Who is Son Kuma?

Son Kuma, a Hip Hop and R&B composer and recording artist from Inglewood, California, has established his catalog based on a blend of emotional storytelling and vulnerability.

Photo Credits: Los Angeles Poetry Department

By Jamari Shelton

He began making music in 2017, not out of long term planning, but from chance. After being suspended from Stanford University, Son Kuma found himself with an unexpected hiatus—one that shifted the trajectory of his life. What could’ve been a setback instead pushed him to experiment with creating music, later producing his mixtape Indica that gained over 15 million streams.

But the balance wasn't immediate or natural, he says. He describes it as something that happened over time, influenced by the type of artist he aspired to be from the start. The break from Stanford forced him into a period of isolation,  “When I got suspended from Stanford, I was like, shit…I got this year where I can’t really do anything,”

Rather than distancing himself from the moment, Son Kuma leaned into it and found his foundation as an artist. He began making music on his own, training himself production and recording, and produced his debut song with the cheapest equipment he could find. The result was his debut mixtape, Indica, a project he spilled his soul into talking about his suspension and the chain reaction that led up to it.

“I had to be willing to tell everyone I got suspended from Stanford,” he says. “Which is like… hard to say.”

What was supposed to be a defining achievement quickly turned into something far more complicated that forced him to confront a different reality.

“It was like, oh, whoa. He got into Stanford,” he said. “But then me getting suspended… it’s like, whoa, that’s not it, bro.”

As Indica started to make waves, Son Kuma had a new identity that extended beyond the classroom. When he returned to Stanford, he wasn’t just a student reintegrating back into campus life; he was now an artist whose music had touched people's ears and resonated with them.

Using music less as performance and as a hobby, Son Kuma has used it as a way to figure himself out in real time. His music was no longer something he processed alone, it was being shared all over now for everyone. Everyday campus events and parties that Son Kuma shared, turned into him being the center of it. His growing presence eventually led to one of his earliest large-scale moments.

Opening for multi-platinum band Glass Animals.

The opportunity came from a student run competition, Battle of the Bands, where Son Kuma competed for a chance to perform at the university’s annual music festival. The opportunity placed him in front of a crowd far larger than anything he’d ever experienced. But the moment wasn’t seamless. It became a lesson in discipline and presence.

“My first show did terrible only because I got too drunk and high beforehand,” Son Kuma says, “So my second show, I locked in.”

When looking back on those performances it marked a new beginning in how he approached his craft. It became something way more than just making music, but how that music lived in front of people, “I want to have, like, a cinematic experience…I don’t want it to just be me up there doing some songs.”

As quickly as things began to take off, sustaining that momentum proved to be complex. With his mixtape gaining significant traction, it didn’t align where he himself felt he was as an artist, yet.

“When your first project does really well, really well, and you don’t feel like you’re that good of an artist yet… it kind of sucks,” he said. “You’re getting better as an artist, but your new music is never going to do as well as your first music because your first music blew up.”

As his music evolved, so did his priorities. Returning to Stanford and re-immersing himself in academia created distance between him and the version of himself that had just begun to find himself. The unknown eventually led him to step away from music altogether. He’d told his girlfriend he was done with “Son Kuma”.

But two weeks later? He was pulled right back.

Old fans had reached out to him. Telling him how they still played songs he made years ago and hadn’t let go. Those moments made him less of his own critic on how he viewed his music. Less of sometime tied to immediate success, but something people could play on forever

Son Kuma considers himself to be a starving artist. The goal was no longer about just making music, but to keep making it.

He graduated with a degree in Mathematical Physics and while many of his peers from Stanford picked more traditional careers, he picked a path that required more investment and sacrifice, “I got homies that are flying all over the place. They go to every country. They’ll hit every country in a year. I’ve chosen to become a hermit, essentially. I work and then I go home and I make music.”

That reality became the ground for his upcoming project, Keep That Energy. Based on labor, purpose, and the way energy is spent emotionally and physically. His background in physics shapes how he understands not only the world, but his place in it.

As Keep That Energy continues to take shape. Son Kuma’s intentions are clear: “I’m starting to see that there's a version of me that I want to portray, and I’m figuring out what that is.”

He mentioned coming across an AI- generated artist being recommended alongside his own. An account with multiple albums and no clear presence behind it all released under a year. In an industry where music is rapidly shifting artificial and being treated like content, he’s intentional about keeping his work human made and intentional to last forever.

Son Kuma says, “It’s more than mp3 files.”

Want to hear more from Son Kuma? Find him on all platforms @sonkuma!