Lauren Sanderson

Fort Wayne, a YouTube channel and a TEDx talk

Sanderson was born on 13 January 1996 in Fort Wayne, Indiana, an only child of divorced parents. Her first audience came from the internet rather than a stage: by 2014, just out of school, her videos were drawing over a million views a day and the Indiana Social Media Summit named her its Most Influential Up & Comer.

In 2015 she gave a TEDx talk called "For God's Sake, Just Love Them", about coming out as a lesbian and about getting a parent to accept it. Speaking engagements at local schools followed. The music grew in parallel and on cheaper equipment — she found instrumentals online, rapped over them and burnt the results to cassettes so she could play them in her car. Mac Miller, Logic and Tyler, the Creator were the early reference points, which is audible in the phrasing she still uses when a song tips from singing into rapping.

Her first EP, Center of Expression, came out in June 2016. The follow-up, Spaces, arrived in July 2017, topped the iTunes R&B chart and reached No. 24 on Billboard's Heatseekers chart. That was enough to bring a major label in and move her to Los Angeles.

The Epic year, and leaving it

Sanderson announced her signing to Epic Records in March 2018 with a re-release of "Written in the Stars" featuring PnB Rock. The major-label EP Dont Panic! followed that August and reached No. 2 on the iTunes R&B chart. The title was also a tattoo on her neck, which gives a fair indication of how the period felt from the inside.

She played LA Pride, LA Sparks Pride Night and BET Experience dates in that stretch, and supported Chase Atlantic's Phases tour in 2019. By June 2019 the Epic chapter was over: she self-released the EP Hasta La Vista and announced her independence, then signed a one-album deal with Young Forever, run by the executive Chris Anokute. The single "Hotel Room" premiered on Apple Music's Beats 1 in September 2019.

Six years of releasing it herself

Midwest Kids Can Make It Big, her debut album, landed in January 2020, with a deluxe edition carrying seven unreleased tracks that August. "Frustrated" from that record remains one of her most-played live songs. Death of a Fantasy followed in July 2022, then two EPs with titles that make their own argument about who the records are for: Songs I'll Eat You Out To in February 2023 and Fine Ill Get In My Feelings in October 2024.

She also turned up on other people's records — most visibly on G Flip's "Gay 4 Me" in 2022, which still opened her sets three years later. The cumulative figure she and her label now cite is over 100 million streams, built from bedroom recordings and self-booked touring rather than radio.

None of it was a clean ascent, and the catalogue is openly uneven in genre: R&B-leaning pop, straight rap, confessional ballads. What changed in 2026 was that she stopped treating the spread as a problem to solve.

LAUREN, and the Fred Durst collision

LAUREN, her third album, came out on 29 May 2026 through Pack Records — ten songs, self-titled, and considerably louder than anything before it. The reference points she names are late-nineties and early-noughties: Missy Elliott, Korn, P!nk, Limp Bizkit, with Charli xcx and Ashnikko on the modern side. Her own summary of the record is "blow your speakers out, makeout with that girl in the bathroom, drive too fast down the highway". Asked what was hardest, she said it was cohesion: "The biggest creative challenge was genre blending and making all the genres I love so much make sense together." Elsewhere she described the album as a time capsule, running from that first TED talk to a third album at 30.

The track that moved fastest was "COME SAY SUM", which borrows the gear-change of Limp Bizkit's "Break Stuff" and name-checks Woodstock '99. Fred Durst found it on Instagram and messaged her. A version with him on it was released on 7 May 2026, with a video in which the pair work a diner shift. Within a fortnight it reached No. 13 on Billboard's Hot Hard Rock Songs chart and had accumulated close to 3.5 million streams and video views. Sanderson's line on the partnership: "Ever since the first conversation Fred and I had, I knew this friendship was created by the universe."

On Friday 12 June 2026 she joined Limp Bizkit onstage at Download Festival to sing "Hot Dog". Durst introduced her as "a new artist", which drew objections online given her ten years of releases. Sanderson defused it on Instagram herself: "if someone hasn't discovered you yet, which is the majority of the world, for the majority of people, you are new."

Where she stands in October 2026

The run she is in the middle of is the COME SAY SUM Tour, announced on 1 June 2026. It opened at Cafe du Nord in San Francisco on 20 September and has worked east through Vancouver, Portland, Boise, Denver, Dallas, New York, Washington and Boston. Her Austin City Limits debut came on 4 October on the BMI Stage at Zilker Park, in a 5.30–6.30pm slot on the stage the festival uses for acts it expects to outgrow it. On 11 and 12 October she supported Limp Bizkit at The Truth in Nashville — the direct consequence of the Durst record.

Eighteen dates are on sale. Six close out North America: Toronto on 20 October, Ann Arbor on the 21st, a hometown-adjacent Indianapolis show at the HI-FI Annex on the 23rd, Kansas City on the 25th, Phoenix on the 28th and the Teragram Ballroom in Los Angeles on 29 October. The remaining twelve form her UK and European leg, from Slay in Glasgow on 31 January 2027 through Manchester, Birmingham and The Dome in London on 5 February, then Antwerp, Cologne, Hamburg, Berlin, Vienna, Munich and Lyon, finishing at O'Sullivan's Backstage by the Mill in Paris on 22 February. Several of those dates carry meet-and-greet packages.

The rooms are small by design — 300 to 700 capacity for most of them — which is the honest reading of her position: a chart entry in a genre she has only just entered, and a club-level live business she has built herself.

The show as it stands

Thirteen setlists from this tour have been logged publicly so far, and they are consistent in shape. The Dallas show at the Cambridge Room at House of Blues on 5 October ran from 9.00pm to 10.15pm and opened with "SPELL IT OUT", "Smoking section" and "POSSESSIVE". At ACL the day before, with a festival clock to respect, she led with "POSSESSIVE", "queen bee" and "SHUT UP & KISS ME". The official tour set list she publishes on Apple Music runs to 14 songs and 34 minutes of recorded material, which the live versions stretch considerably.

Support rotates. XKYLAR has opened the largest share of dates, including San Francisco, Boise, Washington and Indianapolis; Zoe Ko takes New York and Los Angeles.