The round of sudoku is significant of Keshi himself. He has forever been one to take estimated actions, gauging the upsides and downsides of every single choice — regardless of whether the obstacles he needs to defeat don’t necessarily prompt clear arrangements. On his most recent collection, Gabriel, which was delivered on March 25, the promising craftsman focuses on his own process in affection and life for motivation. As he mines his own feelings, he represents a test to himself, yet in addition the audience: how can one sit with the inward activities of mankind, regardless of whether its intricacies take steps to consume you?
Keshi’s Music life
Approving others’ despair has acquired Keshi over 5.3 million audience members on Spotify and 1.3 million Instagram supporters. With his steadfast, quickly developing fanbase, it’s hard to accept he was an oncology nurture in the no so distant past, conflicted between the security of the all day grind or the delicate creative dreams he didn’t know would become reality.
Born Casey Luong, Keshi experienced childhood in suburbia of Houston, Texas. In the wake of getting his granddad’s guitar at 13 (regardless of his mom’s many fights), he showed himself how to play, and went gaga for the complexities of songwriting, blending, and delivering. Before the 27-year-old was working with YSL for his visit looks and selling out Los Angeles’ Fonda Theater and Webster Hall in New York, he grappled with double characters.Following his graduation from the University of Texas at Austin, he fulfilled many of the roles Casey was expected to achieve. His Vietnamese immigrant parents disapproved of music, so Casey got a job as an oncology nurse.
Yet, there was still the unshakeable voice in his head, refusing to let his passion wane. After Casey’s shifts at the hospital would end, he’d immediately morph into Keshi. He posted music on SoundCloud under the moniker—born from a nickname coined by his fiancé’s parents. Compartmentalizing his identities made it easier to bare his soul on wax. Joining SoundCloud was the spark that would later explode into a conflagration of music-industry moves.
Soon, he gained fans after submitting his first song, “If You’re Not the One for Me Who Is,” to a small subreddit’s monthly music competition—and winning the contest outright. With his consistent SoundCloud presence, he grew his fanbase from just 500 Instagram followers to millions of dedicated members, catching the eye of his current label, Island Records in the process. He flew out to New York in 2019 to perform for executives in the hope of getting signed. After winning them over and securing a record deal, he quit his job.
Throughout Gabriel, Keshi delves deep into his evolution as an artist and examines his new world as a musician on the cusp of worldwide domination. He looks at his journey and contemplates the moments where he had to give up his “privacy, personal time, mental health.” “Angel”—a favorite track of his—sees the musician completely vulnerable, with his soft, floating whispers begging for solace. “It captures the ethos of the record and a lot of the romanticism I like to write about,” Keshi says.
Keshi made it a point to include the people who ground him most on Gabriel. His father happily participated on the track “Père,” in which he openly recalls his journey immigrating to the U.S. It was jarring for Keshi to not only experience his parents’ change of heart regarding his career, but also create a newfound understanding between them. “I don’t really have that kind of relationship with my dad—where we are open with our feelings or our emotions,” Keshi explains. “So to hear him be [so honest about] his mental and emotional state, when he was younger, moving from Vietnam to the States…it was really sobering for me.”
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