CHARTBREAKER
At the end of 2022, pop singer-songwriter Mark Ambor felt lost in his music career. Despite recently signing a record deal and releasing his debut EP, Hello World, something didn’t feel right.
“I fell into this routine of teasing a song, [and] if it did well, putting it out, but I was feeling like I wasn’t saying anything I really mean,” he remembers. “I wasn’t digging deep or singing about things important to me.”
To clear his mind, Ambor, 26, embarked on a months-long international backpacking trip with his then-girlfriend — and returned feeling grounded with a whole new wave of inspiration for songs. He quickly wrote the whimsical, acoustic “Good to Be” and now refers to it as the first time he was musically “genuine and fully expressing myself.”
Just a few months later, he struck gold: While playing guitar in his bedroom, he wrote the lyrics, “You and me belong together/Like cold iced tea and warmer weather,” which would become the instantly catchy hook to the cozy, uplifting “Belong Together,” his ultimate breakthrough and first Billboard Hot 100 hit.
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Meredith Jenks
Ambor grew up with a musical background in Pleasantville, N.Y., playing the piano from a young age at his parents’ request. Though the skill took a backseat in high school, he rekindled his love for the instrument as he approached graduation, trading the classical pieces he previously learned for modern-day pop songs. He proceeded to pen his first song that summer, as he grappled with the emotions of having to leave his small hometown to attend Fairfield University in Connecticut. “I didn’t want to leave home,” he says, “and I tried to write a song to get those feelings out.”
He then returned to work that night as a barback and casually sent the song to his parents in a group chat. “My mom was like, ‘Dad and I love this song. Who’s the artist?’ ” he recalls with a laugh. “I was like, ‘Mom, what do you mean?’ It’s me!”
Ambor self-released a few songs while obtaining a marketing degree in college, and upon his graduation in 2020, decided to take six months to completely immerse himself in chasing his dreams as a musician before considering a different job. “COVID happened after I said that,” he recalls. “I got to spend time working on music at home.”
Thanks to a suggestion from a friend, he joined TikTok later that year. He steadily began to grow a following with his cool guy next door vibe: People gravitated not only toward his big smile and curly brown hair, but to his voice and disarming demeanor as well. He soon began posting covers — including breathtaking renditions of Coldplay’s “Yellow” and Billie Eilish’s “Happier Than Ever” — as well as a few originals, and ultimately caught the attention of then-independent manager Kyle Thomson, who admits he’s a “sucker” for a great voice over a piano melody and asked Ambor to send a few demos.
“It was so early on in both of our careers,” says Thomson. “I was excited to dive into something that I felt was going to be a fun project to build.” By the end of 2020, Ambor had signed a management deal with Thomson.
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Like Ambor, Thomson knew that some of his artist’s early work wasn’t playing to the singer-songwriter’s strengths. “At the beginning, he told me he wanted to make early 2000s festival, opera-rock music, like Passion Pit or Grouplove,” he says. “I was like, ‘That doesn’t make sense for what I think your qualities are. Why would you take your natural, raspy voice and distort it with synths?’ What he meant [initially] was that he wanted to make music that made him feel the same way that those bands made people feel.”
But after hearing “Belong Together” for the first time, Thomson knew that Ambor had succeeded in his mission. On the heels of his release of “Good to Be” in October 2023 — and its growing popularity on a global scale — Ambor began to tease the forthcoming new track in late December. And following a few months of building hype on TikTok, “Belong Together” arrived on streaming services on Feb. 16.
Ambor continued to stoke the fire well after its release, posting many videos on the platform of him walking the streets of major European cities while on tour and singing its dialed-up final chorus, several of which have compiled more than 10 million views each. Per Thomson, user-generated content and influencer marketing was crucial in making “Belong Together” “as big as humanly possible.”
By May 11, the single debuted at No. 87 on the Hot 100. It later reached a No. 74 high — and has spent 21 weeks and counting on the ranking. It has also reached Nos. 24 and 20 peaks on the Billboard Global Excl. U.S. and Pop Airplay charts, respectively. “Belong Together” has earned 141.6 million official on-demand U.S. streams and 610.2 million official on-demand global streams through Sept. 26, according to Luminate.
“It has been really surreal to write something that is so heartfelt and authentic to myself and then feel it resonate around the world the way it has,” Ambor reflects. “The way a song can mean something to a fan that’s different than my own experience, but it’s their own story that they’ve attached to a song of mine … that part blows my mind.”
Meredith Jenks
In August, Ambor’s debut album, Rockwood, arrived through Hundred Days/Virgin Music Group, despite some hesitation from the rest of his team to put out a full project too quickly. (Ambor notes the success of “Belong Together” helped in convincing them otherwise.) He split with the label soon after its release, and while he doesn’t divulge much on specifics, he emphasizes trusting his gut while continuing to grow his career.
“I think people sometimes get too caught in the industry of it all,” he says. “Maybe I’ll sign to a major; maybe I’ll stay independent forever. What really matters is putting out good music and meeting and talking to the fans.”
“He has the best work ethic of anyone I’ve ever met,” adds Thomson. “Mark thinks that he can be Taylor Swift, and I’m not going to stop him.”
A version of this story appears in the Oct. 5, 2024, issue of Billboard.
When “Big Dawgs,” the riotous song by Indian rapper Hanumankind and producer Kalmi, began spreading across the world in July, its creators couldn’t fully appreciate its impact. Despite sites like YouTube and Reddit signaling the song’s crossover appeal, Hanumankind and his team were largely in the dark about its impact on TikTok — including the more than 1 million posts using the track to date — since India banned the platform in 2020.
“We’re hearing about this going crazy, but we can’t wrap our heads around [it],” Hanumankind tells Billboard. “We’re sitting at home like, ‘I guess this is happening. Let’s strap in.’ ”
Born Sooraj Cherukat in India’s southern state of Kerala, Hanumankind was a self-described “child of chaos.” His family bounced around the globe with his father working in the oil sector, making stops in Nigeria, Qatar, Dubai and Egypt before moving to Houston in the early 2000s during his formative years.
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“Houston has a way of shaping a person,” he says, wearing a No. 34 Hakeem Olajuwon Houston Rockets throwback jersey. “Whether you talk about UGK or DJ Screw, you hear it in everything. It was important to be there and absorb so much of that.”
Hanumankind
Samrat Nagar
Talking over Zoom, the 32-year-old has photos of 2Pac, MF DOOM and The Notorious B.I.G. in his living room — but even with his vast hip-hop knowledge, he says his parents hoped he would pursue “a real job and build a career.” He moved back to India for college in 2012, and after graduating, he burned through jobs at Goldman Sachs and different marketing agencies while living like “a f–king idiot.” (Upon turning 30, he temporarily gave up drinking entirely. Nowadays, he says, he drinks in moderation.)
