Kyle Gordon is everywhere.
Since Gordon released “Mr. Jambo” on July 17, the musical comedian has been inescapable across social media, with the song’s official music video racking up over 1.8 million views on YouTube so far. Gordon and his team traveled to South Africa to film “Mr. Jambo,” a comical send-up of Paul Simon’s “Graceland.” The song is his second big hit, coming out three years after the massively viral success of Gordon’s “Planet of the Bass” in 2023.
A few weeks after the release of “Mr. Jambo,” Gordon and I met up in a Brooklyn café to chat about his life and career. We couldn’t recall whether we had met before; Gordon was two years ahead of me at John Jay High School in Cross River, New York, where I was friends with his younger brother, Sam.
After the success of “Mr. Jambo,” I knew I had to reach out — and I soon discovered that I’d been enjoying Gordon’s comedic music for much longer than the last few years. Gordon’s overnight success with “Planet of the Bass” was actually the culmination of 15 years of comedy experimentation, obsessive execution, and a creative network that has nourished his work both before and after viral fame.
The early years
As it turns out, Gordon’s first foray into musical comedy came in 2008 — and I’d already listened to it. As a high school student, he and a group of friends formed a humorous rap group named Endoplasmic Rediculum, which published two songs via Myspace, including the Pac-Man-themed “Da Packwilder” — which I distinctly remember downloading to my parents’ desktop computer as a 13-year-old. Before Endoplasmic Rediculum disbanded, the group scored a writeup in our school newspaper: Gordon’s first brush with fame.
“I was always a class clown personality, but I wasn’t doing formal productions or anything,” said Gordon, who said he sang in a cappella groups in high school and college but never identified as a theatre kid.
Gordon didn’t grow up in a family of performers — his father is a lawyer, and his mother formerly worked in marketing — but he clearly came from an environment that encouraged creative expression. His brother, Sam, also works as a comedy writer and video editor, and frequently collaborates with Kyle as both an editor for his social clips and a sounding board for writing ideas.
“Both of my parents are, in their own right, funny, but I don’t think either of them would put that as a core personality trait,” Sam said in an interview with GamesBeat. “You crave validation; you come from a home that values intelligence and being active and having a thing to say, and a great and easy way to do that is to figure out how to be funny.”
After graduating from high school in 2011, Gordon went to Denison University, where he majored in East Asian Studies and disc jockeyed for the college’s radio station. On campus, he developed a reputation as a jokester among a creative friend group that included Ori Segev, a co-founder of Loose Films, the production company behind “Planet of the Bass,” “Mr. Jambo,” and other Kyle Gordon creations.
While in college, Gordon and Segev collaborated on over a dozen comedy videos, with their most successful one, “Denison University: Shmammered,” garnering thousands of views and propelling Gordon to “Denison fame.” Gordon said it was the success of this video — a parody of the then-popular “ImShmacked” YouTube channel — that made him realize he could turn comedy into a full-fledged career.
In addition to sharpening his parody chops through videos like “Denison Shmammered,” Gordon also experimented in college with early versions of the characters he would later use for more polished songs and music videos — such as a prototype of his emo musician character, who can clearly be identified in a video of Gordon, Segev, and other college friends playing one of the comedian’s early songs in August 2012.
“Kyle has so much energy when he wants to do something. Nothing will get in his way, so if he has an idea, it’s going to happen. When he called me for ‘Jambo,’ he was like, ‘you want to go to Africa?’ And I’m like, ‘100% — I don’t even need to know what the plan is. I’m already in,’” Segev said in an interview with GamesBeat. “That was similar in college, too. If he wanted to do something, it was going to happen.”
Going pro
Gordon graduated from college in 2014, then promptly moved to New York City to make it as a comedian and performer. He co-hosted comedy showcases with Jacob Kaplan, a fellow comedian and one of Gordon’s frequent writing collaborators, playing for dark rooms in Brooklyn while paying the bills with a combination of jobs that included line cook, bartender, and customer service worker. Although he developed a loyal following and performed consistently, it wasn’t until COVID-19 lockdown in 2021 that Gordon decided to take the next step and go into comedy full-time.
“When I first met him, he was a customer service rep for hedge funds,” said Canning Robb, a fellow comedian and actor who went on a blind date with Gordon in February 2020 and married him in 2024. “He was like, ‘I can’t do it anymore.’ It was soul-crushing. Everyone was working from home, so he just quit and was like, ‘I’m going to try and write videos’ — and literally the first one he did ended up blowing up.”
Although Gordon built his initial following with humorous skits — like a viral short about Jewish food — he always yearned to return to his roots as a purveyor of musical comedy. In 2021, he signed with the booking agency Paladin, which sent him on a tour of small-town comedy venues, and he took advantage of the live-show setting to roll out his music in front of a live audience. After dropping by one of Gordon’s shows at NYC’s City Winery venue, a representative of the record label BMG offered him a record deal in 2023.
