Kaelyn Kastle lends vocals to breakout hit single
A Bermudian singer and social-media star living in Atlanta has been featured in a song that received more than 300,000 YouTube views in just under a week.
Kaelyn Kastle said that she felt honoured to be featured in A.T.L.A.S., the newest single by the Atlanta-based rapper Unghetto.
She added that the response to the song so far has been very positive and it had not received a poor review yet.
Kastle said: “People were ecstatic to see how we took the story and made it our own while still being a beautiful collaborative piece.”
A.T.L.A.S. was released in September after months of negotiations as part of Unghetto’s extended play, Unghetto World.
The audio on YouTube boasts about 12,000 views, while the music video, which was released last Thursday, has more than 363,000 views at this time.
Kastle said that her feature on A.T.L.A.S. was something of a last-minute addition.
She explained that Unghetto contacted her one night last spring and insisted that she come to his studio later that evening to take part in the project.
Kastle added: “He said, ‘I want you to be the only feature on this record’.
“So I went to the studio, I wrote something in about 45 minutes, and we recorded the piece that night.
“Immediately he was like, ‘this song is going to be a hit’.”
Kastle said that production for the video started in the autumn and was shot in one 16-hour workday.
She said: “It was a long, long, long day, but I had a great time. The label brought in a creative director and a team, and it was a such a great team.
“They had good guidance and they kind of let us be a little bit of ourselves.
“He got to dress how he wanted, I got to dress how I wanted. I got to portray myself how I wanted, and he got to do the same thing.
“It was cool working with such an organised team.”
Kastle said that she attempted to put her own style on the song by adding “a bit of Caribbean flavour” to the melody in Unghetto’s otherwise “alternative pop/hip-hop” sound.
She said: “When [the song] first dropped, I feel like people were not expecting us to collaborate, because our styles are different, but as they listened to the record they saw how we meshed our sounds together.”
Kastle added that her presence on the track opened up the audience to her Bermudian following and her fans who appreciated her musical style.
She said: “The thing about doing collaborations is that you’re merging two sets of audiences.
“My audience might not necessarily know who Unghetto is or what he looks like and his audience might not necessarily know who I am or what I look like.
“But if they do know us already, they’re curious to see how our two styles are going to tell a story.”
Kastle added: “Being an international artist, I feel like I always jump on to things and open it up to more than just the space that it was already in.”
She said that Unghetto was a fun and creative person to work with and described him as “a very eclectic person”.
She said that she had known the 23-year-old for years and that they started their music careers at about the same time.
They both have several projects planned for the near future but she hopes to include him on one of her upcoming songs.
Kaelyn Kastle has had a busy few years and has more planned in the months to come.
She said that her previous social media group, Collab Crib, dissolved near the end of 2022, with her former coworkers continuing solo careers.
She joined forces with her publicist, Keith Dorsey, to create the Atlanta-based production studio Collab Studios.
Kastle said they now hope to guide young artists on their journey to building a career with the help of social media.
She said: “The space has become an amazing foundation for creatives to get their feet wet in the industry, but also shoot high-quality content.
“We expect to release a few more creatives, just to connect them to the brands and give them that experience, but also learn how to monetise and capitalise off of these apps based on ad revenue.”
Kastle said that the production studio would introduce several young creatives throughout the year and hoped to take on more.
She said that she has also accepted several advertising gigs.
She explained that she worked with the Bermuda Tourism Authority to promote the island and hopes to enter a marketing partnership with BLK Dating, a dating app for Black singles.
Kastle said that she was also working on an EP and hoped to release it around April.
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