Still, rapping largely remained a party trick he’d pull out at gatherings. But things changed in late 2019 following a performance at the NH7 Weekender Festival in India, pulling inspiration for his stage name from religion. (Hanuman is the half-monkey, half-man Hindu God of wisdom, strength and courage.)
“There was a mob of people running over from different areas, like, ‘Who the f–k is this guy?’” he remembers. “[After] that set, I was like, ‘This feels like something I can do. I just want to do something that gives me purpose. Am I decent at this? Can I make money off this? Cool.’ That’s all I needed.”
A year later, Hanumankind signed a management deal with Imaginary Frnds’ founder Rohan Venkatesh, with the company’s Abhimanyu Prakash helping as part of the management team. “He charmed the pants off me when I met him,” says Prakash. Adds Venkatesh, who first met the rapper backstage in 2018: “I knew this could go global. I believed in the art from day one.”
Hanumankind spent the next few years as an independent artist, releasing a pair of EPs and a handful of singles before his team decided to explore the major-label route, ultimately signing with Def Jam India at the start of 2023. “They were so ready to help us from day one,” says Prakash. “We’ve had this moment, and they’ve been pillars for us in figuring out how to grow it.”
Hanumankind
Samrat Nagar
That January, Hanumankind released the twitchy “Go to Sleep” — but nothing else for the year. With time ticking on his next move, he hopped on a Zoom in early 2024 with frequent collaborator Kalmi while living in Bengaluru. They began with a creative exercise they’d done before: Kalmi would queue up a beat for Hanumankind to rap on and they’d build an idea from whatever came out. “We didn’t want boundaries on us, and the minute [I heard the] beat, I was like, ‘Oh s–t.’”
After taking a liking to the engine-revving production and bristling synths, the hook came next, followed by the first verse. Within 30 minutes, the basic structure for “Big Dawgs” was set. “Instantly, this flow came in,” Hanumankind says, though he admits he began to overanalyze it. “I didn’t think it was a single at all — this song just came to be as a byproduct of being f–king weird, experimental folks.”
But Kalmi and Venkatesh changed his mind. “We knew this was the one instantly, there was a shock value to it,” Venkatesh says. “[Kalmi and I] went for a drive and played it four or five times. Next morning, we called Hanumankind and convinced him to drop.”
Kalmi tightened up the production, adding the chopped-and-screwed element to the song’s outro, and Hanumankind tacked on a second verse. On July 9, “Big Dawgs” arrived on streaming services.
Instead of a traditional marketing budget, Hanumankind’s team allocated much of their financial resources to the music video, which arrived the next day and opened the world’s eyes to a popular Indian spectacle known as the “Well of Death.” Two-stroke engine bikes and vintage cars whiz around in circles on the walls of a vertical pit, testing the limits of gravity — and in the video, Hanumankind even hangs out the window of one of the cars. “It was more of a culture shock for people, which was a unique selling point for us,” says Venkatesh. To date, the video has more than 116 million YouTube views.
Within a few days, Hanumankind realized the reception to “Big Dawgs” was different than any prior work, as it started extending well beyond India and into popular American music. “American hip-hop makes the world react. But this is the first time a lot of people were like, ‘There’s this video coming out of India,’” he says. Popular streamers like IShowSpeed and No Life Shaq reacted to the hit across social media platforms, boosting its visibility to another level.
By mid-August, “Big Dawgs” debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 at No. 57; two weeks later, it reached a No. 23 high. The hit has also topped the R&B/Hip-Hop Digital Song Sales chart and to date has earned 72 million official on-demand U.S. streams and 288.5 million official on-demand global streams through Sept. 5, according to Luminate.
“Everything came in a huge tidal wave,” says Hanumankind. “I feel like someone’s going to slap me in the face and wake me up.” Its reception has indeed been a dream for the rapper: both Project Pat and Bun B separately joined him on Instagram Live — in “Big Dawgs,” the former receives a name check and Hanumankind interpolates a lyric from UGK’s “Int’l Players Anthem” to pay homage to the latter.
Hanumankind is now eager to perform outside of India, and in September signed with Wasserman Music. He also plans to release a remix for “Big Dawgs” with an American rapper, though specifics on who or when are unknown. And while a debut album isn’t ready just yet, he’s still basking in what his breakthrough hit represents.
“I am just the tip of the iceberg of what can come from this side of the world,” he says. “If some random dude from India can make music and shoot a cool video that pops off, it allows people to dream a little harder.”
A version of this story will appear in the Sept. 28, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Cash Cobain is exhausted when he arrives at Billboard’s Manhattan office in late July. But that’s to be expected when chasing the momentum of a breakout hit like “Fisherrr.”
The rapper’s last few months have been a blur, from performing an impromptu park jam this April in New York’s Union Square after his Irving Plaza show was shut down (due to police concerns about crowd size) to featuring on his first Billboard Hot 100 entry in June to recently hitting the studio with Frank Ocean. Cash has quickly become a staple — and propellant — of hip-hop today, particularly in New York City.
The 26-year-old (born Cashmere Small) grew up in the Bronx listening to his grandparents’ Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder CDs alongside Biggie Smalls, 50 Cent and Aaliyah and developed an early interest in music production. His mother bought him drum pads and Yamaha keyboards, while he taught himself how to incorporate samples into his trap and drill-inspired beats on a jailbroken version of FL Studio.
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As he carved out his sound, he was careful to avoid impersonating his biggest inspirations, telling Billboard earlier this year: “ I wanted to add my own flavor… I didn’t want to bite guys like Southside and Metro [Boomin].”
Cash Cobain photographed on July 25, 2024 in New York.
Elianel Clinton
The result is a style all his own, best known as sample drill. As the name suggests, Cash’s beats often incorporate other tracks in some capacity, whether he’s flipping Snoop Dogg and Pharrell’s “Beautiful” on Don Toliver’s “Attitude” — which peaked at No. 58 on the June 29-dated Hot 100 — or Ciara’s “Body Party” for his song of the same name with Chow Lee.
He’ll even snatch a sample out of thin air: “I can be in the elevator or watching a movie,” he says, “and if I like the song or hear a part that I can use, I’ll Shazam it.” Ironically, the music discovery app is also how Cash’s team realized “Fisherrr” was gaining traction.
His A&R at Giant Music, Daniel Byrnes, says they first noticed that Shazams for the song were taking off in New York and that it coincided with a spike on TikTok. “That’s when you know it’s time to go to radio,” says Byrnes. “We then hired [independent] radio plugger GOAT Troy Marshall and Shazam started going even crazier. Then [the song] broke the Top 100 Shazams in the country and it was No. 1 in New York for weeks. Nothing was touching it.” By May, “Fisherrr” debuted on Billboard’s R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay, Mainstream R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay and Rap Airplay charts, and it has since reached the top 10 on all three.
