You won’t reveal your real name, so what does Lubalin mean?Ī couple of years ago, I was using a different artist’s name. Since then, it’s been just this exponential curve, where I’m like, “It’s gonna slow down at some point.” But right now, it’s wild. When I made the first one, I was like, “Yeah, if I got 100,000 views, that would be really cool.” And then it hit a million and then 9 million, but then it was kind of like, “Can I do it again?” And then somehow I did it again. What do you make of the way your TikToks blew up so quickly? The way he tells it, that was always the point.
He’s spent the past few years saving enough money to pursue music full time and see where this sudden fame takes him. Lubalin signed a record deal last March, so he’s now especially happy that he doesn’t have to discern between labels courting him to jump on the TikTok bandwagon and those genuinely interested in his music. “People tell me, ‘I came for the internet drama, but this is beautiful this song means a lot to me.'” “At first, I kind of thought, ‘Maybe is kind of gimmicky’ or ‘Maybe people won’t want to cross over ,’ but the response, even before ‘Long Txts,’ was a really stark contrast,” he says. In addition to his TikToks, Lubalin makes his own music, some of which is more serious than funny (his Lubalin EP) and some of which straddles the line (is his latest single, “Long Txts,” ironic, romantic, or both?). “I saw the conversation somewhere and I was just like, ‘How funny would it be to take something so stupid and then spend days crafting a beautiful pop record around it?'” he tells Rolling Stone on a Zoom call from his Montreal home.
He credits his success to agonizing over the perfect concept.
The singer and comedian won’t reveal his real name but says he’s 30 and grew up in Ottawa before moving east. Lubalin’s latest effort, “Turning Random Internet Drama Into Songs, Part 4,” premiered on The Tonight Show last month with Fallon and Alison Brie joining him. Whether crooning like the Weeknd while telling off a friend for stealing her secrets to the perfect broccoli casserole or sounding both furious and sweet while confusing an Airbnb host over a canceled booking, Lubalin shifts from serious into zany so effortlessly that he won over Jimmy Fallon. Since late December, his melodramatic musical readings of “internet drama” - misunderstandings over rental bookings, stolen recipes, a person wanting hassle-free butter - have made him a sensation on the platform. Then he discovered TikTok, tapped into his sense of humor, and reinvented himself. And he recorded R&B-inflected pop-rap music alone, but he felt boxed in by his own high standards. The Canadian artist had played in an “alternative hip-hop group with a folk-rock/P-funk twist.” He made beats and remixes.