“It’s me and an acoustic guitar in the Chuckle Hut, or whatever — and audiences were kind of confused, because they wanted to see all these characters that I was doing before,” Gordon said. “So, that’s when I got the idea. I was like, ‘I should put out an album. I should start getting this music out.”
Gordon’s contract with BMG included a $15,000 marketing budget, which he decided to spend entirely on the music video for the album’s lead single “Planet of the Bass.” But before he could travel to Loose Films’ Columbus studio to film the video, a promotional clip Gordon filmed with his brother inside New York City’s Oculus Transportation Hub blew up across the web, propelling Gordon to viral fame.
“We put the first clip out at the end of July, and it just goes absolutely crazy. We were going to shoot the music video in the middle of August and then put it out at the beginning of September, but because people were going so crazy, we pushed the release date up two weeks,” Gordon said. “So, we shot the music video, and my friends at Loose Films essentially stayed up for 48 hours straight, edited the entire thing, and we put it out.”
What makes Gordon’s work particularly hilarious is his mix of genuine musical skill and deep knowledge of the genres he parodies, from Europop to more niche genres like UK rap. Even to listeners who don’t understand all of the direct references in his songs, his music often strikes a nerve among anyone who has paid attention to popular music in recent decades — and it’s good enough to make fans tune in for repeat listens.
Gordon has a hand in a variety of revenue streams, including ticket and album sales and merchandise, but said the “vast majority” of his income currently comes from branded content work with advertisers like DirecTV, Walmart, and Irish Spring, with a solid baseline of YouTube ad revenue as well.
“Last tour, I did turn a profit, but it’s not a substantial portion of my income,” he said. “My goal last tour, and this tour as well, is ‘don’t lose money.’”
After the viral moment
So far, “Planet of the Bass” has accrued over 8.2 million views on YouTube, and tens of millions more across TikTok, X, and other social platforms. The song was a bona fide viral sensation, spawning its own Fortnite emote and leading to a guest appearance on “The Simpsons” for Gordon. After the release of “Planet of the Bass,” Gordon was no longer a niche internet micro-celebrity; he crossed over into the mainstream zeitgeist. All of this helped soothe the sting when the administrators of the Oculus reached out to levy Gordon a “substantial” fine for filming an unlicensed video in the transportation hub.
“The Port Authority of New York was like, ‘you used our building without permission, and we can get this taken down if we’d like,” Gordon joked. “Essentially, they shook us down, and we had to pay them.”
Gordon realized the full extent of his internet fame last year, when he joined the cast of the NBC series “The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins.” When Gordon arrived on set, he was greeted by series star Daniel Radcliffe — who introduced himself as a fan.
“I went back for the second episode, and then everyone on set was like, ‘oh, Daniel showed us your other song,’” Gordon said. “And I was like, ‘holy shit!’”
Radcliffe appears on Gordon’s upcoming album, “Kyle Gordon Is Everywhere,” having recorded a series of spoken-word interludes with Gordon at New York City’s storied Power Station recording studio. The album, which is slated for an October 2 release, features “Mr. Jambo” as its lead single. Next month, Gordon is launching a nationwide tour to help support the release.
Amid Gordon’s rise from the class clown who released a Pac-Man rap song on MySpace to a musician recording an album with Daniel Radcliffe, his friends and loved ones said he hasn’t changed a bit.
“I am shocked at how much he has not,” said Kaplan, Gordon’s friend and writing partner. “I see people who achieve such a lower level of success and change. There’s certainly a little gig that maybe he would have done in the past, and now it just doesn’t make as much — but he hasn’t gone Hollywood or anything like that.”
Above his creative ambition and relentless drive, Gordon’s loved ones described him as loyal. After achieving viral fame in 2023, he still hangs out with the same friends — some of whom date back to the Endoplasmic Rediculum days — and he made sure not to leave Loose Films behind following the success of “Planet of the Bass,” consistently employing the company as his production team before and after.
“He has this touring agent, and when he got signed by CAA and they gave him this whole package of people, he made it a necessity that he keep on his original touring agent and that he doesn’t switch over, because this is the guy who was booking him,” Segev said.
Moving forward, Gordon has his eye on a career in TV. “The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins” has been renewed for a second season, leaving the door open for the return of Gordon’s character, Dr. Freak. Gordon told GamesBeat that he’s “always going out for stuff” — although he has no plans to leave behind his roots as a musical comedian.
“Everything I’ve done has been my project, with me leading it, me writing it, me being in charge,” Gordon said. “It’s so nice going on set and just being told what to do.”