CALABASAS COLLABORATES WITH 5-BILLION STREAMING TRINIDAD CARDONA ON “GENTLE”

L.A.-BASED CALABASAS ALT-POP DUO FUSES HIP-HOP, ROCK, R&B, AND ELECTRONIC MUSIC ON CHART HITS SINCE 2018

TRINIDAD’S “HAYYA HAYYA (BETTER TOGETHER)” (FROM FIFA WORLD CUP QATAR 2022™ SOUNDTRACK) AND “LOVE ME BACK” (FAYAHH BEAT) AMASS 10s OF MILLIONS OF WORLDWIDE STREAMS & VIEWS

Calabasas, the Los Angeles-based duo of Franskiiz and Watrcup whose intensely personal songwriting first attracted notice in 2018, teams up with 5 billion-streaming bilingual, multicultural, next gen pop singer Trinidad Cardona for the release of “Gentle,” the brand new single available at all platforms via Def Jam Recordings.

“Gentle represents everything we are going through right now just not trying to force anything. Letting things come to us naturally. The session with Trinidad was exactly that, just free flowing and felt right from the very beginning,” said Calabasas.

Calabasas is known to bury personal experiences inside of bold and boisterous alternative pop, punctuated by hip-hop rhymes, electronic waves, R&B grooves, and cinematic flourishes. For the duo, “Gentle” is the latest chapter in a career together that goes back to 2018. Their breakout single of July 2020, “Believe In Me” hit #1 on Spotify’s Fresh Finds editorial playlist one week after release, amassing over 3 million streams.

The next Calabasas single, “Beaujolais” (October 2020) carried on the momentum, placing at #6 on Apple Music Hot Tracks, and landing on the Spotify editorial playlists Signed XOXO at #24 with over 3.5 million streams, and Alternative Hip-Hop at #3. The track peaked at #29 on the SoundCloud Top 50 US chart after surging over 2 million streams in just under a month. Their track “Gory Love” has almost 10 million streams on Spotify alone.

Rap was still a central element for Calabasas in the lustful, melodic “First Time Thing” that has amassed close to 13 million streams on Spotify (July 2021). But the duo’s wholehearted embrace of pop began in earnest the following month on “Voices” with Bay Area singer Marc E. Bassy (who they later supported on tour), now with nearly 1 million views. The track propelled them to a new high point, “The Mend,” an acoustic slow burner, “another amazing production of catchy guitar melodies, superb vocals, and beautiful songwriting that gets personal with what is going with their lives,” as Sheesh Media raved.

Trinidad Cardona became a household name in 2022, his first year as a Def Jam artist, when he became the first emerging bilingual, multicultural, next gen artist to launch the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022™ Official Soundtrack with “Hayya Hayya (Better Together)” featuring Davido and Aisha. First issued in April, the rousing reggae-meets-EDM anthem currently boasts over 103 million views. English and Spanish versions of the song were included on the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022™ Official Soundtrack album, released November 2022.

Following the viral global phenomenon of “Hayya Hayya (Better Together)”, Trinidad dropped the incandescent “Love Me Back,” a soaring torch song that melded hypnotic Afrobeats percussion and shimmering synths. “Love Me Back” (Fayahh Beat) with Robinson exploded virally in the spring of 2022, with over 3 billion views on TikTok and over 400,000 creates, over 4 million plays on Soundcloud, over 10 million streams on Spotify, and over 8 million lyric video views on YouTube. At the same time, the official “Love Me Back” video amassed over 10 million YouTube views.

“Love Me Back,” plus “Love Me Back” (Fayahh Beat), along with a special Spanishversion and acoustic version, were coupled with two previously unreleased sped-up and slowed-down versions of the song (from notable TikTok producers xxtristanxo and Esteves) – for a mini-EP package released July 2022.

The odyssey of 23 year-old Phoenix, Arizona-bred Trinidad Cardona began with the futuristic R&B banger “Jennifer” in 2017. The viral hit scored over 12 million streams and over 53 million YouTube views. It led to his 2018 single “Dinero,” a sexy ode to toxic romances with its Miami-flavored rumba horns and driving beat. The track revived phoenix-like in 2021, as a #1 TikTok Viral chart sensation with over 65 million streams, that was the prelude to the 2022 FIFA phenomenon “Hayya Hayya (Better Together).”

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