From mail to music, Sherrod delivers

Every year, music lovers around the country gather in Chicago for Lollapalooza, a four-day music festival at the end of July filled with various genres. This year’s lineup included names like Luke Combs, Olivia Rodrigo and A$AP Rocky.

However, musicians must put in hours of time and effort before they can make it to this exciting stage. That’s where Pre-Lollapalooza comes in, and one of Creston’s own is working to climb its ranks.

Khalil Sherrod is known around Creston for a couple things. He’s one of the friendly mailmen seen walking the streets each day. He’s a graduate of the CHS class of 2022 and was part of the varsity basketball team. Sherrod also happens to be a budding musician, one of many who played at Pre-Lollapalooza this year.

“I think it’s just more so out of luck. I saw the signup two days before it happened and then me and my buddy went up and we did it,” Sherrod said. “Before you know, we’re going down to St. Louis. It was super quick and super exciting, and ever since then, I felt like I’ve been busy.”

Held in St. Louis, Missouri, the weekend before Lollapalooza, Pre-Lollapalooza is a showcase where artists can get in front of a crowd, network with other musicians and earn a chance to perform at Lollapalooza itself.

Sherrod said the experience was great to receive feedback and connect with other artists.

“It was nice to be almost in a different environment and see so much love from the community,” Sherrod said. “That’s what I think music is also about, bringing people together and giving somebody just a second to say, this is a good song. Time is a finite thing, but music has a unique ability to exist outside of time.”

While focusing most of his attention on hip hop and R&B, Sherrod got his musical start by entertaining his family.

“When I was really young, I liked to make parodies of songs,” Sherrod said. “I thought that was enjoyable and it made my family laugh.”

Writing parodies soon morphed into something more, and Sherrod began to seriously contemplate making music during his sophomore year at Creston High School.

“By my senior year of high school I knew I would be consistently making it and producing it, but I would say before that, I always kind of knew,” Sherrod said. “I’ve always been doing this, even before it was putting a project out or putting a song out in general. I knew I was always going to be writing stuff, so I always had that in the back of my mind.”

Under the name Kingill, Sherrod released his first album, “Ill-informed,” featuring 15 songs on his birthday last year. He’s also released a number of singles under the same name. He’s working to release a second album around his birthday again this year, in October.

“I’m trying to stay consistent. I’m almost done, I’ve got some recording to wrap up, but other than that it’s good and golden, so I’m excited for that,” Sherrod said.

For now, he produces and does post-production work on his own music. However, his goal is to eventually get into a studio.

“I think this year I’m going to work a lot more on getting up to an actual studio and getting studio-quality sound coming out so I can start gaining some traction there,” Sherrod said. “I’ll still use the stuff at the house so I can set my ideas in stone and get that working, but I’d like to get the production and the post-production to where I would want it to be.”

Along with making new music, Sherrod has been working with the Des Moines organization Syntriss to work his way into the Midwest music scene. His next performance will be Friday, Aug. 22 at 1833 Saloon in Des Moines.

“That just will be a really good opportunity. We’ll be able to pretty much just get our names out there,” Sherrod said. “There’s a lot of up-and-coming artists. It’s a good thing for the community, especially when people are able to come out and show love and support the community.”

Sherrod’s music can be found on most music platforms under Kingill.