K’alley, born Tyler Darnell Hightower, is one of the most unique, upcoming artists in the rap industry. Contrary to many other rising rappers from this current generation, he graduated from a university with a 4.0 GPA (Summa Cum Laude) and a degree in Business Marketing. Yes, there are rappers with degrees but most don’t disclose this information in fear that it will hurt their brand and cause them to be rejected by Hip Hop’s audience–where increasingly songs about killing and drug abuse are the norm. Instead of hiding this information, K’alley encourages his young audience to go to school or find a skill. It would surprise some to know that K’alley didn’t come from a middle-class family with 2 parents and a nice house. Quite the contrary. Gangs, narcotics, and struggling were a regular part of K’alley’s upbringing. In a recent interview he stated, “where I’m from, being intelligent was looked at as corny and would get you targeted. But me…I was from the Hood and really known in my Hood…YET, I was at the top of my class, academically. To me it was natural, but people always told me that I was doing something they never really seen. I was different”
Throughout the past couple of years, K’alley has been working very diligently at becoming Rap’s biggest independent artist, so it’s very on brand that he had a song blow up this month (November 2022). Today, we’re sharing the tactics K’alley used to grow his song. Before we get there, it’s noteworthy to mention the experiences that pushed him towards developing his plan in the first place. For over 3-4 years of creating music, K’alley never received a full 1,000 plays on Spotify for a single release. Today, it seems like hot artist blow up out of nowhere and go on to be the biggest stars imaginable, but that was not K’alley’s reality. In another interview, K’alley shed some light on his come up, stating, “See what people don’t tell you is making it in music requires 1 of 3 things. You either have to be connected to somebody who can open doors for you in the music industry, be rich enough to be able to purchase connections and invest 100s of 1000s into your music, or be extremely likeable and talented on social media. The first two options weren’t accessible to me so I was left with option 3. That’s why I put so much work into my social media. What eventually happens is you’ll get the love of the people, and that will manifest into connections because it’s very costly to get fans to like some somebody new. It’s way cheaper for a label or company to invest in someone who’s already liked.”
Before K’alley dropped his most recent song he built an audience of over 100,000 people on Tik Tok. He built his audience by being relatable, funny, and talented at his craft. “The most important aspect of building a following is being relatable. You can’t connect with someone who you can’t relate to”, K’alley stated in his interview. After the audience was built, it was as simple as previewing different songs to see which one people liked the most. One of the song previews got over 400,000 views and it went on to become K’alley’s next release: On God this a Freestyle. The plan was simple. Make a relatable Tik Tok video that promotes the song every single day. Some days got skipped, some videos did poor, but the key was to keep posting. Another tactic was utilizing Spotify playlisting. What K’alley did was find artist who sounded similar to him, figure out the playlist they were on, and reach out to the creators to see if he would be able to be featured. Currently, the song has been viral over 10 times, is in over 700 playlists, and holds the rank as K’alley’s most streamed song–getting over 100,000 streams in 2 weeks. It was a very big accomplishment for K’alley, but he says it’s just the beginning. Outside of rap, we can also anticipate great things from this young man. He plans on opening his own marketing firm to aid influencers, artists, and small businesses by the start of 2023. To stay updated with K’alley’s music follow him @papi_kalley on Instagram and Tik Tok
https://www.tiktok.com/@papi_kalley
https://www.instagram.com/papi_kalley/
