WANDERLUST ICE & INK — ART & CULTURE: “PHÉNOMÈNE”, AFTER 10 MILLION STREAMS, KAYSON’S NEW BET AT 19 YEARS OLD

Only a few years ago, launching a music career almost inevitably meant walking through the doors of a studio, meeting producers and eventually convincing a record label. For Kayson, the story began somewhere else: in a bedroom in Chartres. After three years spent developing his project, 2026 is set to open a new chapter. On August 13, Kayson will release “PHÉNOMÈNE”, a single presented as more summery in tone and as an evolution in his artistic journey.

The track arrives at a particular moment: one when the numbers are beginning to give the project significant visibility, while the artist himself remains at the beginning of his professional career. At 19, Kayson now has an established online community, several million streams and, above all, a working method developed over the years from his first home studio in Chartres. “PHÉNOMÈNE” will now have to turn that digital momentum into another step forward artistically
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Because behind the millions of streams and tens of thousands of followers, the same process that existed on day one remains: writing a song, building the instrumental, recording it, mixing it, then imagining the visuals that will bring it to life. The studio is still at home. The audience, however, now reaches far beyond the walls of that bedroom.

Kayson’s “PHÉNOMÈNE” will be available on streaming platforms on August 13, 2026.

When Kayson began making music in February 2023, he was only 15. There was no professional training, no studio provided by a record label and no team yet in place to build his project. He started with what he had and gradually taught himself what he needed to know. Songwriting, composition, instrumental production, recording and mixing: the young artist taught himself the different stages required to create his own music. That independence quickly extended beyond music itself, as he also began taking charge of his visual content and music videos.

Three years later, the bedroom that became his home studio remains at the heart of a project that has grown considerably. The first tracks released in 2023 gave Kayson the opportunity to put his music in front of an audience. The response he received on social media encouraged him to continue and gradually develop his artistic identity. That identity has taken shape at the intersection of two worlds: contemporary pop and R&B influences, built around melodic productions and lyrics that primarily explore love, relationships and the emotions that come with them.
But it was in 2024 that his journey began to take on another dimension. In June, one of his tracks reached a significantly larger audience and gradually surpassed 2.5 million streams. Its growth was notably accompanied by numerous videos shared across social media, platforms that have become essential spaces for discovering new artists.

In 2025, Kayson was able to consolidate that initial exposure. New releases continued, alongside the regular creation of online content, while his musical and visual identity became increasingly defined. It was a progression achieved without abandoning the hands-on approach of his early days.

That independence has become one of the defining characteristics of Kayson’s project. The artist does not simply perform the songs released under his name. He is involved throughout the entire creative process, from songwriting to mixing, before extending that artistic direction into the images and videos accompanying his releases. This way of working allows him to maintain consistency between what he writes, what listeners hear and what audiences discover across social media.

“I make music from my bedroom, with my own hands and my own words. I love building every track from beginning to end and creating a world that genuinely feels like me. Music is where I feel the most free,” he explains.
Behind those words is also a reality that has become increasingly familiar within the contemporary music industry. Accessible production tools, streaming platforms and social media now allow young artists to produce, release and distribute their music without necessarily waiting to enter traditional industry channels.

That freedom, however, also means taking on several roles at once. In Kayson’s case, the singer is also a songwriter, composer, producer, sound engineer and content creator.

This control over his visual identity has directly accompanied the growth of his audience. In less than three years, Kayson now reports more than 80,000 followers on TikTok, 35,000 on Instagram and approximately 65,000 monthly listeners on Spotify. Across all platforms, his music has now accumulated more than 10 million streams, according to figures provided by his team.

These are significant numbers for a relatively recent project, but they also illustrate how the boundaries between music and content creation have gradually become increasingly blurred. For a generation of artists who grew up with TikTok, Instagram and streaming platforms, releasing a song no longer necessarily represents the final stage of the creative process. A track can continue to exist through excerpts, videos, short-form content and visuals that help shape its identity and allow it to reach new listeners.

In Kayson’s case, that continuity feels even more natural because he creates much of this content himself. On the eve of the release of “PHÉNOMÈNE”, the challenge is therefore no longer simply to introduce a new song, but to continue building a project that began in a bedroom in Chartres and is now starting to find an audience far beyond it.