Kane Brown

He took his talent to TV, auditioning for American Idol and The X Factor. He landed on the latter, but left after the show tried to place him in a boy band. Brown, who is biracial, saw the power his presence could have in country – a genre he’d mostly been performing since those early high school days. 

Brown began posting covers of songs on Facebook, quickly amassing and a following, which helped him crowd-source his self-released EP Closer in 2014. 

His self-titled debut album followed in 2016, and one year later he released an expanded edition that brought things full circle. The project featured a duet with Chris Young on the track ‘Heaven’. Brown’s sophomore album Experiment arrived in 2018. 

In 2021, Brown hit two milestones: He became the first black person to the ACM Award for Video of the Year, and he launched his own label, 1021 Entertainment, through Sony Nashville.