Kane Brown knows he might be an unlikely country music star, but that doesn’t deter him from making the best music he can be. Brown was born to a White mother and a father who is Black and Native American, with his father incarcerated, and Brown and his mother experiencing homelessness during his childhood.
But Brown wasn’t about to let his past dictate his future. The singer-songwriter has emerged as one of the most successful, and unique, artists of the past decade, an accomplishment he credits to all that he experienced so far.
“Everything that I went through is a part of my life that got me here. And I’m actually proud of it,” Brown says on Sunday TODAY with Willie Geist. “Even though a lot of it was tough and hard and you didn’t know what was going to come out of it. But I feel like that’s who made me who I am today. It made me strong. It made me want to get back to people, and made me humble. And just made me proud of who I am and where I came from.”
Brown was employed at Lowe’s when he posted a video of him singing Lee Brice‘s “I Don’t Dance,” and went to sleep, unaware that the entire trajectory of his life and career was about to change.
“I remember waking up, and my phone was completely black,” Brown recalls. “I put it on the charger, and immediately, once it turned on, I just got notifications for hours. I couldn’t unlock my phone; I couldn’t do anything. They just kept popping up. I remember it being 60,000 followers overnight. And I thought that was big, and then fast-forward, I did a George Strait ‘Check Yes Or No,’ and 60,000 turned into millions. And that’s when I started writing my own music.”
The “Bury Me In Georgia” singer loved making music, even when he was paying his bills by working at Lowe’s, a job he held until he made the move to Music City.
“Music was always my life. That was always my escape, even though I didn’t realize it, coming up through my childhood. It started coming out more when I started working at Lowe’s. In the meantime, while I was mixing paint, I was singing.”
“It feels amazing,” he says. “Especially coming from where I came from, my background. Getting to go to Australia; I never really left Georgia. So now I’m getting to travel the world to do music, and it makes absolutely no sense to me.”
Some may doubt Brown’s place within the country music genre, but the father of two knows where he belongs, a place that will be even more evident in his very country new album.
“I’m really excited,” Brown told Pure Country. “We usually have a huge variety. I usually have pop stuff on there, but so far, this album has just been pop country, and then we have some really traditional country songs. George Strait actually had one on hold that didn’t get cut, so I took it.”
All of Brown’s music and upcoming shows can be found at KaneBrownMusic.com.
Photo Credit: Diwang Valdez.
