His influences lean towards the lyrical and honest — Frank Ocean, Joji, John Mayer. He values the way these artists have all created something so personal and powerful, yet they do it discreetly, keeping so many parts of themselves mysterious. The artist persona within him hopes to do the same. Keshi is Casey’s most distilled form; honest, introspective, and a bit moody. It’s a rainy Friday afternoon in New York City, and Keshi can’t quite believe he’s here. Here in a dimly lit room inside Island Records’ offices in midtown Manhattan where light leaks in through a glass paned wall, here in New York, here at the precipice of releasing his debut album Gabriel after years of SoundCloud releases and singles and EPs. Word about an album first sprung in an October 2019 interview with Radio Heatwave, where keshi said: Understand: These vocals! The emotion! Amazing! WOW WOW WOW! The strings blend incredibly well with the vocals. (9/10) With this first larger body of work, Keshi introduces new layers of his persona, and simultaneously, new layers of himself as Casey. He’s more candid and honest than he’s ever been before. Each song is a step into the person behind the facade that is Keshi. “I've never been so forward about how I am feeling in my music before,” he says.

It is one of my biggest challenges and dreams to make an album that is cohesive through-and-through that is meant to be listened from beginning to end. That has always been the goal since Continuum and Battle Studies and Blonde and TRAPSOUL and Take Care, like they all have this top-to-bottom sort of aspect to it. Vietnamese American and Houston native keshi (real name Casey Luong) has become a streaming powerhouse in the last few years, inspiring him to leave his job as an oncology nurse to pursue music full-time. The success of his first four self-produced EPs—2018’s The Reaper, 2019’s skeletons, 2020’s bandaids and always, with their millions of streams—is proof enough. GABRIEL is his proper debut LP, and it’s a departure from some of his earliest recordings. After six EPs showcasing keshi’s flexibility in songwriting and production, GABRIEL marks his debut into the studio album world. Producer Elie Rizk played the role of executive producer for the album.

7 Reviews

I wanted skeletons, bandaids& always to be an introduction to who I am as an artist. Now that they’re done, it’s time to start working on the album. However, it was first formally announced in a celebratory post regarding the release of his sixth EP always, where he says: