TikTok is home to all kinds of success stories in the music industry, there are the household names — Lil Nas X, Dillon Francis, Lizzo — and there is a lesser-known ecosystem of emerging artists who have taken success on the app and begun to leverage it into both career and financial success. Take rapper ppcocaine, professional producer and master of mashups Carneyval, and bass-heavy, demonic hip hop artist Freddie Dredd — all three have racked up millions of creations from their songs and continue to grow off the platform all while securing deals at major record labels. This is just the beginning for these three, and so many more artists.
Emerging rapper ppcocaine has been making her presence felt on the app. Last week, she posted dozens of TikToks in a matter of days, earned more than 67 million video views, and crossed the 1 million follower mark. Her profile is diaristic and undeniably authentic, whether she’s dancing to ‘00s throwback jams, introducing the world to her friends, or bragging about her success. ppcocaine’s recent success is fueled by a snippet of her song “PJ,” which went viral on the app and generated over 465k video creations. Even more impressively, the song remains unreleased on streaming services–the artist recently posted a video asking fans to use TikTok’s duet feature if they’re looking forward to its official release. ppcocaine is making the most of her moment, as her song “DDLG” reached the top of Spotify’s Viral 50 chart and her new song “Catching Feelings” racked up 57k streams in its first four days of release.
A professional producer and master of mashups, Carneyval is taking TikTok by storm. The L.A.-based artist has over 1 million followers, who look to him for innovative mashups of today’s hottest songs. Rather than just mash two songs together, as the name mashup implies, Carneyval’s mixes put songs in dialogue with each other, creating duets that cross genres (Twenty One Pilots x Wiz Khalifa x Panic! At The Disco x Travis Scott) and eras (Jack Harlow x Jay Z x Kanye West x DaBaby). He enjoys mixing together recent TikTok hits (like Don Toliver’s “No Idea” and StaySolidRocky’s “Party Girl“), combining two different songs by the same artists (in this case, Rod Wave), and making bangers that don’t make any sense at all (Swae Lee singing atop the “Theme From Friends”). His recent mix of Rod Wave’s “Rags2Riches,” Saweetie’s “Tap In,” and YFN Lucci’s “Wet”–all popular TikTok songs on their own–has generated over 900k video creations, spurred by a dance craze that has reached many of the platform’s biggest influencers.
Pioneering a bass-heavy and demonic strain of Hip-Hop, Freddie Dredd is the unlikely face of the internet-savvy underground. His singles “Opaul” (2.4M creations) and “Cha Cha” (566k creations) have become TikTok sensations. A member of the Doomshop/Sixtet collective of boundary-pushing artists, Freddie Dredd cultivated a massive following with his abrasive demeanor, inventive beats, and unique visual sensibility. Is he breaking into the mainstream, or is the 23-year-old artist from Ontario dragging the mainstream with him into his dark world.
Check out more details on these artists and their success stories as well as their music and videos soon on HipHopSince1987.com and TikTok.
© 2020, Seth "Digital Crates" Barmash. All rights reserved.
