna, in an interview with Vibe magazine, cited the reason for delays as being over the video for the album's debut single.

The inspiration for the album came from Kenna's attempt to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, the title, inspired from phone calls by Pharrell asking Kenna; "are you going to make sure they see your face?".

Kenna's climb took him to 18,200 feet before he fell ill from taking a sulfur-based altitude medicine, to which he had an unknown allergy.

On October 23, 2007, the album debuted at #1 on the Billboard Top 20 Heatseekers Chart.

An unrelated song from his second album, "Face the Gun", was released to appease his waiting fans, and initially was not to appear on Make Sure They See My Face, missing from early promos of the album.

Ultimately, it was included in the final track listing.

Kenna released a track from the album, entitled "Better Wise Up", in time for the Super Bowl.

His track "Say Goodbye to Love" was nominated for Best Urban/Alternative Performance in the 2009 Grammy Awards.

Kenna is the founder and producer of the Summit on the Summit clean water initiative, and also partnered with Justin Timberlake to re-imagine the social network Myspace before its purchase by Time Inc.

Kenna was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where he was raised by his grandfather for the first three years of his life.

His parents had escaped persecution and immigrated to England and later America; Kenna reunited with them in Cincinnati, Ohio when he was three years old.

He was later raised in Virginia Beach, Virginia, attending school with friends and eventual career-long collaborators Chad Hugo and Pharrell Williams.

Kenna began to express an interest in music upon receiving a copy of U2's The Joshua Tree.

The album inspired Kenna to teach himself piano while studying singers like Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye, as well as groups like The Cure and Duran Duran.

Breaking into the music scene at such a young age and at an interesting time in pop history, Kenna met some of music's biggest names including Whitney Houston, Babyface, Blackstreet, Teddy Riley and Michael Jackson.

He was featured in Malcolm Gladwell's book, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking.

On February 13, 2011, Kenna announced plans over Facebook and Twitter to release a series of 3 EPs with 3 songs each, titled the Land 2 Air Chronicles, which will serve as the "runway" to his third album to be titled Songs for Flight, described by Kenna as a "first ever musical journey."

The first EP, titled Chaos and the Darkness, was scheduled to be released on March 8, preceded by the first single "Chains".

The song was streamed on Kenna's official website on February 22.

On March 4, it was announced that there had been an unfortunate technical failure with the hard drive that stored the majority of the files that made up the songs for the EP and the album.

Kenna rerecorded and reproduced all the songs, reworking the concept for the entire series.

Chaos and the Darkness was eventually released on April 26, 2011, with "Chains" being available as a single on iTunes & Amazon on March 8.

The second volume of the Land 2 Air Chronicles series saw its release spanning three EPs, titled Imitation is Suicide Chapter I, Chapter II and Chapter III, respectively''.

''Four singles would accompany their release, including "Relations (An Ode To You And Me)", "Long Gone", "Love Is Still Alive" and "How Will It End?".

All of them have an accompanying music video, with the exception of "How Will It End?".

The video accompanying "Long Gone" was filmed in an Hitchcockian-style and also marks Kenna's directorial debut.

It was released on MTV on October 17, 2012.

Additionally, a remix to "Relations" featuring Childish Gambino was released on November 12, 2013.

Kenna announced the third and final volume, to be called Genius.

A demo of a track from the EP called "Something to Break" was streamed on Kenna's SoundCloud and social media pages.