How rising star Knox Fortune won a surprise Grammy — and why he wasn’t there to accept it

Yahoo Music

You may not have heard of Knox Fortune yet, but the Recording Academy sure has. Two years ago, the multitalented, 26-year-old songwriter-producer — who got his start as a teen playing around with GarageBand and making “horrible-sounding music” by sampling Looney Tunes and public domain audio — earned a Grammy for his involvement with the track “All Night” on fellow Chicagoan Chance the Rapper’s Best Rap Album winner, Coloring Book. Sadly, however, he didn’t go to the ceremony, because the Grammy triumph came so early in his career, he didn’t have enough money to attend.

“I live in Chicago, so I went out to L.A. But I was broke when the Grammys were happening. I had not had my ‘break’ yet, and I couldn’t afford a [ceremony] ticket,” Fortune tells Yahoo Entertainment backstage at the Toyota Music Den at the Life Is Beautiful festival in Las Vegas. “It was too expensive! The Grammys are expensive to attend, and I just didn’t have any money at the time. I barely afforded my plane ticket out there, crashed on couches — and then we won, and I couldn’t believe it.”

Instead, Fortune, whose real name is Kevin Rhomberg, learned the news during a casual Grammy viewing party at his producer friend Mike Power’s L.A. house. “I was the only one in the room that had worked on the project, and as soon as they said it, everyone started screaming. And then everyone, all of a sudden, at one time, looked at me. They’re like, ‘Dude, you just won a Grammy!’ I was like, ‘What?’ I didn’t even really realize that I also was included on that.”

So, if Fortune had been able to deliver an acceptance speech that night, what would he have said? “’I don’t deserve this.’ That’s what I would say,” he laughs. “I would say, ‘Thank you, Chance, for allowing me to somehow be here with you.’ I mean, I totally worked hard and stuff, but I don’t know. I would just say thank you to everybody in Chicago. It’s such a wonderful scene, and I’m glad to be a part of it.”

It was Fortune’s work with another Chicago scene fixture, rapper Joey Purp — whose critically acclaimed iiiDrops mixtape was executive-produced by Fortune — that serendipitously led him to unexpected Grammy glory. “Joey Purp is a close friend of Chance, and they work together. I was working at a studio finishing Joey Purp’s project, and the studio closed unexpectedly. I was forced to go to a new studio, and that new studio wound up being the one that Chance was working at, and they wanted a dance record. I make a lot of dance records too, so he asked me if I would try and add something on it,” Fortune explains. “I was like, ‘Do you mind if I try the hook on it?’ He was like, ‘Go for it.’ Then I brought it back to him, and he was like, ‘This is great.’ It was literally that easy.”

Now that Fortune has a Grammy win on his résumé, hopefully he’ll have an easy time hooking up with some of his dream collaborators, like Pharrell Williams, Frank Ocean, Damon Albarn and Gorillaz, and James Taylor. And if he’s ever nominated for another Grammy, next time he’ll likely be in the audience. Maybe, I don’t know. I’m not really into the whole suiting-up thing,” he says, chuckling. “But I probably will.”

Yahoo Entertainment’s live stream of the Life Is Beautiful festival concludes Sunday, with performances by T-Pain, Bastille, Tyler, the Creator, and others. Click here to watch.

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