KiNG MALA

KiNG MALA rules. That’s all there is to it. Los Angeles alt-soul artist KiNG MALA (a.k.a. Areli Castro) has a voice as strong as her moniker, with a narrative that includes lust and sexuality, but manages to keep her vulnerability intact. Everything about her manner and her message make her a badass independent sovereign we’d trust to lead a war for humanity.  “’mercy’ was a chance for me to explore a darker side of myself,” she tells us, of her new single, released in July. “I kept asking myself the question: ‘Am I the bad things I’ve done? How can I separate my actions from who I am as a person?’ And that inspired this delve into my ‘shadow self’ to explore it from the outside. In the music video, there is this sweet, innocent version of myself seated across the table from a more co...