The first time we saw Kingdom DJ it was at Mansion, a giant, terrible club in Manhattan, the kind of place with $12 beers and a huge, fake chandelier. It was for a fashion show, not a party, so the extreme loudness off his Baltimore club and electro set was completely jarring in the middle of the day, waiting for a bunch of dudes in weird bondage outfits to strut their stuff. Kingdom was in the balcony, hovering above like he owned the place. But when you looked close, you could see he was fairly hunched over to reach the CDJs. He's tall, and wearing a giant T-shirt, he looked like a gawky teen master of ceremonies getting one over on us. Since then, we've become better acquainted with Kingdom—he's something of a FADER house DJ—and have found out that he's both very serious about his music while maintaining a very childlike excitement about it. For this Discobelle mix, Kingdom runs down the tracklist, dropping genres like "Japanese baile funk," "rhythm & grime" and "tribal guarachero." He's putting in the work of a total dweeb, but with a player's finesse. This is all before his first official release has come out, too—not because he can't, he just wanted to let it simmer right. Catch him at any number of shows in New York soon. And somewhere with Joker on Nov. 20th. We can't even tell where from the flyer on his MySpace, but we'll be there.
Download: Kingdom's Discobelle Mix
