Is Troy Kingi really preparing to exit the stage?

Larger than life: Troy Kingi at Auckland’s Spark Arena in November, opening for Lenny Kravitz. Photo / Nico Rose

Troy Kingi arrives looking exactly like Troy Kingi: a black top hat on his head, a beard covering his face, sunglasses obscuring his eyes and a thick poncho featuring two large deer hanging over his blue board shorts. On the morning of his Lenny Kravitz support show late last year,
Kingi enters an inner-city Auckland cafe fresh from a flight, pushing his luggage trundler ahead of him. He orders a latte, then doesn’t bother drinking it until it’s cold.

For an hour, he talks softly and nervously, often pausing to consider his responses. This is a surprise. Having seen many of Kingi’s recent shows, I expect him to match his feisty on-stage presence: loud, colourful, a touch larger than life. In person, Kingi is quiet, circumspect, a little fragile. Sometimes, he answers questions with a nod, one word or a brief statement. “I’m really shy,” he says by way of explanation.

He’s not kidding. Kingi (Te Arawa, Ngāpuhi, Te Whānau-ā-Apanui) always records his vocals on his own in his Kerikeri home studio. At last year’s Electric Avenue music festival in Christchurch, Laura Lee, of Texan band Khruangbin, waved at him backstage. He freaked out, retreating to his dressing room to hide. He felt the same about meeting Lenny Kravitz. “I’d be too star struck,” Kingi says. “I’d rather hide away in my corner.”

Backstage pass: Troy Kingi and band at Spark Arena. From left, Kingi, Ezra Simmons, Treye Liu, Guy Harrison and Marika Hodgson. Photo / Nico Rose

This, it turns out, is why Kingi feels the urge to disappear after finishing his 10 albums in 10 genres over 10 years project this year (more of which later). Despite also having an acting sideline – he had prominent roles in Muru and The Mountain and a small part in Hunt for the Wilderpeople and spent the end of 2025 filming in West Auckland – he is a reluctant performer. Fronting live shows is the thing that causes him the most stress.

But with five kids at home in the Bay of Islands, he feels the pressure to earn money while his wife, a teacher, provides their sole stable income. Playing live is how Kingi earns his living. “I’ve never loved being a front man,” he says. “If I could have been the bass player in the shadows the whole time, I could carry on doing that forever.”

That night at Spark Arena, Kingi and band blast through a typically rowdy opening set. It’s a struggle to reconcile the shy Kingi to the man on stage. At the start of the show, people are still filing in and finding their seats. By the end, they are dancing in the aisles, “shaking that skinny ass” (to paraphrase an album title) to Kingi’s desert rock boogie. By the end, the venue is full – and they are cheering for more.

I don’t want to be a Mick Jagger. I want to leave while I’ve still got myself together, while I’m still coherent.

Troy Kingi

Kingi gets through his live shows by pretending to be a bigger version of himself. Usually, by the end of the first song, he feels confident enough to get through his set. It helps when lights obscure the crowd. “On stage you get to be someone else.” He sighs. “That’s how I put it in my head to get through it.”

After Kingi’s set, the house lights come up and he unplugs his guitar, high-fives his band mates, and gets a pat on the back from a stagehand. Then Kingi pulls out his guitar case and gently places his instrument inside. It might have been the most important show of his career, yet Kingi still packs up his own gear, and quietly leaves the stage, hoping he doesn’t run into the headliner on his way back to the dressing room.

As he worked his way through his 10 albums, Kingi became a cult music industry figure nearing mainstream acceptance, even featuring in his own documentary series, Troy Kingi’s Desert Hikoi . Apart from his performance at Electric Avenue (the country’s biggest music festival) and opening for childhood hero Kravitz last year, he also supported Supergroove on their 15-date, mostly sold out nationwide tour.

About a year ago, Kingi sent direct messages to 15 people, some of whom he’d never met before. He told the recipients to think about their answer to one of two questions: “What do you believe in?” or “What happens when we die?” Then he gave each a time to meet him at Ponsonby’s Red Bull Music Studios. Kingi had booked for two weeks, paying for it using the proceeds from his 2020 Taite Music Prize win for his third album, the reggae set Holy Colony Burning Acres.

