Lucky Daye

One Liner: Classic R&B guy with a great voice

Wikipedia Genre: R&B, soul
Home: New Orleans

Poster Position: 7
Weekend Two Only.  Friday.

Thoughts: My first thought on starting this was that this was a British Khalid.  Instead, this is really David Brown, a dude from New Orleans, who happens to sing like Khalid.  He competed on American Idol in 2005 and reached the top 20 before being eliminated.  Before he did his own thing, he became a go-to songwriter for a bunch of other R&B type things - Keith Sweat, Ne-Yo, Boyz II Men, Mary J. Blige, Trey Songz, etc.  Then he started putting out his own tunes, and actually went on tour with Khalid.

Two albums - 2019's Painted and 2022's Candydrip.  The "Intro" to Candydrip sounds like some Outkast spoken word stuff.  You'll never call me a big R&B guy, but this album is actually pretty solid.  His voice is great, and the tune on "God Body" or "NWA" is pretty nice.  His biggest streamer is "Over," from that album, with 57.5 million spins.

Wonderful voice.  Beautiful video.  Not an especially memorable tune.  But this newer album is definitely better than the 2020 album Painted.  Much more lush and put together, both his voice and the arrangements - the earlier disc feels more raw and less practiced.  The top track on the album is "Roll Some Mo," with 50.3 million streams.

That's on some Marvin Gaye stuff.  Hey, maybe that is where the "Daye" spelling comes from?  Good tune though.

I read a story about him saying that he is relatively shy in real life and has seemed shocked that people actually know his music.  When he was a kid he belonged to a strict church where all secular music was banned, so now he is trying to catch up on learning about historical musical sounds.  As a kid, he felt like he couldn't make conversation, because he never saw TV or heard music.  But his family left that church, and after a while he started using his voice to make money.  This tidbit is awesome: "In the ninth grade, he started using his voice for pocket money, singing to girls at school in exchange for the cost of his cafeteria lunch. "I'd sing their name, and my homie would charge 50 cents," he says. "I'd give him a nickel or just buy both of our fries. I didn't think my voice was nothing special; I just knew I could eat from it, so I started using it as a tool." "

After Katrina, he moved to Tyler, Texas with his family.  After a falling out with his family over Christianity, he moved by himself to Atlanta and started making music under his real name.  He then went out to L.A. to try to "make it," and when he was close to rock bottom he started using the Lucky Daye moniker - and the extra "e" is because of Marvin Gaye!

I'm not a big R&B guy, but this dude is definitely very talented.  Probably not going to go see him, but I could see it being an impressive show.