Brown’s voice developed in his teen years. Even then, Brown had never been to a concert. When another friend bought him tickets to see Young and Brad Paisley in Atlanta, he jumped at the chance.
“When Chris Young came out, I was a little fan girl,” Brown said. “Just seeing him up on stage and seeing Brad Paisley come out with his light show and his lasers, it was just like, ‘Dude, I want to do this.’ I just started running with it.”
As a second-year senior, already pierced and tattooed, he had to beg to enter his high school’s talent show. Videos of the performance show students initially referring to Brown with racial slurs and threats of “better not mess this up.” After he sang, the same students clapped and cheered until Brown followed up with a Josh Turner tune.
Within a couple of years, the singer started filming videos of himself singing cover songs and sharing them on social media. In 2014, he posted a clip of himself singing Lee Brice’s “I Don’t Dance” and went to sleep. The next morning, he had 800 friend requests on Facebook and then 700 more. Brown’s account maxed out at that, but by the end of the day he recalls having 20,000 followers and the video getting 60,000 shares.
“I was freaking out while I was at work,” he said. “I had posted videos of me singing for a while, but I would get 50 likes at the most. Every second I had to check my phone to see what was happening.”
He continued to post videos, which gained popularity, eventually attracting millions of views. When he started posting songs he wrote, Brown broke more than 1 million followers on Facebook. He recorded his song “Used to Love You Sober” at a friend’s house, and the video got 15 million views. Then he released the song to iTunes, where it became the first of five Kane Brown songs to top the iTunes country charts.
At that point, record labels took notice. Because of the viral nature of Brown’s success, the singer says, some people in the music business brushed him off.
"A lot of people don’t think it’s real, is what I’ve heard," he explained.
Goodman called his first meeting with Brown “jarring,” but in all the right ways.
"
We use two words here a lot when we’re looking at artists and listening to music. ... ‘Is it unique? Is it compelling?’ ” he said. “Just the fact that he’s biracial and he’s tatted up and he’s got piercings — that makes it completely unique. Then, when he starts singing with that Chris Young-esque voice. When he made the turn and got really authentic about what he was singing about, the compelling nature continued to grow.”
