Loyalty Records, an sovereign record label, management and publishing company founded by home-town pals Stephen Orso and Peter Ashley, has been seeing great opulence in 2021 on the heels of earning their first Billboard #1 release in the second half of 2020.
The two founded the company in early 2019, signing an unostentatious 18-year-old producer from a small borough in Michigan by the name of Keegan Bach (or KBeaZy) to a publishing deal. At the time, the young producer only had a meagre solvency to his name, but the duo saw his irrefutable potential as both a ingenious and a marque .
Fast forward to 2020, having relocated to Los Angeles and with a few more releases under his belt, KBeaZy began working closely with rising rappers/singers 24kGoldn and Iann Dior almost daily, forming a valued bond that prompt in some of the best music he’d been a part of.
As a result, one of the demos that spawned from that time period ended up being the chart-topping single “Mood” released by Columbia Records in July of 2020. The song actually came together quite naturally while the creative crew was just hanging out playing video games one day, when frequent 24kGoldn collaborator, Omer Fedi, picked up a guitar and played around with a riff that caught everyone in the room’s ear. From that moment on, the rest was history.
Bolstered by a Gen Z audience on Tik Tok, the record started to perform well on all major DSP’s almost immediately, slowly gaining traction week over week which prompted Columbia to push the record even harder until it made its initial debut on the famed Billboard Hot 100 Charts. As radio stations and new audiences began to tune in, the song quickly experienced a meteoric rise to #1 where it remained for a whopping six straight weeks, while also earning number one status at Top 40 Radio for eight straight weeks, as well as Rhythmic Radio for three.
As a result, “Mood” became the most played song at Top 40 radio in 2020, while also setting records as the first song ever to concomitantly chart at number one on the Hot 100, Hot Alternative, Hot Rock and Alternative, and Hot Rap songs charts. Mood is still currently on the Billboard Hot 100 charts sitting at #7 with almost a billion streams on Spotify alone, while also having been performed live at the 48th Annual American Music Awards, as well as on prominent TV shows “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” and the “Ellen DeGeneres Show”. The song also received a remix by global superstars Justin Bieber and J Balvin, and was even used in a McDonalds Superbowl Ad, solidifying the song’s enormous significance in pop culture.
Yet never being one to settle, KBeaZy has kept his foot on the gas in 2021 where he has landed singles with “Mood” mate Iann Dior (“Holding On”), in addition to a handful of upcoming releases with 24kGoldn, The Kid Laroi and new collaborator Lil Nas X, to name a few.
For Stephen and Peter, the two couldn’t be more happy to see their vision for KBeaZy fulfilled, as the producer was named one of XXL’s “Top Producers” of 2020. Often times it takes a number of years for a new act to find their footing in the music industry, but for KBeaZy it barely took a year before he found himself collaborating with some of music’s biggest stars.
In addition to KBeaZy, the promising label/publisher has also inked a publishing deal with instrumentalist Kyle Stemberger who has been behind massive songs such as “Be Honest” by Jorja Smith and “How I Move” by Flipp Dinero featuring Lil Baby, while also developing an artist by the name of YVS Village in partnership with KBeaZy.
Always keeping an eye toward the future, Loyalty plans to continue to round out its roster with an emphasis on multi-dimensional artists, songwriters, and producers that they believe can achieve the same level of success as their flagship act KBeaZy. With their current momentum, Loyalty Records is without a doubt one of the most promising independent companies to look out for in 2021.