Cash was initially connected to Byrnes through his co-managers, William Foster, Glyn Brown and Makeda Tewodros. (The Bronx rapper started out independent, beginning his career under the guidance of Casanova and his 2x Entertainment label, but eventually decided to seek out new management around 2020.) And while his new team wasn’t focused on getting him a record deal at first, Byrnes jumped when the time was right. “[He] was just one of those people that was always there, continuously checking on us and checking on Cash’s growth,” Tewodros says.
Giant signed Cash in June 2023, and the rapper has leaned into his social media savvy since then, becoming notorious for previewing unreleased tracks on Instagram that he then deletes as the official release nears. “He’ll hide the song, or he’ll archive it after a day or two, and everyone’s like, ‘Where did it go?,’” Tewodros says. “Then they’ll start to chase for it.” Adds Cash: “I’m not the type to post a snippet and then you never hear it,” he says. “Nah, it’s going to be on the album.”
Cash Cobain photographed on July 25, 2024 in New York.
Elianel Clinton
The strategy is exactly how “Fisherrr,” which Cash started teasing on TikTok and Instagram in January, started to thrive. As Cash recalls, when he walked into the studio at the top of 2024, producers FckBwoy! and WhoJiggi were already cooking up the beat. “I cut it up,” he recalls. “The beat was taking too long to drop; I didn’t like that. I wanted it to drop right away.”
From there, he and Bay Swag “started going crazy” in the booth — humming some of the song’s bars as he remembers its creation. Over an intoxicating loop, Cash and Bay Swag go back and forth like a horny Jadakiss and Styles P, with easy-to-remember one-liners like, “And your ass fat, know you eat your rice and your cabbage too/She a savage too, I’m a savage too, it’s compatible.”
The song soon started bubbling on social media and in the streets thanks to a From the Block performance clip from its release day in February that went viral. A couple weeks later, when Brooklyn rapper Kareem Gadson (aka Reem) did “The Reemski” dance to the song — in which he dances like a cobra to the tune of a snake charmer — “Fisherrr” grew even larger. “Once Reem came out with the dance, it was over,” says Cash. Byrnes felt the same way, saying the team dropped their own marketing plans to focus on the dance. “You couldn’t plan for it to be that big,” says Byrnes in astonishment. “Everyone on social media was doing the dance.”
To capitalize on the song’s momentum, Cash came quickly with a remix in April, tapping his old friend and fellow Bronx rapper Ice Spice. “Shout out to Makeda, I know she wants her credit. She made it happen,” Cash says playfully. “There were some ideas and names thrown about and I think we all kind of unanimously agreed Ice made the most sense,” adds Tewodros. “It felt really New York, so we felt like this would be the best amplification for the song.”
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The remix not only resonated with fans, but more importantly, with Cash himself. “I felt loved when I heard her verse. She had the whole flow, it was fire. She was on some Baddie Drill s–t.” Following its first full tracking week, “Fisherrr” debuted on Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs at No. 33.
Cash has been an opener for Ice during her stateside Y2K! trek since the end of July, and he’ll continue on the tour through August. And come Aug. 23, he’ll drop his sophomore album, Play Cash Cobain. “He’s in the zone,” says Brown. Everyone on his team shares a similar sentiment. “I saw him cook up a beat in a bowling alley parking lot and record it in like, 12 hours — and it sounds like another hit,” says publicist Sam Hadelman. “He’s making the best music of his life right now.”
“Straight sexiness. Back to back, play it out — no skips, sexy music,” Cash adds, previewing what fans can expect. “I just want to show y’all I’m really serious about this. I’m not no one or two hit wonder — I am here to stay.”
From left: Glyn Brown, Cash Cobain, Will Foster, and Makeda Tewdoros photographed on July 25, 2024 in New York.
Elianel Clinton
A version of this story will appear in the Aug. 24, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Years before Myles Smith broke through with his anthemic single “Stargazing,” he followed his mother’s advice by focusing on his education — graduating from the University of Nottingham in 2019, launching his own company at 19 and making it profitable by 23.
“I [was] earning good money, but I [wasn’t] fulfilled within my heart,” Smith explains. “That, for me, was a moment of [realizing] that I can’t dedicate years of my life to doing something that I know I’m truly not completely invested in.” So he quit — and already, just two years later, the returns have trumped any apprehension.
As he speaks with Billboard from his Brighton home in late June, the 26-year-old singer-songwriter’s runaway hit “Stargazing” has reached a No. 41 high on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 7 on the Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart, earning 61.2 million official on-demand U.S. streams through June 27, according to Luminate. He has also been announced as a supporting act for select dates on Imagine Dragons’ upcoming fall tour, and will jet to Australia and New Zealand in November for his own headlining trek, which has sold out shows across Europe and North America.
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Myles Smith photographed June 19, 2024 in Brighton, U.K.
Jennifer McCord
As a kid born to a Jamaican family in Luton, England, Smith consumed a wide-ranging selection of genres: Reggae was a mainstay, but between his mother’s love for Whitney Houston’s “Million Dollar Bill” and his siblings’ indoctrination of Destiny’s Child, Ne-Yo and Justin Timberlake, he listened to plenty of R&B. His vibrant working-class neighborhood also exposed him to hip-hop and grime, but it was the music of the 2010s that truly honed his songwriting skills. He credits the heartbreaking lyricism of Adele’s 21, Ed Sheeran’s +, Bryson Tiller’s Trapsoul and Mumford & Sons’ Babel as four foundational albums.
While he crafted his sound, he began uploading unfinished song snippets to TikTok, one of which caught the attention of Extended Play Group’s Eric Parker as he was scrolling through his For You page in fall 2022. “It was a very sad song [that] hit me in a place I don’t normally get hit on TikTok,” Parker says. He promptly reached out and started managing Smith that November.
The two worked to build his following by joining his originals with evocative covers of songs that mined Gen Z’s penchant for nostalgia, including The Neighbourhood’s “Sweater Weather.” “Covers [were] an opportunity to find an audience that I thought would match with the music I would eventually create,” he explains.
With a growing online fan base by 2023, Smith was independently releasing his own singles through Ditto Music, including early tracks like the thumping “My Home” and the witty wordplay fest “Solo” (his first U.K. chart hit). Once he surpassed four million monthly listeners on Spotify, Smith and Parker agreed it was time to look for a label deal. After meeting with scores of potential partners, Smith signed with RCA U.K. last January, in partnership with the U.S. label.
“[My] incredible A&R Jaryn [Valdry] made me cry my eyes out in a meeting because she saw me for who I was,” Smith says. “[RCA’s] whole philosophy being growth over a long period rather than a flash in the pan really aligned with me.”
Myles Smith photographed June 19, 2024 in Brighton, U.K.
Jennifer McCord
Two months later, Smith dropped his debut EP, You Promised a Lifetime. “Stargazing” — written in Malibu, Calif. shortly after signing his deal — wouldn’t arrive until May. Fueled by Fireball shots, nachos and tacos, he and co-writers Peter Fenn and Jesse Fink were “eight or nine songs in,” before Smith came up with a chorus melody so arresting that it sparked an immediate search for complementary chords. Most of the song was written in 15 minutes, with verse details finalized in the following weeks. And when the rest of his team heard it, they solidified his confidence in the looming hit.
“I get back to West Hollywood at two or three in the morning, and I play the day-of demo on the speakers in the [ceiling],” he recalls. “I remember my manager waking up on the sofa like, ‘What is this?’ Everyone in the house is running and jumping around. For my team — my harshest critics, after my mum — to give me that genuine reaction, I knew I was on to something.”
They soon launched a month-long rollout for the song, culminating in its release on May 10 to coincide with the start of his next touring leg. The first snippet he posted to TikTok on April 8 doubled down on the intimacy of his guitar-backed singer-songwriter style, and each subsequent teaser featured more members of his team lip-syncing and dancing along to the track.
“Being able to draw people into the context of the song really works,” Smith says. “I’m Myles Smith, but I’ve got a team, and they’re my best friends. There’s a strange culture of everything revolving around the artist. You think I could do this without everyone around me? No way.”
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The song’s radio campaign began across the pond, but Parker mentions that RCA wanted to make a stateside push immediately. “They were very proactive, [which] was a good sign that they believed in the song as much as we did.” Their hunch was right: “Stargazing” continues to build at radio, debuting on the Adult Alternative Airplay chart dated July 6 and reaching new peaks at Alternative Airplay and Rock & Alternative Airplay.
Amid his breakthrough, Smith sees himself as someone known for his full bodies of work. “I want to be an album artist,” he stresses. “There’s only so much you can say in an EP or single.” But even more importantly, he’s focused on setting an example for how the music industry intersects with the world’s larger systems of oppression.
“I don’t want to be used as a means of saying, ‘We’ve done enough,’” he says of his success in the singer-songwriter space as a Black man. “If anything, I want to be used as a question for why aren’t there more Myleses breaking through.”
Myles Smith photographed June 19, 2024 in Brighton, U.K.
Jennifer McCord
A version of this story will appear in the July 20, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Before R&B-leaning singer Tommy Richman vaulted into the mainstream conversation, he recorded music in his mom’s basement. An ardent supporter of her son’s career, she’d often tell him her favorite songs — but oddly enough, his breakthrough hit hardly cracks the list. “‘Million Dollar Baby,’ that’s the one everybody likes?” Richman playfully teases during our Zoom conversation in late May, mirroring his mom’s reaction. “She likes a lot of older songs way more and [other] stuff off the album, too.” But while his parents may not be captivated by the ‘80s funk-inspired track, the rest of the country has been infatuated, giving him a steady top-5 Billboard Hot 100 hit.
A native of Woodbridge, Va., Richman, 24, grew up listening to 50 Cent and Lil Wayne. Though the small town near the nation’s capital lacked an active music scene, he earned some of his musical sensibilities from his father, a drum teacher. And despite many residents working government jobs, his musical aspirations trumped the idea of a traditional 9-to-5 career. He self-released the somber single “Pleasantville” on YouTube as a freshman in college; then, he spammed various YouTube pages linking to it and urging listeners to “be brutally honest with the last song I posted.”
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The positive feedback he received online encouraged Richman to chase music as a full-time career, and in 2022, he met Darren Xu, COO of Brent Faiyaz’s imprint, ISO Supremacy, and his now-manager. Before long, Xu felt Richman was ready to take the next step and connected him with Faiyaz. By last August, the two artists were in business as well, with Richman signing a record deal with ISO Supremacy in partnership with PULSE Music Group. He also joined Faiyaz on his F*ck the World, It’s a Wasteland Tour that summer, and in October, they collaborated on Faiyaz’ Larger Than Life album standout “Upset” alongside FELIX!, which reached No. 12 on Billboard’s Hot R&B Songs chart.
“[My team] values me as a person,” Richman says. “A lot of people look at you as an object: ‘We have to stay around this guy because he makes good songs.’ This sh-t wouldn’t have really transpired like that if we didn’t get along as people.”
He adds that “Drake reached out super early when I put out [2023 single] ‘Last Nite.’” And as the A-list cosigns began to accumulate, Richman’s confidence grew. He released two grooving singles in 2024 before his breakthrough, first with “Soulcrusher” and then “Selfish.” On April 13, Richman uploaded a teaser of another track — what would ultimately become “Million Dollar Baby” — to social media, shot in a grainy VHS style and featuring the artist and his friends dancing to the beat in the studio. It went viral, garnering over 12.5 million views on TikTok alone, as his falsetto in the infectious chorus quickly struck a chord with fans: “Cause I want to make it so badly/I’m a million dollar baby, don’t at me,” he sings.
“It was the combination of the sound of the VHS camera, the vibe of the people in the studio, how short the snippet was and how in your face the audio was,” says Richman. “The audio is really loud. I compare the audio to my other TikToks, and the one snippet is in your face. I think that’s why it caught on.”
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He followed it with a few more clips, and according to PULSE Music Group vp of marketing Sara Ahmed, they made the decision to drop the song just four days before its ultimate April 26 release. Richman turned in the master recording at 1:00 a.m. on April 23. “I built him a rollout [plan to] build into the hype of the song,” she says. “We didn’t have much lead time to [create] a campaign.”
Nevertheless, “Million Dollar Baby” had a seismic debut, netting 38 million official U.S. streams in its first full tracking week (April 26-May 2), according to Luminate. It entered at No. 2 on the Hot 100, and atop Billboard’s Streaming Songs, Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs and Hot R&B Songs charts — a particularly notable feat given the track was released amid the vicious hip-hop battle between Drake and Kendrick Lamar. Lamar’s “Euphoria” arrived as “Million Dollar Baby” was gaining momentum; in the same weekend as its release, Drake’s “Family Matters” and Lamar’s “Meet the Grahams” and “Not Like Us” dropped, elevating the culture-defining feud. But even as the heavyweights threatened to stymy his opening week numbers, Richman remained unfazed.
“It was a blessing, low-key,” Richman relays. “I was reading a lot of comments like, ‘Damn, this is like the worst time to drop your song.’ It was kind of funny. A lot of people looked at us like we were the palate cleanse.”
“There’s nothing out there like this,” Ahmed adds. “I think people are looking for something new, exciting and different, and Tommy is it. This great song coupled with sharp strategy and Tommy’s determination really carried the song through — and we have barely scratched the surface.”
