When Kenny Iko hit the high notes of Bruno Mars’s Versace on the Floor” on The Voice, the LA audience was already on its feet—but he didn’t see Snoop Dogg’s chair turn until the cheers nearly drowned out the music. Moments later, Niall Horan turned, too. The 35-year-old DC singer had just earned his spot on Team Snoop — and a second chance at the solo career he’s been fighting for.
“I don’t know how I was able to finish that song,” Iko admits. “I was like, ‘let me just give these guys a hug.’ I fought through it, and I will never forget that moment.”
For Iko, the song that landed him on Team Snoop was more than an audition choice. It was the first solo cover he posted after his R&B group 4EY The Future broke up, a way to reintroduce himself as an artist. Performing it live, with both his mother and his father—who is battling Parkinson’s—cheering him on, was a “really full-circle moment,” he says.
Iko’s dream of a solo career is closer than ever. He advanced from the blind auditions, where the coaches listen without seeing the performer and turn their chairs if they want them on their team, to the Battles, the head-to-head round where contestants compete for a spot to move forward. Viewers can catch his next performance tonight on NBC.
Since his audition, Iko has grown a social media following of more than 150,000 on Instagram, and he’s starting to feel the buzz in his own Northwest DC neighborhood, where he says fans have acknowledged him at his local Starbucks and fellow gym-goers recognize him and have even called him a “superstar.”
But the journey to “superstar” has been anything but easy.
When Iko was in junior high, he put his musical skills to use by joining the choir. But bullying quickly pushed him to hide his voice and blend in on the football field. “I was thinking, man, this ain’t it. This ain’t worth it. I don’t want to do this,” he says. “So I just kind of strayed away from singing.”
But by the time Iko entered McKinley Tech High School, the landscape had shifted. “It was like a wave where either you wanted to be a rapper or you wanted to be in a go-go band,” Iko says. “Every kid wanted to make a band. It was the cool thing to do.”
A lifelong DC resident, Iko rekindled his love for music in the most Washingtonian way: he joined a go-go band, N2L, with one of his best friends. Performing wasn’t always easy; he often played in hole-in-the-wall venues where he says fights sometimes broke out. Still, Iko says he saw “so much culture and love in the music, for the music.”
“It definitely gave me the strength and the courage to go sing anywhere on any stage or any platform,” Iko says.
By that point, performing was no longer just a hobby: Iko knew he wanted to try to make it as an artist. When a family friend’s friend heard him sing and suggested he join a boy band, Iko jumped at the chance. He clicked immediately with the other two members and dove into daily singing practice and dance lessons. That was the moment Iko says his life started to change.
When the group eventually disbanded, Iko says he didn’t just lose the band and the “brothers” he had grown “tied to the hip” with. “You have the vision of the future of what it’s going to look like, and something instantly changes it and rocks your world,” Iko says. “It was very depressing. I sat in a room in the dark for a while just eating pizza.”
Iko jokes that he survived on that steady diet of pizza with applesauce (yes, you read that correctly), but eventually he found his footing again through fitness and a renewed focus on his individual artistry. Then a producer from The Voice reached out, encouraging him to audition.
“I was like, ‘Wow, is this fake?’ ” he says, laughing.
Having come out on the other side of a career low point, Iko now hopes to inspire others not to give up on their dreams.
“If you talk to the Kenny Iko that was in junior high school, he would not be expecting to be where I am right now, or even have the confidence to do what I’m doing right now,” Iko says. “Don’t stop because of what people think. If you can’t sleep because you want this so bad, that is what you’re supposed to do with your life. And no matter when, how old you are, how young you are, what you look like, go for it.”
