12-year-old Keedron Bryant went viral in May with his acapella performance of “I Just Wanna Live,” a song penned by his mother about the fight for racial equality and the plight of being a young Black man in America.
Now he’s set to make his major-label debut.
On Thursday (June 18), Warner Records announced the Sicily, Italy native’s signing, revealing he will be releasing the single through the label on Juneteenth.
In an interview with the Associated Press, Bryant expressed his excitement over working with his own family.
“It’s very exciting because this is what God’s called me to do,” he said. “It’s just been an exciting experience to work with my mom.”
View this post on Instagramjust singing what’s on my heart…hope this blesses someone??❤️ @sdhtoronto thanks for this dope shirt!!?? #ijustwantolive #blacklivesmatter #ijustwannalive #equality #black #blackexcellence #racism #justice @mstinalawson
Producer Dem Jointz was commissioned for the beat Warner execs heard the version he created upon seeing the original video.
“It just moved me to create music around his vocal,” Dem Jointz told the AP. “It was so much energy coming from the video alone, it was just easy for me to produce around that.”
The news follows a whirlwind of praise from the likes of Will Smith, Lupita Nyong’o, Janet Jackson, LeBron James and even Barack Obama since Bryant posted the clip on May 26. He was also invited to perform the song on Ellen, and was paired with a 9-year-old bassist from Slovakia to provide instrumentation.
Warner plans to donate 100 percent of the song’s profits to the NAACP, as well as $1 per every stream on Amazon Music for the first 24 hours with a cap of $50,000.
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Bryant, who began singing in church at the age of 5, also previously appeared in season 4 of the NBC variety show, Little Big Shots. Revisit the powerful singer’s Ellen performance below.