In 2016, Khalid Robinson was voted Most Likely to Go Platinum by his high school class. About a year later, he proved them right. A military kid, Robinson split his childhood between Georgia, Kentucky, upstate New York and Heidelberg, Germany, eventually settling in El Paso, Texas—a pattern of dislocation that often made him feel like an outsider. Self-described as “an awkward teen,” he picked up songwriting primarily to stave off loneliness, sharing music through SoundCloud and quickly catching...