Gustavo Soriano
In five weeks on the Hot 100, “Million Dollar Baby” has remained a fixture in the top 10, and according to Richman, the song’s music video will arrive ahead of summer. As for a potential remix, fans shouldn’t get their hopes up. “There’s no remix, man,” he says. “A couple people [have reached out]. It’s cool, but for the integrity of the track, let’s keep it by itself.”
As Richman savors his newfound success, he’s already chipping away at his debut album, Coyote. Though he doesn’t have a release date, Richman believes his project will showcase his artistry beyond being a one-hit wonder.
“This is a big record, but this s–t doesn’t define me,” he says. “I’m using this as ‘We’re here. We arrived.’ Not as ‘We made it!’ This is the start of a run.”
A version of this story will appear in the June 8, 2024, issue of Billboard.
“‘Austin’ was written out of a lot of rage,” Dasha tells Billboard in late April. At a Los Angeles session in early 2023, the singer-songwriter began working on a different song with Adam Wendler, Cheyenne Rose Arnspiger and Kenneth Heidelman, which proved unfruitful. After Dasha suggested taking a quick break, she poured out a story of a tumultuous relationship; when the break ended, the group turned her heartbreak into her breakout smash.
With its irresistible groove and defiant storytelling, the single arrived as an independent release last November, and appeared on her sophomore album, What Happens Now?, released in February. “Austin” details the country artist hightailing to L.A. and leaving her no-good lover a drunken mess in Texas. Though she’d never actually been to Austin, at the time, Dasha says that “all the emotions that drove the story were real to me.”
They’ve resonated with listeners too: the song became Dasha’s first Billboard Hot 100 entry in March, since reaching a No. 28 high. It has also peaked at No. 3 on Hot Country Songs and registered 86.7 million official on-demand U.S. streams through May 2, according to Luminate.
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Mark Gong top and pants, Petit Moments necklace.
Ashley Osborn
Born Dasha Novotny, the 24-year-old has been writing songs and performing for over a decade. The San Luis Obispo, Calif., native started performing at local coffee shops at 10, and three years later, her father gifted her a professional studio session for her birthday to record one of her songs. “That experience at such a young age was pivotal,” she says. “I feel like I got an internship to my artistry. I was ready for this spotlight.”
After finishing high school, Dasha attended Belmont University in Nashville, though she dropped out in 2020 amid the pandemic to focus on her music career. She independently released pop-R&B singles “Don’t Mean a Thing” and “None of My Business” that year before releasing a project of remixes and her first EP, $hiny Things, in 2021. Her pop-oriented debut album Dirty Blonde followed in 2023, but it wasn’t until “Austin” 10 months later that listeners flocked en masse, prompting Dasha to further explore the blend of catchy pop-country fusion as an artistic sweet spot.
Before its official release, “Austin” drew the attention of Type A Management’s Alex Lunt, who had been looking for an act just like Dasha. “I had been working in the urban space and in rock, but I wanted to work in country and everyone knew it,” he says. He has been managing her brother’s band, Beauty School Dropout, for several years already, and after her brother sent Lunt a few of Dasha’s demos — including “Austin” — he soon became her manager as well.
Versace tank top, jacket and jeans.
Ashley Osborn
Alex Lunt and Dasha photographed April 25, 2024 at The Comedy Chateau in Los Angeles. Dasha wears a Prada top, jacket, skirt and belt.
Ashley Osborn
Prior to the track’s release, Lunt connected her with the indie label Version III, as well as PR company King Publicity, in anticipation of broadening the song’s reach. Dasha created a line dance timed to the song’s chorus and worked with a handful of influencers, including Zoey Aune, to create shortform videos to showcase it. “The goal was to target very specific demographics upfront: the female country audience,” Lunt says.
Clips began to roll out in early 2023, with one such video on Aune’s TikTok account featuring the influencer dancing with Dasha that went viral (with 29.4 million views on the platform to date). “That was the video that started the massive tidal wave,” Lunt recalls. A week later, Dasha posted herself line dancing in a corral solo; that video has since garnered 68.5 million TikTok views.
“I remember feeling really nervous that it would be cringey,” Dasha recalls. “I think the reason it worked so well is because it came from such a fun place and I feel like there’s this gap in community on TikTok right now, so people are down to connect any way they can. When you go to the club and you know the dance, you can participate in the community.”
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The song’s surge on social media sparked a label frenzy, with Dasha signing to Warner Records in March. (At the time of the announcement, she told Billboard, “Warner felt like they had the most heart. They were so passionate about my songwriting, which is my priority.”) The next month, she inked a deal with WME for booking. Media appearances followed, including Jimmy Kimmel Live!, a performance at the CMT Music Awards (notably held in Austin), and a set at the country music festival Stagecoach in Indio, California.
As the single continues to build, the team is now putting its efforts toward stabilizing it stateside — recently promoting it to country radio — and across the globe. “Austin” reached a No. 23 high on the Billboard Global Excl. U.S. chart on April 27, with Lunt revealing they have since targeted Scandinavian, German and Australian creators.
“I think the magic of this new country sound is that I can incorporate those big pop hooks,” says Dasha. “The first time you listen to it, you can sing it back. I think that’s why it’s working so well overseas. But then also it has a super vivid lyric, so it’s like a movie in your head.”
While Dasha works on a deluxe version of What Happens Now?, she believes the biggest opportunity to grow the song is performing it live: “Now that I finally have an audience listening, we can spend the time and energy and make this into something really, really magical.”
Mark Gong top and pants, Petit Moments necklace.
Ashley Osborn
A version of this story will appear in the May 11, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Michael Marcagi came to an agreement of sorts with his manager in late 2023. The folk-pop singer-songwriter had just finished a recording session in Woodstock, N.Y., and emerged with three songs he felt captured the signature sound he’d been crafting, inspired by Bruce Springsteen as well as artists like Jim Croce and John Prine.
Marcagi was eager to release one song as a single before the end of the year, while his manager, Alex Brahl, was hoping he would ramp up his presence on TikTok — and advocated for a regular quota of posts to increase exposure. “Five times a week, that was our ultimate deal,” recalls Brahl. “We were coming from zero, more or less.”
The two studied how other artists used the platform to their advantage, and within weeks, Marcagi released his solo debut single, the simmering, acoustic guitar-led “The Other Side,” and had developed a following on the platform. By January, that fandom helped power his breakout hit and follow-up single, the jangly and more uptempo “Scared To Start.”
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The following month, “Scared To Start” scored the artist his first Billboard Hot 100 entry, reaching a new No. 54 high on this week’s chart. The song — which appears on Marcagi’s debut EP American Romance — also entered the top 10 on Hot Alternative Songs and Hot Rock Songs charts and marked Marcagi’s return to Adult Alternative Airplay, which he previously graced in 2020 and 2021 with his former folk-rock band The Heavy Hours.
