Hasta La Ideas

While L. Young has four albums out and a host of TV music credits, the Kentucky-based R&B singer has been toiling in relative obscurity for years. But 10 months ago he began playing around with an iPhone app (we’ve not been able to find out which) that records multiple takes of him singing different parts of the same song, then strings them all together into a single split-screen video for upload to social media. Though he’s the only member of this “band,” he attributed the subsequent videos—primarily covers of R&B classics—to “L. Young & Da Youngstaz” in a nod to his on-screen clones.

The videos were modest hits, with the least-viewed barely cracking 15,000 views and one just squeaking past 100,000. But last week he quietly posted this one, covering “Uptown Funk,” Mark Ronson’s collaboration with Bruno Mars:

At press time the YouTube version only had 166,000 hits. But uploading the same video to his Facebook account racked up 1.8 million in less than a week.

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