FILIPINO-American singer-songwriter Yeek is bringing his music back to his roots. 

Sebastian Carandang, or Yeek as he has been called since he was a kid, may only have visited the Philippines for a total of four times in his life, but the Filipino influence has always been so strong that his desire to establish a career in the country has never left his mind. 

For Yeek, bringing his music to the Philippines is his way of connecting with Filipinos, especially his fellow Filipino-Americans, who feel similarly lost in a foreign land. 

“I think a lot of Fil-Ams have a sense of their identity [that] feels kind of lost, and they want to be able to go back to the homeland, go back to [the] Philippines and speak more Tagalog and be more with family,” he told republicasia. 

“I feel more of a sense of home when I do that,” he added. 

Yeek’s career 

He may be new in the Philippines, but he has established quite a career abroad. 

For one, he has produced music and worked for foreign acts such as Dominic Fike, Bakar, Raveena, Jesse Rutherford, Umi, Mac Miller, and ASAP Rocky. 

He has also performed in various venues and festivals in the US and even sold out a headlining show in El Rey in Los Angeles twice. 

In 2017, he released an album called Sebastian that received its fair share of recognition. Its lead single, Only in the West, has over 50 million streams.

In 2021, he released another album and two more songs called Freaky and Long Time No See.

This coming May, he is set to perform at  the Head in the Clouds festival in New York and will be releasing an album in the following months. 

A glance at his Spotify also shows a fairly big listening base. Currently, he has 857,121 monthly listeners, with almost all of his songs raking in tens of millions of streams. 

Yeek has dabbled in acting as well. He landed a role in the Tribeca Film Festival award-winning movie Good Girl Jane.

Yeek and music 

The 32-year-old Jersey-born singer has been surrounded by music ever since he can remember. 

“My parents always played music. In church, they’re always singing. My dad always has an instrument,” he said.

One day, he decided to pick up a drum and started playing it. He also started singing with his parents in church and then moved on to play in the band with his friends in school. 

“From there, I started making beats,” he said.

He started making music as Yeek in 2013. 

As he grew older, he developed his own sound, which he described as a “mix of everything.” 

But he is mostly inclined to making R&B music just like his influences Pharrel and Drake. 

In pursuit of dreams 

Before headlining sold out shows and getting a sizable following, Yeek was a kid who worked a 9 to 5 job not just to survive, but eventually to fund his music dreams.

“I used to bike like 20 miles a day to get to work. I moved to LA. I drove all the way from Florida to LA. I drove there like wala nang pera and just tatlong kaibigan in one bedroom house just trying to make music work,” he recalled. 

It was not easy, but they worked hard until they were able to penetrate the music scene. 

“We were broke for a while and eventually just kept working and working and working and eventually sold out shows in New York, sold out LA, sold out a lot of good venues,” he said. 

Sadly, most of his former bandmates stopped doing music, so he was left with no choice but to thread on his own. 

Eventually, his brother, cousins and some friends decided to form a band, and this turned out to be a good move. They sold out festivals and allowed Yeek to introduce his music to the world. 

Songwriting

As a songwriter, Yeek’s process of writing changes from time to time. He said he usually starts with a beat or just sings the words. At other times, he dreams of an idea and then works on it when he wakes up. 

Having grown up in an era where slow jams were a thing, his lyrics and writing inspiration inevitably come from a lot of R&B. 

Very Filipino 

Like most Filipino kids who grew up in the US, Yeek remains very much connected to his Filipino roots and heritage because of his family. 

In fact, he is very well-versed in OPM because of them. 

“Your parents will make you sing the Magic Sing karaoke, they will make you sing all the OPM hits. It’s nice to see that it’s still evolving,” he said. 

Having done his research, he saw how Filipino music thrives in digital streaming platforms.

This gave him a strong conviction that the path he intends to pursue is the right one. 

He is bent on expanding his music career to the Philippines.