“I knew in the back of my head that I wanted to eventually write singer-songwriter music that was narrative-driven and just talk about what I felt, what I wanted to sing about,” says Marcagi, who mentions that The Heavy Hours amicably parted ways a few years ago. However, the role of frontman primed him for his solo career — particularly amid his viral takeoff. “I needed those couple years of playing shows and getting notches in my belt and learning the ropes,” he continues. “The music industry is weird. It’s a hard, kind of a lonely, intimidating place to be sometimes. I needed the time to get used to it.”
Kate Sweeney
Growing up in Cincinnati, Marcagi was drawn to the production of “simple folk songs and acoustic guitars,” while his midwestern upbringing inspired his lyrics. “I write a lot of songs from that feeling of being from a flyover state,” he says. (His brother and day-to-day manager, Andrew Marcagi, adds that their “blue collar roots, without a doubt, have shaped Michael’s lyrics and songwriting style.”)
Marcagi is well aware that folk-pop is enjoying a mainstream resurgence, propelled in part by new labelmate Zach Bryan as well as Noah Kahan, the latter of whom Marcagi is a major fan. “I think it’s so awesome he’s playing for stadiums of people that are screaming about Vermont,” he laughs. “This style of music is working right now and I’m super grateful that people connected with [‘Scared To Start’]. It has been this wild little rocket ship the past couple months.”
Brahl can trace the song’s takeoff all back to one particular TikTok clip in which Marcagi is playing guitar in a field of dead grass over the “Scared To Start” lyric “let’s lay in the dead grass, stare at the stars.” As Brahl recalls, after uploading the teaser on December 19, the team went out to lunch — and when they came back, the clip had 10,000 views. “I remember talking to Michael and being like, ‘What if we wake up tomorrow and it has 50,000?’,” he says. “It had 100,000, and it was this completely organic thing that just kept going and going.”
Kate Sweeney
In the days before the holiday break, Brahl sent the clip around to a handful of labels, and by Christmas Eve, Marcagi and his team selected Warner Records as his label home. He signed his deal the first week of January, and the following week, “Scared To Start” was released as his next single from American Romance, which arrived in early February. “One of the reasons we were so excited about Warner is that over the holidays we were getting on the phone with the digital team and planning. We were moving very, very quickly,” says Brahl. “We had momentum and I’ve seen it too many times where people don’t take advantage of that. We wanted to.”
“We were aggressive out of the gate in attacking the areas we knew would adopt the song with open arms,” says Will Morrow, Warner’s vp of viral marketing and digital development. Plus, as senior vp of digital marketing, Dalia Ganz, adds, the digital teams at Warner were quick to “leverage our deep relationship with TikTok to get increased visibility for the song on the platform,” noting that they are now focused on driving virality for “Scared To Start” across other shortform platforms like Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts.
With the hit’s success, Warner has another win and developing star on its roster, joining the likes of Teddy Swims and Benson Boone, who have each enjoyed top 5 Hot 100 hits in 2024. “Warner has emerged as a leader in the championing of this new generation of singer-songwriters and the return of guitars in pop music, and we identified Michael as a standout in that space,” says Warner CEO Aaron Bay-Schuck. “He had a collection of songs we loved and felt he really understood how to authentically market and promote himself online.” (Yet, Marcagi is the first to admit “TikTok is a weird, Wild West for me still.”)
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Recently, Marcagi returned to the same Woodstock studio to work on his debut full-length before heading out on tour. He’s currently abroad — with dates in the U.K., Ireland, Germany and elsewhere — and in May will kick off his 23-date U.S. trek in Denver. “It’s been very much like, ‘Quick, go!,’ but still mostly organic,” says Brahl, noting there has yet to be a major TV campaign or concerted radio push, nor any particular challenge TikTok users can opt into.
Even so, Marcagi’s friends send him a photo whenever “Scared To Start” does play on the radio — which he says is perhaps the most surreal part so far. “I remember driving my dad’s car and hearing Mumford and Sons and The Lumineers on the radio when I was in high school,” he recalls. “It’s a weird full circle moment to be like, ‘I can’t believe that out of all of the artists that are putting music out, they’re choosing to play my song.’ It’s really, really wild.”
Kate Sweeney
A version of this story will appear in the April 27, 2024, issue of Billboard.
While visiting Los Angeles in 2022, 26-year-old pop artist Knox was telling a friend that he had recently scored a major-label deal with Atlantic Records. “That’s cool, but you’ll never be Matty Healy,” the friend quipped.
Instead of dwelling on the snide comparison to the frontman of The 1975, Knox remembers thinking, “This could be fun,” and went into the studio with songwriter Spencer Jordan. After recording several versions of what would become his breakout track, the indie rock-tinged “Not The 1975” was released in July 2023 — and has since become Knox’s introduction to the Billboard charts.
Growing up in Dayton, Ohio, Knox (born Knox Morris) showed off his alternative-influenced vocal range at local open mics during his teenage years. Following high school, he attended Ohio University with plans to become a teacher, but his passion for music won out — and by early 2019, he dropped out and moved to Nashville.
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Soon after, Redline Entertainment’s Larry Blackford discovered Knox on Instagram and reached out to the singer for a meeting, along with the company’s Wes Mayers. The three of them instantly hit it off, and Knox signed a co-management deal in 2020. “When he sings, his voice is reverberating. I’ve never heard anything like it,” Blackford says. Adds Mayers, “Knox has one of the best work ethics of any artist I’ve met. He has high energy, high drive and that real competitive streak.”
Aaron Sinclair
Aaron Sinclair
That drive was quickly put to the test when the pandemic forced Knox to get creative with his promotional strategy while building a fan base on social media. He first experienced some significant traction with his 2022 single “Sneakers” before trying the same strategy of consistently posting teasers for “Not The 1975” — particularly leaning into videos about the cheeky chorus.
The rallying track draws in listeners thanks to Knox’s witty songwriting: He references The 1975 hits “Chocolate” and “Oh Caroline” in his verses, then spins that pivotal L.A. conversation into the chorus. (“I said, ‘Girl, I might not be famous yet, but I’m gonna put you in a song that I write’/Then she said, ‘I like your confidence but you’re not The 1975.’ ”) The music video, which arrived the day of the song’s release, plays even further into the bit: Knox dresses in a Healy-inspired black-tie get-up and smokes a cigarette throughout. “I don’t think people understand how many cigarettes I had to smoke,” Knox recalls, laughing. “At first, they were herbal cigarettes, but I could already [imagine] the comments calling me out.”
