yung kai

Burnaby, Shanghai, and an older brother's drum kit

yung kai is Max Zhang, born in Burnaby, British Columbia on 5 July 2002 and raised largely in Shanghai before returning to Canada. The instruments arrived through an older brother — drums first, then piano and guitar — and production came in 2018, when Zhang began making beats at home as a hobby rather than as groundwork for a singing career. Vocals were the later addition, and the route to an audience was TikTok: from 2022 he was posting covers, which led to work with other online-native artists including bbno$. His own early release "listen to this when you're down <3" dates from the same year and still turns up in his sets.

The influences he names are specific rather than decorative. He has cited Laufey, keshi, Higher Brothers and, above all, wave to earth, whose records he says he took apart to work out how they carry feeling; he has also pointed to Juice WRLD, XXXTentacion and Young Thug, none of whom sound anything like him. He was still a student when the breakthrough landed — a profile published on 6 June 2025 found him at university in Toronto, describing the gap between the two halves of his life: "One year ago, I was just another kid doing school. Now people run past me and shout, 'I love your song!' It's wild."

The song he nearly left on the hard drive

"blue" was released on 2 August 2024, written and produced by Zhang on his own. Its origin is unusually traceable: he was watching the 2023 Chinese drama When I Fly Towards You over Discord with someone he cared about, and built the song from that. The chorus came from trying to work out what the colour sounded like — waves, open water. He has said he was not planning to put it out at all: "I wasn't even planning to release it... I left it alone for two or three months."

What followed was a slow, platform-driven climb rather than a radio launch. The track reached number one on Indonesia's chart, number two in India and Malaysia and number three in Singapore, peaked at 39 on the Billboard Global 200 and 26 on the US Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart. It was certified platinum in Canada and gold in the United States and New Zealand, and had passed a billion streams by 4 June 2025; Korean press covering his Seoul date in October 2026 put the figure above two billion. A video directed by Kenji K Chong followed on 12 December 2024, ending with the narrator alone at the water. On 18 April 2025 came a remix with Minnie of (G)I-dle, a collaboration he treated as fan service to his own teenage self: "She's my bias. I used to watch I-dle religiously back in high school."

A debut album with a billion streams behind it

The album arrived on 26 September 2025. stay with the ocean, i'll find you came out through Flood Division and BMG, and Zhang framed it around a single idea: "This album is centred around the idea of yearning for someone or something, and the idea of 'Even if it doesn't work, I'll just imagine that it does.'" It gathers the singles that bridged the gap — "wildflower", "do you think you could love me?" — alongside "how do you dance?", "i hope my cat loves me" and "beach song", a duet with asumuh that uses shoreline imagery to measure distance from a past relationship. A collaboration with 88rising and Sunkis, "where the sunlight glows", also landed in 2025.

Reception split along a predictable line. A student review published on 8 October 2025 rated it full marks and singled out "how do you dance?" as both heartbreaking and danceable. Aggregated listener scoring has been cooler: 70 out of 100 from 83 user ratings on Album of the Year, where the most-read write-up calls it a solid, calming record whose tracks start to resemble one another before the end. Both readings describe the same album — soft-edged, close-mic'd, consistent to a fault — and the question it leaves open is whether the next one widens the palette.

Nothing has answered that question at length yet. Through 2026 he has released in short form: a Chinese-language single, "蓝", and "i think of you the most", a two-track single issued on 14 August 2026 and already fixed in the live set.

Where things stand in October 2026

The institutional recognition came in January 2026, when he was nominated for Breakthrough Artist or Group of the Year at the Juno Awards against a field including Saya Gray, Jade LeMac and Noeline Hofmann. The ceremony was held at TD Coliseum in Hamilton, Ontario on 29 March 2026; Cameron Whitcomb took the category.

The touring picture has changed faster than the discography. Songkick logs nine shows in 2025 against 22 in 2026 — a year spent working outward from club rooms: Bottom Lounge in Chicago on 11 April, Antone's in Austin on 13 April, Under the K Bridge Park in Brooklyn on 30 May on a bill with Dabin, then a summer stretch on dates alongside Myles Smith, including Hard Rock Live Sacramento on 28 July and McMenamins Edgefield Amphitheater in Troutdale, Oregon on 31 July, before Vancouver on 4 August.

The next move is the largest he has attempted in Asia. Announced in late July 2026 and promoted by Live Nation, stay with the ocean, i'll find you: Asia 2026 runs nine cities over three weeks: Star@ Culture Center in Shanghai on 30 October, Sphere Hall in Bangkok on 1 November, Capitol Theatre in Singapore on 3 November, Zepp Kuala Lumpur on 6 November, New Frontier Theater in Manila on 9 November, Zepp New Taipei on 11 November, TIDES in Hong Kong on 13 November, Seoul on 16 November — his first headline show in Korea, at Musinsa Garage, an 8pm start — and Ebisu The Garden Hall in Tokyo on 19 November. Singapore tickets went to general sale on 6 August 2026 after two presale windows. Opening in Shanghai, the city he grew up in, is the sort of symmetry a promoter does not have to invent.

Short sets, borrowed songs, flowers into the crowd

The show has stayed small-scale on purpose. Across the current tour the average set runs to about 11 songs, opening on "how do you dance?" and closing out through "wildflower", "blue" and "i hope my cat loves me"; encores are inconsistent, logged on roughly one night in three. The documented set from Troutdale on 31 July 2026 ran ten songs and threaded "i think of you the most" in late, between "do you think you could love me?" and "wildflower". Covers do real work: at the Courtyard Theatre in London on 16 October 2025 he played a 15-song set that found room for wave to earth's "seasons", keshi's "drunk" and Daniel Caesar's "Best Part" — an unusually literal reading of his own influences — and at a sold-out show at The Echo in Los Angeles on 1 October 2025 he brought asumuh out for their duet, played a Laufey cover and named keshi from the stage.

The recurring note in attendee accounts is proximity and manner rather than spectacle: close quarters, a soft vocal that holds up live, long unhurried stretches of talking to the room, and flowers thrown out during "flower". Attendees at the Dallas and Sacramento shows described him as personable and unrushed; the one consistent complaint is duration, with more than one reviewer of the 2025 club dates writing that the set ended just as the energy was building. The Asia venues are theatres and mid-sized halls rather than arenas, so the format is unlikely to change much on this run.