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“I used to go back for holidays and stuff like that, and now I feel like it’s just a ‘picture thing,’” Brown explained of the change in family dynamics due to fame.
By
Melinda Lorge
Melinda Lorge
Melinda Lorge is a Nashville-based freelance writer who specializes in covering country music. Along with Music Mayhem, her work has appeared in publications, including Rare Country, Rolling Stone Country, Nashville Lifestyles Magazine, Wide Open Country and more. After joining Rare Country in early 2016, Lorge was presented with the opportunity to lead coverage on late-night television programs, including “The Voice” and “American Idol,” which helped her to sharpen her writing skills even more. Lorge earned her degree at Middle Tennessee State University, following the completion of five internships within the country music industry. She has an undeniable love for music and entertainment. When she isn’t living and breathing country music, she can be found enjoying time outdoors with family and friends.
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Posted on May 26, 2025
Kane Brown, Photo Courtesy of Interview with Jamie Laing/Great Company Podcast
Kane Brown seems to have it all — money, fame, fortune, and a beautiful family. But, getting to that point has been anything but glamorous. Before he was breaking records, releasing albums, and winning awards, Brown had been handed a series of bad music deals and lived through a rough and sometimes unimaginable childhood.
During an interview with Jamie Laing on the Great Company Podcast, the 31-year-old discussed his personal life from his troubled past to experiencing the dark side of the music business. He also opened up about his love life with his wife Katelyn Brown and being a father to his three kids, Kingsley Rose, Kodi Jane, and Krewe Allen Brown.
“I didn’t have any superheroes,” Brown said, reflecting on his youth, sharing that he was raised in a broken household that included several different step-fathers — many of which beat him as a kid — and a biological father, who has been incarcerated since 1996.
“I had one. My Nana is a superhero to me, in my eyes,” he said. “I’d say my pop was definitely when I was a kid. And then once I grew up, stuff kind of changed.”
Despite the instability and abuse, the country music star has come out the other side and can say he wouldn’t be who he is today if it weren’t for navigating through the hard knocks of life. These days, he knows how to weed out the bad and lean on the good, even when it comes to family and relationships. One unfortunate side of his fame is that he no longer feels a connection to home during the holidays, as many of the people around him now want the perks of knowing a celebrity figure or are simply looking for a handout.
“I used to go back for holidays and stuff like that, and now I feel like it’s just a “picture thing.” Everybody’s like, let’s take a picture. I’m like, I just want to chill. I just want to come back and see my family, but they don’t allow me to do that,” Brown said. “My Nana and my aunt and a couple of other people in my family, they come up, but they also see it, so they’re like, ‘We don’t blame you for not coming back.’ So I’m like, ‘Okay. At least y’all see that.’”
Brown shared that he didn’t get to meet his siblings until he was 16 years old and through them, without naming any names, he had met other people — one of which helped him get into the high school that he wanted. Little did he know that several people, who he has only known for a short time, would end up trying to take advantage of him by asking for favors, and then turning against him if he said ‘no.’
“People are always asking for things. People always want favors. They always want tickets, whatever it is,” Brown said, adding that the person who helped him get into Red Bank High School for six months “had the audacity [to ask for] a car because they helped me. So I bought ’em a car.”
But, a car was just one item of what seemed like a domino effect of people trying to profit off of the “Miles on It” singer.
“Another person was like, ‘I need help getting a house.’ I’ve known [this person] for maybe seven years. So I helped them get a house, and then somebody else needed rent paid, so I helped them pay rent, and then they needed rent paid, so I helped them pay rent,” Brown said. “And then another person hit me up for rent. So I paid their rent, and then they wanted to tell me I haven’t done anything for them, or I don’t care for my family and stuff like that. And I’m like, ‘I’ve known you for this amount of time. You are still a stranger to me. It’s like I’ve known people that work for me longer than I’ve known you.”
Brown added that people have gone as far as taking to social media in hopes of ruining his reputation for not giving in to their unreasonable requests.
“They’ll go to social media about it, and then they’ll start posting on social media about it that I don’t like my family,” Brown said, “…they technically make themselves haters. They go to social media and start posting it, and then I can’t even text you. I mean, I can’t even text you because you’re just going to post it on social media and make me look like the bad guy… It’s like I want you to be my family. I’m trying to learn, but y’all are making it where I don’t want to know. I wish I never met y’all… So then it just turns into, there’s this cute little block button that the social media, and the iPhone, have created. So, you just hit that button.”
Thankfully, Brown can lean on his family as a decent and trustworthy support system. But, that wasn’t always the case, as he had to learn to open up to Katelyn in the beginning, as he had a hard shell with his guard up.
“I mean, she was beautiful to me. It takes me time to let people in,” he confirmed, adding that she knew he was the one right away. “She messaged her friend and said, ‘I’m marrying this guy.’ The first time she flew in, and we went to lunch, I thought she was beautiful, and I thought she was a sweetheart, but I thought it was almost like it was too good to be true.”
