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98``````Khalid’s debut album wentplatinum before he left his teens.No longer “young, dumb, andbroke,” the singer checks in withCarina Chocano. Photographed byEd and Deanna Templeton.The GraduateGETTING ELECTED PROM KING in El Paso is a big deal.Kids start angling for the honor in middle school, so whenthe singer-songwriter Khalid—then just an eighteen-year-oldrecent transplant from New York—joined the fray, it rubbeda few of his classmates the wrong way. Khalid released someof his captivating, melodic songs online ahead of the big nightand started getting the kind of music-industry attention notusually directed at high school seniors. After he was crowned,the prom queen refused to dance with him. “I stole their joy,”Khalid, now 20, tells me. His photo shoot has wrapped, andwe’re sitting inside the wardrobe trailer at a beach just southof Los Angeles. It’s a golden late afternoon, and Khalid issmiling and avoiding my eyes, both kidding and not. “ButI did it in a way I felt was deserving, because I’m a decenthuman being and not some superevil kid who just came inand was like, ‘Whoop! Now it’s mine!’ ”In the weeks following prom, the momentum behind hismusic continued to build. On graduation day, Kylie Jenner,who has been known to boost artists from relative obscurityto the top of the charts, shared Khalid’s song “Location”on Snapchat. Within two weeks of her endorsement, thesong blew up in El Paso. People began to recognize Khalidon the street. “When all of the celebrities started putting iton their Instagram,” Khalid’s mother, Linda Wolfe, tells me,“we knew that it was something.” The single now has morethan 280 million plays on YouTube.As Khalid tells me the story of the prom coup and itsaftermath, I recognize a paradoxical blend of bravado andhesitation, of confidence and shyness—you can see it inhis demeanor and hear it in his music, which is rangy andexpansive. His slightly melancholy songs have echoes ofR&B, hip-hop, eighties synthesizer pop, and American folkmusic. He counts Fleetwood Mac, Father John Misty, andhis mom (also a musician) among his influences. He tries tomake it easy for people to like him, and yet, at the same time,there’s an undeniable grit and determination.You wouldn’t know it from its smoothly assured sound,but “Location,” a crooning ballad about courtship in theage of subtweets that has since gone platinum, emergedfrom a period of unease for Khalid. His mom was a U.S.Army sergeant who also sang different kinds of music, andKhalid grew up moving every few years—from Atlanta toKentucky and, after his mom joined the army band as asinger, to Germany and New York``````GONE VIRALKhalid’s musicinitially spreadthrough social mediaand online platformslike SoundCloud.Gucci jacket andpants. 3.1 Phillip LimT-shirt. Grooming,Daronn Carr. Details,see In This Issue.Sittings Editor:CONTINUED ON PAGE 123 Lucinda Chambers.