What better way to ring in the New Year than with music and dancing! Pete Davidson and Miley Cyrus will have fans of music and comedy covered on Friday December 31 with a two-hour special on NBC to celebrate the arrival of 2022. The show will feature plenty of massive musicians both new and well-known, from Brandi Carlile and Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong to Jack Harlow and 24kGoldn. One of the newer acts that’ll take the stage includes Kitty Ca$h. Here are five things to know about Kitty before the NYE special.
1. Kitty is a DJ
While Kitty, whose real name is Cachee Livingston, may not be a household name just yet, she’s been making music for over 10 years. In 2020, she signed with the label Love Renaissance, and she’s featured a few times on their 2020 Home for the Holidays compilation.
Kitty was likened to DJ Khaled in a 2014 profile for The Fader, and she’s only grown since then. She embraced the Khaled comparisons, due to the producer’s reputation as a well-known curator of talent. “he’s killing it. DJ Khaled is living his best life,” she told The Fader. At the time, she joked about how she both DJ-ed and worked in the service industry. “One day I DJed at Opening Ceremony during my lunch break,” she said, mentioning that a co-worker had seen her on Instagram. “She’s like, ‘Girl, what kind of lunch break were you on?'”
2. She released her debut single in September
Kitty revealed that she spent much of the COVID-19 pandemic gearing up to release her debut album in a September 2021 interview with W. “Some DJs went crazy not having live performances,” she explained. “So they did live streams, they did Twitch. I decided to work on an album.” Her first single “Just Fine” dropped on September 14, and it features Kiana Ledé offering vocals.
3. She’s collaborated with SZA, and many more
While her album may still be forthcoming, Kitty has collaborated with tons of stars on her mixtape series Love The Free (which has three volumes). The series boasted tons of stars from the worlds of rap and R&B, including Solange (who performed the outro on Vol. III), SZA, Doja Cat, and Willow Smith (who all sang on Vol. II).
4. She has a talk series
Besides working on her album, Kitty also kicked off a talk series on her Instagram amid the pandemic called Kitty’s World on IGTV and YouTube. The series featured her discussing a wide range of topics from her favorite female rappers to Black Lives Matter protests. She explained that she felt like it was a great way to connect with her fans in the interview with W. “It was a way for me to start to open up. I don’t talk that much, but I was talking my a– off on that. It was so much fun because people were like, wait, I didn’t know you felt that way,” she said.
5. She already has a NYE mix out that you can listen to now
While what she’ll play on New Year’s Eve isn’t clear, Kitty has perhaps offered a preview with a 2022 NYE-themed DJ mix on Apple Music, which you can listen to here! The playlist features remixes of a wide variety of hits, including standouts like “WAP” by Megan Thee Stallion and Cardi B, as well as tracks by Drake, Doja Cat, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and many more. “These are some of my favorite dance records from all around the world,” she said of the mix.