Spotlight: KB Mike Lets His Fans Decide His Next Move
DIGITAL INTERACTIVITY IS A NECESSITY FOR MANY ARTISTS — especially those whose careers seem to live and breathe online. Sharing snippets, previews of music videos, and live show coverage, they accelerate that parasocial relationship that is the cornerstone of communication between artists and fans. It must be draining to essentially be your own influencer while simultaneously making a living off of your art, but for Chicago’s KB Mike, this is part of the formula that helped make his fusion of R&B and trap garner the attention of millions of prospective fans online, and even Republic Records.
“Used To,” “Toxic Love,” “Deep in Love,” and more songs from the 21-year-old have millions of streams on their respective platforms, but it wasn’t an overnight success. Mike had his music privatized from 2018 to 2020, as he was still honing his skills and not ready for the unpredictable scrutiny that could come with opening his artistic vault to the public. The fact that we’re still talking about him now should tell you enough about Mike’s exponential rise in confidence since then, which eventually crept into how the rapper carries himself in the digital age.
For a lot of rappers, they’re either on one side of the fence or the other when it comes to making strides to nourish their artist-fan relationship dynamic. It’s the bread and butter of how to create a fan: tease them with some content, then give them a hell of a lot more. As someone who was initially fearful of how their music would be perceived, Mike uses this as an opportunity to see what his fans gravitate toward with song and music video snippets through his social media accounts, following this by delivering on the most promising and praised tracks with a full version.
Dedicating himself to his audience in a trusting and genuine way, Mike allows his fans to have a hand in dictating his discography, essentially disbanding the label of a “parasocial relationship” by granting his biggest fans some artistic autonomy. It’s a potentially dangerous move but one that coincidentally works perfectly for Mike.
He doesn’t think communicating with fans should be taboo, as he’s all too familiar with the artists who are supposedly “too big” to acknowledge the audience that helps keep them afloat.
“A lot of rappers get to where they wanna be and then stop showing love to the fans,” Mike explains. “I definitely like to show love on my [Instagram] Lives. I try to reply to every comment; I try to reply to every DM. I don’t care how big I am … I don’t care about the fame. I just show love to the people that show love to me! There are a lot of rappers that get big, go live [on Instagram], have 10,000 viewers and don’t respond to any of the comments. Like, why are you even live?”
Mike asks: What’s the point if you aren’t actually connecting with the fan base? While this maintains an artist’s cadence of engagement on their social media pages, treating an Instagram Live as a glorified vlog is counterintuitive. Sure, you might drag some viewers in to give them a virtual glimpse at the lavish life that conveniently fits into your camera’s frame, but there’s a price to pay for limiting that communication, one that Mike doesn’t even want to think about.
Maybe it’s the fact that his family and friends were the ones that encouraged him to celebrate his voice and publicize his music, or maybe it’s because he’s from Chicago, where word-of-mouth and community support continue to be expeditive catalysts for an artist’s success story. Mike has spoken about how integral the city and its people are to him: his friends, his family, and those that relate to the art he creates. If you’ve been following his journey, the rapper’s music videos have locations that are immediately familiar to any Chicagoan. He hits the mainstream landmarks of the Chicago Theater on State Street in the music video to “L.O.V.E.” but also contrasts that with scenes of graveyards and alleyways in the video for “Blue Skies.” It’s a dichotomy that so many of the city’s residents can relate to, and Mike uses the city’s landscape as symbols of wealth, class, and divide in the city. Having explored the city through his videos, Mike has another spot in the city that he wants to use, even if he can’t exactly remember it.
“I forgot the name of the studio, but they had different areas that looked so different,” Mike recalls. “You could shoot so many videos in there and [the audience] would think it’s a whole new location.”
The young Chicago rapper already showed audiences how the city’s landscape has helped accentuate his stories, but the prospect of letting his creative ambitions run wild in a professional music video studio is stimulating to say the least. It’s also a deserved prospect for the artist who held onto his work for two years, got signed, and is still as hungry for the public’s reception and feedback as ever before.
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