Today we’d like to introduce you to Kaleb Beek.
Hi Kaleb, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
Poster Child was initially born out of a desire for there to be more Hip-Hop and R&B representation at University of Miami’s Frost School of Music. It started out as vocalist and pianist Natacha Chacin, guitarist Ethan Bowden, and myself (vocalist and rapper Kaleb Beek) coming together for a “DIY” class that encouraged forming bands and developing them over the course of the semester. The three of us ended up performing an original of ours (a very early draft of our January 2026 single “Miss Misfortune”) at a forum for our major, asking afterwards if there were any drummers and bassists interested in joining our scrappy trio. Luckily, we would end up completing our band immediately after. Bassist Isabella Heck, and drummer Mateo Gaviria were the missing pieces that instantly turned our project into a fully fledged band. Not just through the addition of important instruments, but also that of different musical backgrounds, creative visions, and influences. The five of us (later six with the addition of our mascot, Elmo) would continue to develop and hone our specific brand of Hip-Hop and R&B, creating setlist after setlist of originals, remixes and covers for various gigs, until we would get our biggest opportunity yet, just over a year after forming. In October of 2025, we managed to win University of Miami’s Battle of the Bands, earning us the opening spot for that year’s homecoming concert, headlined by multi-platinum rapper A Boogie with da Hoodie. A month of preparation, interviews, promotion, celebrations and performances followed until the show, where we performed for a sold out Watsco Center. Coincidentally, the performance also marked exactly one year since our first ever performance back in November of 2024. Now, eight months after the electric experience of performing in front of thousands, we continue to let it fuel us in our creative endeavors, until we play a show like that again, but as the headlining artist.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
There hasn’t been many big struggles in our band, mostly because we get along very well and we use our differences to create unique and new music. Maybe one obstacle we have run into is dealing with college scheduling and finding times where we can all practice and rehearse together. A lot of the members of the band write and release solo music, and play with other bands, so aligning schedules can be difficult sometimes.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
Poster Child is known for making Hip-Hop and R&B music inspired by artists like J. Cole, Frank Ocean, Tyler, The Creator and Kendrick Lamar. Our biggest accomplishment that we are most proud of thus far, is becoming the student openers for the University of Miami homecoming concert for A Boogie wit da Hoodie. This concert was such a special opportunity for the band, we learned so much with working with a sound team, sound checks and playing in a big stadium. One thing of note that sets us apart from other bands is the fact that we play all of our music live with no backing tracks. A lot of modern Hip-Hop live performance includes a lot of instrumental tracks and extra sounds in the background, however our band likes to play every single song purely live, which we believe sets us apart from most other artists in our genre.
Are there any books, apps, podcasts or blogs that help you do your best?
Every person in our band has different preferences, but I think one source of inspiration we all share is live recordings on YouTube. Listening to how other artists arranged their music for life performances definitely gives us some great inspiration when writing music. Also in our band group chat, we love constantly sending each other songs that we found on Spotify Amazon Music etc. and sharing it with the other band members to get inspiration as well.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://officialposterchild.my.canva.site/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/officialposterchild
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@officialposterchild
