Mike Sabath Made It

When the New Yorker editor Andrew Marantz met Mike Sabath on an airplane, the slick teen-ager, a native of affluent Westchester County, New York, was tinkering with a song on his laptop. At first, Marantz assumed his seatmate was just a hobbyist but soon discovered that the eighteen-year-old Sabath is the real deal. He has worked with big-name producers in New York, and one of his songs nearly ended up on a Chris Brown album. But should Sabath defer a spot at Harvard to pursue a precarious career in music? Marantz drove to Katonah, New York, to speak with the executive team: Sabath, his manager—and his parents.