Kalei Renay has been compared to her music idol Billie Eilish because of her jet black hair, heavy winged eyeliner, septum piercing, and collection of bug tattoos. Kalei roars with her dominating performance in shooter games, no-holds-barred streams, and spicy tweets, while the Grammy winner whispers.
The 22-year-old Twitch streamer burst onto the scene while playing Call Of Duty: Warzone, quickly establishing herself as a force in the battle royale game, quickscoping enemies in the head with pinpoint accuracy and racking up 40 kills in a single match. In real life, she’s just as fearless as she is in the game. She skirts the line of propriety with hilarious and occasionally filthy memes, ignoring the temporary bans she’s received on Twitch and other platforms.
In a recent video call with Refinery29, Kalei laughs as she recalls her mods forgetting to turn off a chat command that displayed a modified picture of an over-endowed Among Us crewmate and, while she isn’t one to take herself too seriously, she isn’t afraid to speak up about the industry’s double standards, and is more than willing to point out instances where she, as a female gamer, is held to a different standard than her male counterparts.
Kalei is used to being a target as a result of this. She’s heard it all as the only female creator of the FaZe Clan: She’s too loud. She needs to work on her professionalism. She needs to be nicer, sweeter, and cuter, and she needs to smile more. She turns it off, however, because, as she stated on stream, she won’t “fake happy” for your $5 because she doesn’t care what you think. She hasn’t stopped being unapologetically herself despite the noise and clamoring of haters — and there are plenty — because refusing to conform is what has gotten her to where she is today.
Kalei grew up in Washington until the start of high school, when she moved to Colorado with her parents, where she still resides. To be clear, they are currently residing in her home and are subject to her rules while she runs her business as a one-woman content machine.
You’d have to know Kalei’s specialty: first-person shooters, to understand why anyone would be yelling at the top of their lungs during degen hours. During her teen years, she experienced the high-stakes adrenaline rush that comes with outsmarting and out-aiming your opponent.
She saved her babysitting money in middle school to buy a PlayStation 3, but she forgot to factor in the cost of a game, so she was forced to play 30-minute free trials of Modern Warfare 2 and Modern Warfare 3. Her mother bought the full versions of both games, as well as Black Ops 2 and Skyrim, for her birthday a month later.
Kalei’s gaming career has been built around the Call Of Duty franchise. Advanced Warfare 2 was released in 2014, and she began streaming on Twitch at the age of 14. Then came Call of Duty: Black Ops 3. FaZe’s Agony was her first big host at the time. Her stream went from 10 to 2,000 viewers in a matter of seconds.
Kalei became more visible in the public eye after joining gaming organization Obey Alliance in 2016, which Agony owned at the time. She quickly transitioned from a console player to a hardcore PC gamer.
Picking a side in the never-ending PC vs. console debate is obvious, and Kalei was on the grind for years — stream, sleep, wake, repeat — but she says it was worth it because gaming is her passion. Fifteen-hour streams whizzed by as if they didn’t exist.
Kalei aspired to be a part of a top-tier esports organization, but as her fan base grew, so did the number of haters who told her she would never be good enough or appropriate enough to be signed. There was a constant cacophony of doubters, as with many female gamers, calling out whatever reason they could find to undermine her achievements.
Despite everything, Kalei took the wheel and accomplished what her critics said would never be possible. FaZe, whose star roster includes rapper Lil Yachty, Migos’ Offset, and LeBron James Jr., asked for recommendations for a female creator to sign last March, and Kalei made it clear that she wanted that spot.
She launched a personal Twitter campaign to put her name at the top of consideration, backed by her stream and Discord community. The response was massive, to the point where it couldn’t be ignored. Kalei announced her signing with the organization three months later, a move that drew attention from the likes of The Hollywood Reporter and TMZ. It showed Kalei that her years of streaming and countless hours of work had paid off.
