Exponent Essays #3: "Dear John (Kaelin Ellis Remix)"
- Jun 3
- 3 min read
Essays by Erin Barra on her new EP "Exponent"
The internet is a horribly fantastic place - a mirror that reflects the best and worst of us in equal measure. We can connect and learn in ways my childhood self couldn't have fathomed. It's also, I believe, one of the primary reasons the fabric of society is quietly unraveling. This story lives in the first camp, though it's tangled up in music promotion and online discovery, which is its own complicated territory for me. All of that is to say: this story is terminally online, even though I, as a person, aspire not to be.
In 2013, a friend of mine - Kon Boogie, who has impeccable taste - dropped a track into a Soundcloud playlist of his I was listening to. It was a Kaelin Ellis remix of Miley Cyrus's Wrecking Ball, and it hit me… like a wrecking ball (badum-pa!). That glitchy, r&b, neo-electronic sound was still finding its footing in the world, and something about it felt like the future arriving early. I filed Kaelin's name away - the way you bookmark a sample you're not ready to use yet but know you'll come back to.
When I started working on my 3rd album and knew I wanted to bring in other producers, that seed surfaced. I reached out to him on Soundcloud and asked if he'd be interested in remixing "Dear John." He said yes. I handed it off to my manager to sort out the details - and that's when I found out Kaelin was 16 years old.
The contract had to be signed by his mother. The first time I actually spoke to him was over the phone, after he'd sent a first draft. He was doing this whole thing - deep voice, very formal - "of course, ma'am," "yes, ma'am" - it sounded like a teenager trying on the costume of a professional. It was genuinely hilarious. But the track? The track was exactly what I knew he was capable of. That was all that mattered.
The label handling the release also commissioned a music video. They brought in Patricio Pomies, a director from Argentina who was based in LA at the time. I was in NYC. We'd never met, and wouldn't for years - another thread in what was becoming a pattern: the right people finding each other through the ether without ever being in the same room. Patricio spotted a street dancer in LA and asked him to be in it. I never met that guy either.
The track dropped. The video premiered on Vice. It was a real moment for me - one of those points where something you made goes out into the world and lands. Then, years later, the label folded. Everything got
pulled - streaming, video, all of it. Like sand through your hands.
Some time after that, I had the chance to bring Kaelin to Arizona State to spend time with my students. By then, he wasn't just a promising teenager anymore - he was a thing. The kind of artist people gathered around online to watch work in real time, live-streaming sessions on Twitch like a master class in motion. He'd gone on to produce for Logic, Lupe Fiasco, Jazmine Sullivan - multi-platinum, the whole arc. I could keep going.
He came to campus and we did a live interview together, and that's when I finally heard his side of our story. Turns out, I was the first person who ever actually paid him to make music. His mother had seen that and decided her son's dream was a real possibility - that someone believed in it enough to treat it like a profession.
He told me I'd written him a letter that he still keeps on a wall somewhere. I have absolutely no memory of writing or sending that letter. But I feel genuinely good about whoever past-me was in that moment - thoughtful and grateful enough to put something in writing 🙂.
I take zero credit for what Kaelin has built. But I do feel something quiet and cool about having heard him early, about trusting what my ears were telling me before the world confirmed it. And I love that this song and this video get to have a second life now - finding people again when both of us are standing in completely different versions of ourselves.
It's a look back and a step forward. It's the strange alchemy of the internet - four minutes and twenty-five seconds of trust, luck, and timing. A story that keeps revealing new chapters the longer you let it breathe.
By Erin Barra
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