Kane Brown

Like a lot of artists who don’t fit a mould, it took a second for Kane Brown (born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in 1993) to figure out who he was. A tatted-up ’90s kid raised by a white mother and Black-Cherokee father, Brown didn’t look country to some of the people minding the gates. The way he launched his career—sharing covers of George Strait and Lee Brice over social media, often while knocking around his gran’s house—didn’t fit either. Brown was enough of an anomaly that some conservative commenters even thought he was a hoax—an industry plant manufacturing what looked like an organic breakthrough. However, there was also that undeniable sound: traditional but slick and modern, with bits of pop, R&B and hip-hop woven in. The baritone might remind you of Randy Travis, the backing track could fit in with a ’90s slow jam; it’s a blend that crystallised the increasingly layered, diverse sound of 2010s country. Brown’s self-titled debut came out in 2016 and Experiment followed two years later broadening his style, voice and songwriting. A comfortable, confident and validated Brown, speaking to Apple Music about his growth around the release of Experiment, said: “When I first started, everybody asked me what my sound was, and I didn’t know what to say. But now if you ask me, I’ll be, like, ‘I’m Kane Brown.’” With 2022’s Different Man, Brown leaned more heavily into the country side of his country-pop, collaborating with Blake Shelton on the brooding title track and snagging a cameo from Brooks & Dunn for “Like I Love Country Music”. But it wasn’t because of any desire to fit in—Brown had already carved out a spot for himself just as he is.