It was not a straightforward cover. Murty, the name he goes by, was commenting on Mutt’s remix, highlighting how Brown had stepped into Thomas’ original song as a guest singer, reshaping it with his own vocal style.
Murty sang both parts, switching tones and phrasing to show how Brown’s presence altered the feel of the track.
The clip went viral. Brown commented. Thomas reacted. American R&B singer Vedo chimed in, including producers, one from Brown’s camp. Singer Aloe Blacc began “following” Murty.
“For someone living in a small apartment in Malaysia, that’s mind-blowing. I come from a generation where you don’t think this is possible,” he said.
Murty, who grew up in Balakong, has spent years building an online following through covers, original releases and comedy-infused music content.
But the “Mutt” reel, recorded without studio polish or marketing strategy, caught the attention of the algorithm.
“There were like 1,000 comments, and 900 of them were just ‘Chris Brown, Chris Brown, Chris Brown’. I honestly thought he wouldn’t see it. I thought he’d be too busy,” Murty, 33, said.
He did. Brown commented: “YOU CAN SING MY BROTHER”, with the remark drawing more than 65,000 likes at the time of writing.
What followed was a flood of messages.
“People started messaging: ‘I work for this label’, ‘I work for this company’, ‘Can we talk?’ Nothing is set in stone yet, but I’m taking the meetings,” Murty said.
Murty said he was once kicked out of a primary school musical because he couldn’t sing. “The song I got was ‘My Grandfather’s Clock’ and I butchered it,” he said.
His classmates laughed, he recalled, and the embarrassment became fuel. “That night, I subconsciously decided I was going to practise and get good at it,” he said.
From around the age of eight, Murty found a daily training ground at home. His family sang devotional songs during evening prayers for about an hour each day, and he used that time to work on his voice.
Murty only began making music seriously in 2020, after a motorcycle accident cost him his leg, leaving him hospitalised for months.
“I came out in December 2019. Then the pandemic hit. I was stuck at home. I couldn’t go out,” he said. “That’s when I started learning production, learning software and recording.”
Before music, Murty worked in logistics with his brother, delivering bottled water from a distributor behind their Balakong home. He later deejayed across Kuala Lumpur, Penang and Ipoh, until the accident forced him to stop.
Music, however, was always present in his life. Raised on Tamil oldies, Murty grew up listening to singers KJ Yesudas and SP Balasubrahmanyam, harmonising instinctively without formal training.
“I didn’t know what a key was,” he said. “I just knew that if someone sang a certain way, I could add something on top. Only later did I realise that was harmonising.”
At 14, his older brother introduced him to R&B artists Jagged Edge, 112, Aaliyah and Brandy. Murty said he never separated English and Tamil music into different worlds.
“I’d hear Brandy and think this sounds like something SP Bala would sing,” he said. That musical ear, and his ability to switch convincingly between vocal styles, is what viewers latched onto in the “Mutt” reel.
Murty is candid about his audience base. “About 98% of my listenership comes from social media,” he said.
Radio play, he said, remains limited. “They’ll play your song once or twice, maybe for a couple of weeks, then that’s it. After a while they just stop replying.”
An independent artist, Murty’s songs enjoyed about 20,000 streams on Spotify before his recent breakout.
His single “Good Guy”, released in February, circulated on TikTok for months, but even that did not prepare him for the scale of the “Mutt” moment.
For now, Murty is continuing to perform, create content and blend music with stand-up comedy, a combination he said the local scene still struggles to accept.
“People here think you must separate everything,” he said. “But look at Jamie Foxx. Look at musical comedians overseas. Why can’t it exist together?”
This Saturday, he will test that idea with a ticketed musical comedy show, “Gelakan Jiwa”, at Tong Shin Terrace in Bukit Bintang.