It's impossible to reflect on the year that was 2019, without considering TikTok's extensive influence on the music industry at large. From Lil Nas X challenging Billboard's archaic rules on genre to a slew of sleeper hits climbing the charts, the short-video sharing app revolutionised how we discovered, listened, and supported new music and artists.
Created in 2018 by Chinese tech-giant, ByteDance, TikTok's musical roots can be traced back to its merger with the lip-syncing app, Musical.ly in August last year. Rather than just being a platform for funny dog videos, TikTok culminated music, parody, and of course lip-syncing. But it is what the company describes as "trending hashtags" (commonly known as challenges) that gave rise to the app's most notable victories.
Old Town Road found an audience through the promoted hashtags, #cowboygang and #yeeyeejuice, the latter of which saw teenagers drinking from glasses labelled "yee yee juice", which in turn transformed them into line-dancing, cowboy-hat wearing country folk. The success of the song was in some ways a byproduct of the ever-increasing community that users had found by joining in on a common joke. “I should maybe be paying TikTok,” Lil Nas X told Time. “They really boosted the song. It was getting to the point that it was almost stagnant. When TikTok hit it, almost every day since that, the streams have been up. I credit them a lot.”
And this is exactly what happened with Lizzo's history-making sleeper hit, Truth Hurts.
Earlier this year, TikTok user @reedkavner uploaded a video of himself reading a DNA test, that revealed he is in fact "100% that bitch." Soundtracked to Truth Hurts the video gained 101,000 likes in three months and quickly became a popular meme format under the trending #dnatest hashtag. The song, which was released in 2017 began to experience momentum outside of the app, and it wasn't long before Lizzo had garnered her first-ever #1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100.
The app hasn't just resurrected forgotten songs but also sparked new careers for a bunch of budding hip-hop artists.
Lil Nas X
Since breaking Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men's 16-week Billboard record by spending 19 weeks at #1, Lil Nas X has gone onto become 2019's biggest breakout star. Old Town Road is hard to top, but what ensued was a genre-agnostic foray into R&B, house and indie-rock with his debut EP, 7. The Atlanta star's second single, Panini is a futuristic meditation on love and capitalism while simultaneously hawking Beats by Dre — just like any good hip-hop music video. While Panini didn't reach the dizzying heights of Old Town Road, we never expected it to, and fans are instead looking at what the star has to offer next.
The BoyBoy West Coast
Most artists spend years trying to garner the kind of attention The BoyBoy West Coast did with just a 30-second clip of his now-iconic single, U Was At The Club (Bottoms Up). Drenched in autotune and reverb, the teaser featured the song's hook which went onto inspire millions of videos. It was the kind of song that combined everything weird and unexplainable that the internet thrives on. From the rapper's manicured facial hair and the way he sincerely lip-synced to his own song, to the grainy quality of the video itself, everything clicked together. An underground cult following ensued, which eventually led the once-unknown singer signing a coveted record deal with Republic Records.
Sueco The Child
Having initially gained an Instagram following that stretched into the hundreds of thousands, Sueco The Child was known for filming music stunts, like creating beats blindfolded. But it was his debut song Fast that saw the Pasadena producer achieve virality on TikTok. Like a cross between a SoundCloud rapper and a blue-haired Michael Cera, Sueco possesses all the lewd braggadocio minus the intimidating appearance. Since then, his breakout hit, Fast has gotten the remix treatment from Offset and A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie, positioning the once-Instagram prankster alongside the genre's biggest stars. Now, signed to Atlantic Records, Sueco has released his debut project, Miscreant.
Stunna Girl
It's impossible to spend 5 minutes on TikTok without a video brashly declaring, "Bitch, I look like I’m fresh off the runway (uh)/Bitch, I go crazy the dumb way (uh)/Bitches wanna be me, one day!" Sacramento rapper, Stunna Girl connected with Gen-Z TikTok users immediately with her hit Runway. The song has inspired more than 3 million videos where people strut their stuff and flex for the camera in the #RunwayChallenge. After reaching #8 on Spotify's Viral 50 chart and racking up 6.6 million views on YouTube, Stunna Girl has inked her first record deal with Capitol Music Group.
