For Olusola, fatherhood and family have reshaped the true meaning of success
Photo by Jason Tanner
Kevin Olusola has spent years performing in front of thousands of people, earning Grammy Awards, and building a career as part of one of the world’s most successful vocal groups. But when his two children look back on their childhood someday, he hopes those accomplishments aren’t what they remember most.
“I want my kids to see their dad not as a superstar, but as a father who absolutely loved them and cared about them,” Olusola said. “That this stuff didn’t matter as much as they did.”
At 37, the Owensboro native and three-time Grammy winner is still recording, touring, and pursuing new creative projects with and beyond Pentatonix. But he’s increasingly measuring success by the kind of husband and father he is, and whether the work he creates reflects who he truly is.
That perspective was a recurring theme when Olusola returned to Owensboro in September for his 20-year high school reunion.
The visit also included appearances at local elementary schools to introduce his debut children’s book, My Voice Is a Beat, one of two books he released this year.
Asked what he’s chasing now, Olusola said: “A daily sense of authentic joy that comes from who I really am, not based off of any standard except for my own.”
And these days, much of that joy begins at home.
The father behind the fame
Olusola and his wife have two children, 5-year-old Kaya and 2-year-old Christian. With Pentatonix continuing to record and tour, balancing his career with fatherhood isn’t always easy.
“Every single time I go on tour, my wife is like, ‘OK, well, you’re gone for two months. What do you want me to do?’” he said.
For Olusola, the priority is clear: “It’s just trying to be as present of a father as I possibly can.”
It’s a different perspective from the kid who grew up in Owensboro expecting to follow his father into medicine. Music was a passion he never envisioned as a career, much less one that would bring worldwide success with Pentatonix.
“I never saw myself being in a band. I never saw myself having acquired this kind of notoriety,” he said. “I really wanted to be somebody who was a good doctor that served my community.”
Even after finding success in music, Olusola discovered that professional accomplishments didn’t necessarily bring the fulfillment he expected.
“I talk about how I got my first Grammy, and I thought that was going to solve all my problems, and it didn’t,” he said.
That realization helped inspire Designed to Succeed, a book he released earlier this year with Donovan Donnell. Olusola said he began questioning a culture that constantly pushes people toward the next achievement.
“I realized success to so many people is just hustle culture, hustle culture,” he said. “So I wanted to find what’s a truer definition of success that I can enjoy day to day that was outside of the success of the world, outside of the success of accolades.”
That perspective has changed how he approaches his creative work, from music to writing books.
“It’s not about another accolade,” he said. “It’s about being the truest person and seeing who will resonate with that trueness.”
Finding their own beat
That philosophy also carries into My Voice Is a Beat, Olusola’s debut children’s picture book. The story follows Kasey, a young boy who hears rhythms in everyday sounds and discovers that his unusual gift for beatboxing is something worth celebrating.
The book draws from Olusola’s own experiences, but his children also helped shape it. Even the main character’s name is a nod to Kaya and Christian.
“My wife said it’d be really cool to have a nod to our children,” Olusola said, explaining that Kaya’s K and Christian’s C inspired the name Kasey.
He also wanted the illustrations to reflect a family like his own, with a Black father and a white mother. His children’s enthusiasm for the book’s rhythmic phrases also influenced how he presented the story to students during his recent Owensboro school visits.
“They were having so much fun screaming some of these things that I was writing,” he said. “I wanted to make sure that I highlighted that for all the students there as well.”
Beyond encouraging children to embrace their differences, Olusola hopes the book helps parents recognize gifts they might otherwise overlook.
“I think a lot of times we as parents, we have a hard time sometimes recognizing what our kids’ gifts are because gifts before they’re labeled a gift, sometimes they’re labeled as a behavioral problem,” he said.
He offered examples: A child constantly taking things apart might become an engineer. A particularly sensitive child might grow into a leader with extraordinary emotional intelligence. And a child who won’t stop making noises with his mouth might someday become a Grammy-winning beatboxer.
Olusola remembers his parents asking him to quiet down when he was constantly beatboxing around the house. At the time, none of them could have imagined where that habit would lead.
“They just didn’t know that my gift would develop into something where I would be part of one of the most successful vocal groups of all time,” he said.
For his own children, Olusola hopes to encourage curiosity and empathy, particularly when they encounter people whose experiences are different from theirs.
“I think really the one thing I hope they get is that be curious, be empathetic, really get to know people,” he said.
Having experienced what it felt like to be misunderstood growing up in Owensboro, Olusola hopes his children will respond to differences with curiosity rather than judgment. He said he now recognizes that some of the classmates who made fun of him simply hadn’t encountered someone with his background or interests before.
“I understand now, like, they were learning about me,” he said. “They had never met anybody like me. They had never met anybody like my family.”
For Kaya and Christian, he hopes getting to know people whose experiences differ from their own will help them better understand the world around them.
And he hopes parents reading My Voice Is a Beat with their children will see an opportunity to have similar conversations at home.
“I hope we can help our kids assemble their gift in a way that they feel loved and understood by us,” he said.
Beyond Pentatonix
Pentatonix remains a major part of Olusola’s career, with new music and another Christmas tour on the schedule. The group’s latest single, “Get Happy/Happy Days,” grew out of a TikTok duet by members Mitch Grassi and Kirstin Maldonado, whose interest in older musical styles helped inspire the recording.
“They don’t usually get a lot of big solos like that, just them two, without any other bandmates,” Olusola said. “We just thought it would be an amazing opportunity to highlight them.”
The recording fits the throwback style of the group’s Christmas in the City album and features a collaboration with Dave Pierce, who previously worked with Michael Bublé on his Christmas album.
Outside Pentatonix, Olusola continues making his own music and co-hosts Imagine Faith, a podcast with Donovan Donnell that explores faith and personal growth.
“It’s just talking about really deep, vulnerable things about faith that sometimes people may not want to talk about because it’s tough,” he said.
Donnell’s background as a life coach brings another perspective to those conversations, allowing them to explore subjects through both spiritual and personal growth lenses.
“I love all those things,” Olusola said. “They make me me, and I love them all.”
What matters most
Olusola still has plenty he wants to accomplish, including writing more children’s books and continuing to explore creative projects that interest him. But when asked where he hopes to be five or 10 years from now, his answer had little to do with professional milestones.
“I hope my family life continues to be as rich and fulfilling as it is, because if I can do that, everything else will take care of itself,” he said.
He wants his children to develop their own interests, discover what matters to them and feel confident pursuing their own paths. After spending much of his life learning to embrace the things that made him different, Olusola hopes to help them do the same.
“If my kids are good, if we have a great family, my kids are doing well, they’re doing things that are important to them, and they have found their own swagger, their own rhythm and beat, I’ve done my job,” he said.
This story is part of a pair of profiles catching up with Owensboro native Kevin Olusola. In the latest Owensboro Times quarterly edition, Olusola talks more about growing up in Owensboro, his unexpected path into music, and the years-long journey to finding his identity as an artist. OL
