Kane Brown

"Like a lot of artists who don’t fit a mold, it took a second for Kane Brown 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—at least not to people minding the gates. Launching his career through Facebook—covering George Strait and Lee Brice, often while knocking around his grandma’s house—didn’t fit either. (Some conservative commenters even thought Brown was a hoax, an industry plant manufacturing what looked like an organic breakthrough.)

And then there was the 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 of a ’90s slow jam—a blend that crystallized the increasingly layered, diverse sound of 2010s country. Brown’s debut, Kane Brown, came out in 2016; Experiment followed two years later, broadening his style, voice, and songwriting. Describing his growth to Apple Music around the release of Experiment, Brown—comfortable, confident, and validated—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.’”