THE VIBRANT PROJECT PRESENTS
a few of her videos, then forgot about her until “Handsomer’” exploded. Suddenly my TikTok stream was flooded with people dancing and lip syncing to Ktlyn. Creators @kaileyandtrav started a dance challenge to her version and drew more than 30 million views. And on March 9, 2021, Russ made it official and dropped the Ktlyn remix. The track ran through my bones that summer. It was the carbs that fueled my workouts. Ktlyn was the girl next door reminding you of your badass self, the stranger in the bathroom reassuring you that you don’t need him. “Usually, my goal is to make women—or anybody who’s listening to my music—feel empowered,” Ktlyn says. “I love the idea of people listening to my music and maybe feeling more confident.” And TikTok was hungry for more. Days after the single dropped, fans pushed, pleaded, demanded that Russ release a version with her voice across the entire track. It was chaos— polite bullying, but complete chaos. This was her song now, and they needed him to know it. “He was like, ‘I cannot post anything else without people being like: Where is this song?’” she says. “Russ is the coolest, most genuine guy. And he got to see how amazing my fan base is and how hard they went for me to have that moment.” Russ released the “Handsomer Extended Remix” on April 7, 2021, giving her an extra verse. Things got real fast. The song hit No. 1 on US iTunes and No. 59 on the Billboard Hot 100. The music video featured Tiffany
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Haddish and Snoop Dogg. Russ signed her to his new label, Diemon Records, and she joined his Journey Is Everything World Tour last spring. It was not only Ktlyn’s first tour, but also the first time she’d given a performance larger than rapping to a small room full of mostly friends and family. “I kind of went into it [with] an alternate head space and was just like, ‘Okay, this is the time,’” she says. “You know you’ve been working your whole life for this moment. It’s the same concept. It’s just more people.” Since that tour, Ktlyn has released four singles, threw out the first pitch at a Padres game, licensed her music to a State Farm commercial, received a platinum plaque, and made her Hollywood Bowl debut in front of nearly 18,000 fans. “Right now I’m trying to feed my fans music as much as I possibly can until I’ve earned the privilege of them sitting through a full album of mine,” she says. Going back to that first video, I couldn’t help but notice a comment sitting at the top: “She will never have a hit record but go off.” Maybe, maybe not. But the presence of haters is a bittersweet sign of success.
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