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Despite the catchy hook, Knox admits that “Not The 1975” was more of a “slow burn” in comparison to “Sneakers,” despite the acclaim he was getting from those around him in the weeks following the former’s release. “Everyone was saying that it’s an amazing song, but the streaming numbers weren’t translating yet,” he says. But after a late 2023 tour, where Knox says the song was “clearly a fan favorite,” it began to take a hold at radio and on digital service providers. “Not The 1975” debuted on Pop Airplay and Adult Pop Airplay in late January, and it reaches new highs of No. 26 and No. 15, respectively, on the March 16-dated charts. Additionally, the hit has 8.5 million total on-demand official U.S. streams through March 7, according to Luminate.
Neither of Knox’s managers are surprised to see the singer-songwriter now experiencing multi-format success. “With lyrics like ‘Vodka soda and baggy jeans/Using none of that art degree,’ how could [radio] not love it?” Blackford asks, with Mayers adding that he often sees a “waterfall effect” for an artist following a tour. “People will be like, ‘I like this guy, let’s check out the rest of his catalog.’ We’re mindful of that.”
Aaron Sinclair
From left: Larry Blackford, Knox and Wes Mayers at The Foundry in Philadelphia on Feb. 3, 2024.
Hunter Wurzelbacher
Knox will go back on the road for a headlining tour across the West Coast beginning in April, hopeful that other songs from his discography will get similar love. “I’m most confident in my live shows,” he says. “Whenever I make a song, I ask, ‘Would this sound sick live?’”
Already this year he has released two new singles, first with the unifying “Here’s to Us” in January, followed by the atmospheric, swoon-worthy track “Me, Myself & Your Eyes” in February. And despite his higher profile, he’s trusting the same approach that has brought him to this point while attempting to follow up his breakout hit.
“There is pressure, of course. At the same time, if I put out music that I love, if it gets a million streams, great; and if it doesn’t, that’s OK,” he says. “I have the coolest job in the world. No matter what happens, I’m going to be fine.”
A version of this story originally appeared in the March 9, 2024, issue of Billboard.
It’s 30 minutes before the NBA’s Lakers and Clippers tip-off for a late January showdown at their shared home of Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles, and rapper BigXthaPlug is sitting in a purchased box suite with his entire crew. Had he wanted, he could’ve showcased his 6’3”, 400-pound frame in personal courtside seats, but for the Dallas native, it’s a small token of appreciation for those who were with him before he could afford such luxuries. “I’m not finna see nothing for the first time without people that was there when I had nothing,” he says.
Lately, BigXthaPlug has had a lot to showcase: the rapper turned in a banner year in 2023, first with the RIAA-certified gold hit “Texas” that reps his home state, and more recently, with the braggadocious “Mmhmm.” The bass-bumping, sonically nostalgic track, which showcases his bellowing voice adlibbing the song’s title throughout the chorus, broke through on a mainstream level and debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 in December. “You gotta say it with a little more ‘Mmmhmmm,’” BigXthaPlug instructs with a deep southern drawl that sounds naturally chopped-and-screwed.
Born Xavier Landum, the 25-year-old was raised by his mother — also a Texas native — who put him onto southern rap dignitaries ranging from UGK to Lil Wayne, while his father leaned more into the R&B acts like the Isley Brothers. BigXthaPlug grew up with NFL dreams and only began rapping a few years ago, with his self-released Bacc From the Dead project in 2020. The EP drew the attention of UnitedMasters’ A&R Aaron Hunter, who then peppered the rapper with DMs before ultimately flying to Texas for an in-person introduction at a Chuck E. Cheese birthday party for the latter’s cousin.
BigXthaPlug signed a deal with the distributor in 2021, and shortly after, he added a manager in Public Figures Management Group founder Kyle Wilson, who first discovered BigXthaPlug on Instagram through his raw track “Safehouse.” (Co-manager Brandon Farmer, a partner at Solid Foundation Management, joined the team in 2023 after watching the rapper’s SXSW set.) “His stage presence, you just don’t really see that,” Farmer says. “You can tell when somebody is a star. X is a star.”
BigXthaPlug photographed on January 22, 2024 in Los Angeles.
Daniel Dorsa
BigXthaPlug photographed on January 22, 2024 in Los Angeles.
Daniel Dorsa
But just as the pieces of his team were coming into place, BigXthaPlug was arrested on unlawful carrying of weapons and marijuana possession charges and served a 2022 jail stint in solitary confinement. The experience was a wake-up call: instead of spending the hours in monotony, he wrote rhymes on medically issued med-line paper and read the dictionary. “I tried to read the Bible but I couldn’t do it,” he says.
He was released later that year, and by 2023, BigXthaPlug translated inspiration into action: he launched his own independent record label, 600 Entertainment, and subsequently added artists Ro$ama and Yung Hood to the roster. He joined rapper Key Glock on tour that April, where he met hip-hop producer Bandplay and immediately established a rapport. In June, the two went on a creative retreat in Arizona, and one of the first songs that came about during the two-week Airbnb stay was “Mmhmm.” Bandplay first cooked up the funky beat in 2020 after hearing The Whispers’ “And The Beat Goes On” while watching a movie. But upon initially hearing the beat in Arizona — which samples the 1979 track also prominently used in Will Smith’s 1998 single “Miami” — it didn’t register with BigXthaPlug.
“I’m a groovy-ass person,” BigXthaPlug recalls. “Bandplay was playing it and me and [songwriter Ro$ama] got to dancing. Bandplay stopped it and was like, ‘Y’all know what sample this is?’ We was like, ‘Hell nah.’” Still, within 30 minutes, the hit took form.
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BigXthaPlug saw the track as an opportunity to put his friend in a position to win: in a genre where many are shy about their collaborative writing process, he asked Ro$ama to pen the song’s heavy-flexing opening verse. “I had already wrote a verse — the second is my verse,” BigXthaPlug says. “I [told him], ‘Write a verse, and if it’s good, you could get points and get paid.’ A lot of these rappers are using writers. Even if you don’t end up the biggest artist in the world, you might be the biggest writer. It made me bring the energy.”
After finishing the track, BigXthaPlug headed to nightclubs across the country to crystallize his instincts that he had a mainstream hit on his hands. “I’ll go to the club every day of the week to make sure my songs are getting played,” he says. As an unreleased version of “Mmhmm” began to dominate club venues, UnitedMasters had him pump the brakes for the rest of the summer to make sure the licensing rights were in order. But as BigXthaPlug says, he “doesn’t mind paying that bag to get sh-t cleared,” and upon getting the green light, he officially released “Mmhmm” to streaming services through UnitedMasters last October.
Two months later, he released EP The Biggest, which included a remix of the song featuring fellow Texan Finesse2Tymes. By mid-December, amid the influx of holiday songs on the all-genre chart, “Mmhmm” debuted on the Hot 100 where it has since reached a No. 65 high and compiled 75.5 million total on-demand official U.S. streams through Jan. 25, according to Luminate — and importantly, served as a means of validation for the rapper. “I always like to have reassurance,” BigXthaPlug admits. “Sometimes I catch myself like, ‘Why are you still rapping? You know you not a rapper.’ Then you get a Billboard [Hot 100 entry].”