“But she had no idea who I was,” he added. “She was an artist. She was doing her own thing. Then it wasn’t like I was on the radio or had a record deal or anything like that, and she got drug to my show. She didn’t want to come to my show. The guy that I signed with was like, ‘No, you’re coming to the show.’ And so they literally drove six hours. He just put her in the car, and they drove six hours and came to see me because I was assigned to him. And turns out she’s literally the sweetest human being on earth.”
The man that Brown was signed with was also a part of the bad side of the industry, as Brown had a 50/50 deal, which meant he only received 50 percent of his earnings. But meeting Katelyn through him has been the silver lining of it all.
“We met in Florida. Yeah… She was and is an artist. She was doing a solo thing. I was supposed to be in her music video. And that was the time that I was supposed to have my first show,” Brown recalled of how he met his wife. “I was supposed to be in her music video, and then we never met. We ended up meeting a year later. And that’s another good thing about the shi**y deal that I signed with that dude, is because he introduced us. So without me signing that shi**y deal, I wouldn’t have never met my wife. So yeah, we ended up meeting at a Florida show, and then she was driving home. I messaged her, and then she came to Nashville and just never left.”
Brown and Katelyn tied the knot in Franklin, Tennessee, on Oct. 12, 2018, in front of 200 guests. The couple welcomed their first child, Kingsley Rose, on October 29, 2019. Their second daughter, Kodi Jane, arrived on December 30, 2021, while their son, Krewe Allen, was born on June 18, 2024.
“I want ’em to be sweet. I want ’em to care for other people. And that’s also the dangerous thing too, is I want ’em to watch out for snakes, which is the hard fine line, but at the end of the day, if you let a snake bite you once, it’s okay, as long as it’s not a rattlesnake or something, but just don’t let it happen twice,” Brown said, adding. “Kids are the best. Kingsley, when I had her, it was a different thing. I have videos of me and her just sitting in a room for hours together, just chilling. I wanted the girl-boy scenario. And then I had Kodi… and I was like, ‘This is awesome.’ But I just had my third, he’s about to be eight months old. And when I tell you, the feeling of having a boy is just completely different because with your girl, it’s like, ‘Oh, I want to protect you, fight for my life.’ With my boy, I’m like, ‘Damn, boy, your back’s big as hell. I can’t wait to get in the gym,’ or ‘You’re the next football player’ or something like that. I’m excited for him. I want to be rough with him, but also I want him to have the best life you can.”
One could say Brown is getting somewhat of a second chance at family by raising one of his own. He certainly is counting his blessings, and even considers family as his biggest success.
“I would say that the big success is because I never really had that family thing. I’m still learning as a dad. For me, at first, being a dad was just being there for my kids. I never had that. And now it’s like Kate came in, she had a big family. She has two brothers, her mom and dad. They had a normal Christmas and a full family. I used to have Christmas, and what I remember is I would have Christmas, and then I would go to my room and play with what I had in my room by myself.”
Coming from his difficult, poor, and nomadic upbringing, Brown knows full well that his kids are blessed with what they have. And, he wants to raise them to not only know the difference between right and wrong, but also to know that they aren’t guaranteed the lifestyle they were raised in.
“I had a plastic pool, like a puddle. But yeah, just the swimming and all that. I have to tell my kids all the time, I’m like, ‘Man, y’all are so damn blessed,’” Brown said. “My favorite story. And it’s kind of sad, but it’s their innocence. They have no idea because Kate and I have songs together, so they see us on TV, they see us singing, and we were trying to tell Kingsley because for her birthday, she’s my oldest. We were taking her to Disney World. We were like, ‘You’re not getting many presents this year?’ This is your present. Not everybody gets to go to Disney World.’”
“She’s like, ‘Why?’ And we’re like, ‘Because baby, not everybody can afford it. They have to pay bills and yada, yada, yada.’ I was trying to explain to her how I grew up. And she hit us back with, ‘Why don’t they just sing?’ And we didn’t have anything else that we didn’t know what to say. We didn’t want to be like that, it’s not a thing. But yeah, just innocence.”
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Melinda Lorge is a Nashville-based freelance writer who specializes in covering country music. Along with Music Mayhem, her work has appeared in publications, including Rare Country, Rolling Stone Country, Nashville Lifestyles Magazine, Wide Open Country and more. After joining Rare Country in early 2016, Lorge was presented with the opportunity to lead coverage on late-night television programs, including “The Voice” and “American Idol,” which helped her to sharpen her writing skills even more. Lorge earned her degree at Middle Tennessee State University, following the completion of five internships within the country music industry. She has an undeniable love for music and entertainment. When she isn’t living and breathing country music, she can be found enjoying time outdoors with family and friends.
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