Breland's Already Putting Some Horsepower Behind His Viral Success

Breland's Already Putting Some Horsepower Behind His Viral Success




He might've began beyond the scenes, although Breland's country-rap/R&B prowess is currently front and center. The chameleonic songwriter and powerhouse vocal talent is the artist in back of the infectious hybrid viral hit "My Truck," a point of pride he makes clear early in the video as soon as, grinning a prankster's smile, he pushes a cowboy lip-synching his song out of the frame. This cheeky introduction is compounded by the fact that Breland didn't even set out to create the twang-gilded hip-hop tune his own debut. "I didn't go into the song thinking, this is going to be my breakout single," he told MTV News. Yet it happened; right now it's got 15 million views. As we well know by now, a looped guitar pluck over big trap drums can have that sort of power.


Right now, the 24-year-old artist is using that stylistic harmony as a blueprint for further success. Case in point: His debut self-titled EP, which dropped on May 22, spans "My Truck" (as well as its remix with Sam Hunt) and spiritually similar follow-up singles "Horseride" and "Hot Sauce," not to say a crowdsourced collab and two late-night musings. He's chasing a thread — or a runaway horse. "I want it to feel like the passion child of Atlanta and Nashville," Breland mentioned of his first project.


That might be a fitting summation of Breland's fashion, if not Breland himself. He grew up singing in New Jersey, in the family member church where he learned to fit his voice into a larger vocal patchwork. That training is on full display during the EP — his falsetto on "Beautiful Lies" climbs to the rafters before disappearing in a plume of skylight — although it also manifests in real time on Instagram. Breland has fun on his page, showing his 82,000 followers how to emulate Drake, turn Dixie Chicks's country-pop into R&B, and give praise to his idol Stevie Wonder. They're all flexes, nevertheless he flashes them with a bright smile that belies a studious work ethic.


His now-trademark style-hopping also explains his past experience working as a songwriter for artists like YK Osiris and Elhae, along with his performer name, "The Pen Point Guard," referring to his ability to pass winning melodies off to the correct artists. "My Truck" might have been passed along, also, if Breland hadn't been feeling himself in the booth.


"Trying to get somebody on the song — just as a songwriter, to pitch it to someone — didn't really seem all that feasible," he mentioned. "And I was really rocking with the song, and I fancied the way that I was delivering the vocals." So he finished it and released it as himself. Then he kept going, putting more creative concepts to tape in Nashville.


You can hear that momentum continuing on the playful "Hot Sauce," which Breland called "an anthem for a woman who is confident within herself and isn't going to take any nonsense from anybody." He recorded it in Nashville over some chords from producer Charlie Handsome and immediately came up with the intro melody and also the lyrics "pretty however she ain't afraid to pop off / honey with a bit of hot sauce."


"Vocally, I was able to do a lot of different things with it, which is why I'm hitting some R&B type vocals," he mentioned. "I'm hitting some sort of Young Thug inspired, scrappy type vocals on the main hook. And then, able to hit some of the more established nation flow."


Breland is immensely self-aware. That doesn't habitually come of course, especially for someone who's done the work, as it's clear he has. Nevertheless Breland's got ideas. He understands he's a product of the world wide web and also because the drive of "wanting to be a fantastic artist." His savvy shows through as soon as he discusses plans for put a heavy foot on the gas to help his music travel past TikTok (where it exploded with 90,000 videos) and the web in general.


"Part of what makes 'My Truck' so viral is the quirkiness of it, and thus I want to keep some of that in the music," he mentioned, however I also desire to begin trending more in a direction where, even outdoor of just TikTok and the world wide web, that people in their forties and fifties can listen to some of those songs, and be like, 'Yo, this is actually just a fantastic song. It's not like, a good TikTok song. It's just a wonderful song.'"


In practice, that insinuates swinging the microphone back around to his audience. For one of the songs that made his EP, a gentle, country-fried love song called "In the Woulds," he opened up a telephone call for vocal submissions from aspiring songwriters as a way to give people "something to hope for." Breland ended up choosing two winners, Rvshvd and Haley Mae Campbell, whose contributions made it to the final song, as sung by Chase Rice and Lauren Alaina, respectively. It's an eas act that ties Breland to his roots.


"You're habitually asking the question, 'Would this artist mention this? Could this artist sing this?' And also you construct your melodies and concepts and lyrics around this idea of what you expect another artist might aspire to be doing," he mentioned.


Right now, Breland is writing for Breland. He's prepared to reach the widest audience possible: "I could habitually make a bunch of songs that I like, although at the end of the day, if people don't like them, then I'm being selfish with my gift."









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