From left: Kyle Wilson, BigXthaPlug, and Brandon Farmer photographed on January 22, 2024 in Los Angeles.
Daniel Dorsa
BigXthaPlug photographed on January 22, 2024 in Los Angeles.
Daniel Dorsa
The song’s success propelled “Texas” and featured turn on NLE Choppa’s “Pistol Paccin” onto Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, and as the rapper turns the page to 2024, he isn’t resting on his laurels. He will release a collaborative EP with 600 Entertainment artists and follow it with a solo album. He also says he has a collaboration with Rod Wave, and that Megan Thee Stallion recently reached out, too.
It’s all humbling for BigXthaPlug, who’s still getting accustomed to the buzz — but teases everything will get bigger, and better, this year. He’s a Texan, after all. “I didn’t even want to make [‘Texas’],” he reflects. “If I can do this when I didn’t wanna do it, what the f–k could I do when I want to do it?”
A version of this story will appear in the Feb. 10, 2024, issue of Billboard.
In 2019, Alabama-born country–rock quintet The Red Clay Strays were plugging away at building a core fan base, playing small clubs and festivals around the Southeastern United States in hopes of exposure. “We were a bar band at the time, playing honky-tonks [with] no stability, really just chasing the dream,” harmonicist/guitarist/vocalist Drew Nix says. In the same breath, he acknowledges the toll such commitment took on their romantic partners. “We were like, ‘Our women have the short end of the stick of this. I wonder why they even like us.’”
The notion led Nix and the group’s lead singer Brandon Coleman, along with songwriter Dan Couch, to write “Wondering Why,” the band’s breakthrough hit from their 2022 album Moment of Truth, putting them on the mainstream map.
The bluesy romantic ballad depicts a committed, if unlikely, love story between an upper-class woman and a working-class man. (“I don’t know what happened, but it sure don’t add up on paper/ But when I close my eyes late at night, you can bet I thank my maker,” Coleman croons in the opening verse.) More than a year after its release, “Wondering Why” made its debut on the Billboard Hot 100 — in late December, no less, even amid the typical influx of holiday songs on the all-genre chart. Now, the band’s first entry rises to a new No. 71 high on charts dated Jan. 20 as it builds at radio and streaming.
Composed of Coleman, Nix, Zach Rishel (electric guitar), Andrew Bishop (bass) and John Hall (drums), The Red Clay Strays have been making music since 2016, with most of the group meeting during college or through prior gigs. Crafting an amalgam of rockabilly, gospel, soul, blues and hints of country, Coleman’s barrel-chested vocal and 1950s Johnny Cash-meets-Jerry Lee Lewis onstage aesthetic shape what he refers to as “non-denominational rock’n’roll.”
While crafting its sound in the local circuit, the independent band began to add pieces to its team, including Conway Entertainment Group’s Cody Payne as manager. He first met the group in 2019 as a booking agent and later began working with the group through the company’s management arm, Ontourage Management. As his position continued to grow, so did the group’s fan base within the community and online: by the time the members felt ready to record a debut album, Payne played an instrumental role in igniting crowdfunding efforts to help with the financial struggles of paying for studio time.
“I built it on their website, straight PayPal,” Payne says. Despite not having an official monetary goal in mind, he recalls thinking that $30,000 would be enough to get the job done — and was floored as the total quickly soared past that number. “The first week we did over $50,000; by the end of it we had about $60,000.”
The Red Clay Strays
Macie B. Coleman
The Red Clay Strays
Macie B. Coleman
Using analog methods at a Huntsville, Ala. studio, the band spent just over a week creating Moment of Truth, which was subsequently self-released in April 2022. Though it was initially met with tepid commercial returns, at the start of the following year, Payne hired Coleman’s younger brother, Matthew — who is also one of the band’s primary songwriters — as a videographer to help grow The Red Clay Strays’ online presence. The band also signed with WME for booking representation in January 2023, and within the span of a few months, announced a series of high-profile opening gigs for Elle King, Eric Church and Dierks Bentley.
In May, the band began taking meetings with a handful of labels, with the members parsing the decision of whether to sign or remain independent — until they met with Thirty Tigers co-founder/president David Macias. “It just made more sense for us,” Coleman says. “Instead of giving us the dog and pony show, David gave us straight advice. There was no pitch. That’s what I wanted to hear. If I’m betting on anybody, I’m betting on us every time.” By September, following months of touring festivals including Lollapalooza and CMA Fest, The Red Clay Strays had officially signed to Thirty Tigers.
With Matthew’s help, the band began to upload an influx of clips, largely consisting of live performances, to TikTok, Instagram and Facebook. “He was putting out reels and social numbers kept going up,” Payne says. “Wondering Why” has soundtracked more than 71,000 TikTok videos to date, along with a lyric video for the song that has compiled more than 2.5 million YouTube views.
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In the time since, “Wondering Why” has grown across formats and genres: on charts dated Jan. 20, the breakthrough hit holds at highs on Billboard’s Hot Rock Songs and Hot Rock & Alternative Songs charts, reaches a new No. 19 best on Adult Alternative Airplay and sits at No. 22 on Hot Country Songs. Labels have again reached out, says Payne, though the band has no plans to move from Thirty Tigers.
Additionally, despite plans to release a follow-up project by early summer, the recent chart success has spurred second thoughts to “let ‘Wondering Why’ and Moment of Truth breathe a bit,” Payne adds. When the new album does arrive, it’ll boast production from Dave Cobb, thanks to Conway Entertainment Group’s Brandon Mauldin setting things in motion with mutual connection Shooter Jennings. “Since we’ve started, the goal from day one was to work with Dave Cobb,” Coleman says. “The fact that it actually happened is surreal.”
The Red Clay Strays
Macie B. Coleman
From left: Drew Nix, John Hall, Brandon Coleman, Andrew Bishop and Zach Rishel of The Red Clay Strays with their manager Cody Payne (third from left) in Red Rocks, CO.
Macie B. Coleman
In the meantime, the band will continue its Way Too Long headlining tour, in addition to more festival dates, including Boston Calling and Hinterland. Coleman knows as the hype for “Wondering Why” mounts, so too may the pressure to follow it up while the iron is hot — but he’s keeping his cool amid the band’s breakthrough moment.
“Everybody yelling at us to play it from the beginning of the show is kind of crazy, but it’s cool. I’m thankful for the recognition, but I always have it in my mind that people [go] viral for a month or two, then the next thing comes along.”
A version of this story will appear in the Jan. 27, 2024, issue of Billboard.