It all started November 14, 2009 when Joseph Somers-Morales, best known by his grade school nickname SoMo, uploaded a cover — or as he refers to it, a "rendition" — of Chris Brown's "Crawl."
More than 92 million views and 486,000 subscribers later, the 26-year-old from Austin, Texas has released a self-titled debut and is now singing the lyrics to his own songs, including lead single "Ride."
"'Ride' is one of the first songs I wrote, so just because it's kind of my baby, it felt right, but the audience kind of chose that as the first single, it really just stuck out, stood out, in the eyes of everyone," SoMo told MTV News. "'Ride' comes off very sensual and sexual at first, you know, to a lot of people, but for me, that song, I wrote, I was really in love and basically I was saying I'm going to ride or die for your love and I'm a sensual person so it kind of went into that and it just describes the transcendence of the emotional part of love going into the physical part."
For someone who hasn't heard of SoMo, the R&B crooner describes his sound as "very soulful," pulling inspiration from several genres.
"A lot of [today's] music has a big influence on me, like Miguel and Drake and PARTYNEXTDOOR, you know, that's what I've been listening to a lot lately," he said. "But I also listen to a lot of, like, country and rock."