Kingi: “If I could have been the bass player in the shadows the whole time, I could carry on doing that forever.” Photo / Nico Rose

A who’s who of the local hip-hop scene showed up to contribute to Kingi’s latest and ninth album, Night Lords. They worked fast. Kingi’s band started the day with a jam session, then the MCs wrote and recorded their vocals, often referencing Kingi’s questions. On Afters, the Wellington rapper Mā discussed heaven and hell, and posited where she might end up. On, Isn’t How I Remember, SWIDT’s Amon McGoram (aka INF) rapped about crime and gentrification, including an aside about his cats.

Recording fast and cheap is Kingi’s self-enforced way of doing things. It’s been that way since he was a student at music school Mainz, when he would be placed with a random group of musicians and tasked with recording four songs in a specific genre. Every four weeks, they’d swap and do it again. When Kingi recorded his own test EP in 2009, he kept going like that, recording four songs in different genres.

“I don’t know what artist you are,” a producer who heard it told him. “You’re all over the place.”

Undeterred, Kingi set an ambitious goal in 2016: to write and record 10 albums in 10 genres over 10 years. He likes a broad range of music and didn’t see why he needed to stick to only one. Kingi has kept up that intense schedule ever since, releasing an album a year of soul, 80s pop, desert rock, funk and reggae songs, often made on a shoestring, then touring heavily to promote them.

Night Lords was released in late November to critical acclaim – “mind-blowing” said Muzic.NZ critic Lachie Holt – leaving one album to go in Kingi’s series.

Yet, despite his growing success, the awards and the accolades, once he’s finished his 10-album mission, Kingi’s intention is to quietly disappear. One year from now, the artist Troy Kingi may be no more. “It always had an expiry date,” he says. “As far as Troy Kingi goes, I’m sick of that guy … I’m done.”

So he is planning his swan song. His final album has the biggest concept of all: theme songs to James Bond movies no one has seen. He’s doing this with a full orchestra, and his record label plans to send him to London’s Abbey Road Studios to record it. Te Matera Smith, Kingi’s label boss at All Good Absolute Alternative Records, says Kingi has written different movie pitches for each song on the album. “It’s pure genius,” he says. Once it’s out, Kingi is adamant he wants to retire, to move behind the scenes, to help other artists grow.

Smith doesn’t buy the talk of Kingi fading into the background. The record label owner, engineer and producer behind most of Kingi’s 10-10-10 series calls Kingi “one of the greats”. He realised this, he says, on their first day together in the studio, back when Kingi was recording Shake That Skinny Ass all the way to Zygerton (2017).

King featured in his own documentary series: Troy Kingi’s Desert Hikoi. Photo / Supplied

“I was like, ‘This is something else, this is really special’. It felt like this must be like working with someone like Bob Marley or Jimi Hendrix.”

Smith has been beside Kingi the whole way. He’s travelled to New Orleans and Joshua Tree National Park to research Kingi’s album concepts, sourcing instruments, studio equipment and people to help Kingi’s records sound as authentic and steeped in history as possible. With little funding, Smith has sold cars to pay for them.

“I’ve done whatever we’ve had to do to make them,” he says. He’s done this to help Kingi reach as many people as possible, because “once they know him, they’ll feel the way I do”.

Back at the café, when I tell Kingi I feel I need to spend the rest of our time together talking him out of his decision to fade from the spotlight, he says all his music would still be there for anyone who wants it – a full back catalogue of 10 albums ranging across the musical spectrum.

“I don’t want to overstay my welcome … I don’t want to be a Mick Jagger. I want to leave while I’ve still got myself together, while I’m still coherent.” He sighs and finally sips his cold coffee. “The older I get, the fire that I had at the beginning is getting smaller and smaller.”

Is Kingi really ready to call it quits? Smith calls it a fantasy. “There might be a couple of years where he does [disappear],” Smith says. “The reality is we’re already talking about another Zygertron record, another desert rock record.”

Kingi’s desire for the quiet life, Smith reckons, stems from humility. “He’s got a divine connection to inspiration … It’s pouring through him like a tap.”

He doesn’t believe Kingi could turn that tap off. “It’s my fundamental belief … that the world needs Troy Kingi.”

Troy Kingi dates: Nostalgia Festival, Christchurch, February 7; Marlborough Wine & Food Festival, Renwick, February 14; Homegrown, Hamilton, March 14; Concert In The Garden, Chatham Islands, March 28.

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