Lizzo
The Minneapolis native had her sights set on a career in music from a very young age. Lizzo began playing flute in the sixth grade, and it wasn't long before she started her first rap group called the Cornrow Clique. Battling body image issues and homelessness were low points for the now-superstar but a culmination of hard work and virality gave Lizzo her first #1 hit. Truth Hurts, which was released in 2017, found a second life on TikTok. "I just took a DNA test, turns out I'm 100% that bitch," she sings in the opening line of the song, and this is exactly what users of the short-video sharing app latched on to.
There are now over 201,635,340 videos of people miming DNA tests that span ethnicity, Shrek obsessions and pregnancy announcements.
Not only did TikTok boost the popularity of Lizzo's song, but Truth Hurts found its way to the #1 position on the Billboard Hot 100, and earned a Grammy nomination for Song Of The Year.
Ashnikko
UK rapper Ashnikko snagged her own moment in the spotlight on TikTok when her track Stupid featuring Yung Baby Tate garnered attention on the app. The opening line of the song, sees the artist screaming "WET!" over and over again as her face is covered in blood and her bubblegum blue hair comes into focus. It's arresting and for that reason alone, makes it a perfect song for a service where users have all but mere seconds to grab someone's attention. It's that song you heard in Miley Cyrus' recent TikTok as well as in over 2.9 million other videos. Now on tour with Danny Brown, Ashnikko is seizing her moment and isn't letting go.
As for her favorite TikTok video soundtracked to Stupid? "An older woman made one about getting divorced and spending all of her alimony, which I really liked because we stan divorcees," she told FADER. "It's such a strong aesthetic, being divorced. I love it."
Ambjaay
Ambjaay had already released some music in 2018, most notably his regional hit Shit Talker before everything blew up a year later. In 2019, Uno turned the Los Angeles rapper into a global phenomenon and he has one app to thank for it all. "TikTok helped a lot," he told Genius. "I feel like kids be on there a lot." And he isn't wrong. Uno has since racked up over 2.7 million videos on the app. After the #UnoDanceChallenge blew up, the rapper team up with DanceOn to give aspiring dancers a chance to feature in his next music video. All that attention wasn't in vain, since Ambjaay recently inked a deal with Columbia Records.
Bbno$ & Y2k
Lalala shot to the top of Spotify's Viral 50 in July and remained in the top 5 all month. It is the kind of skittish, self-effacing, nonsense rap you expect to find on TikTok, but the pair behind the track didn't rely on the short-video sharing app alone. Bbno$ and Y2k employed a few guerilla marketing tactics, including promoting the song on Tinder, Craiglist, and even cold-calling. “We tackled a lot of non-traditional markets in a very aggressive way,” Y2k told Rolling Stone earlier this year. There are three different versions of Lalala that have now been used in over 1.3 million TikTok videos.
The song is a culmination of trends designed to grab a large audience and the duo even admits to creating "Latin Spanish vibes" in hopes of making it big. "You know [Cardi B's] I Like It," bbno$ told Rolling Stone. "I sat down on [Y2K's] couch and was like, 'can you try [making something like] this?'" “No offense to Cardi B, love her,” Y2k admits. “But I’ve never heard that song.”
Tobi Lou
When LA Rapper Tobi Lou released his Adventure Time-inspired song Buff Baby in 2018 it didn't make much of a mark. But fast-forward to 2019, the song gained a new life of its own on TikTok. “What I saw on there was so crazy," he told Wired. "I almost didn’t understand it. [The videos] were really funny and outrageous it felt like they were humans on another planet doing a different level of comedic stuff.” The original video, by TikTok user Tooty McNooty, adapted the song into an animation that performed what would become one of the most recreated dances on the app. The "Woah" dance coupled with Buff Baby spotlighted Tobi Lou's work unlike anything else that came before it.
