The Rise of The TikTok Artist
Of all the social media platforms none have had a greater impact on the dynamics of the modern consumer than TikTok. The app has the ability to bring huge virality to a song from a mere 30 seconds. The social media platform has opened up a whole new avenue for creatives to forge their way into the music industry and unlike the ‘YouTube rappers’ or ‘Soundcloud rappers’, it seems this may be a permanent fixture in the industry.
The advent of TikTok could not have come at a better time for African artists with the global renaissance of African music. Amapiano has arguably been the biggest beneficiary of this boom with TikTok users globally taking part in dance challenges that blow up songs to epic proportions. With that being said, who are the next gen of artist who have capitalised on their momentum on this app you may ask? Let’s profile them below.

Mandisa Jacavula, popularly known as Mandz Not Hot, rose to prominence because of her Sho Dnx videos. The reason for the popularity in her video’s is her authentic and comical voice overs in vernac. Her consistency in creating high quality, shareable content saw her build up a community of loyal followers. She took her first foray into music with her debut single titled “Ngawe”. The soft spoken Amapiano record performed relatively well for a debut offering and shows potential of her turning her current audience into a musical fan base.

Robot Boii has been creating content for well over 5 years, first as a dance and later as a budding YouTuber, however, there is no doubt that his short form YouTube content style was built for the TikTok hyper machine. With a history in music, it was inevitable for Robot Boii to play his hand in the music industry. Robot Boii already has a number of singles under his belt but we can all agree his biggest single to date is “Salary Salary”.

We round off our profiling of TikTok artists with Khanyisa Jaceni. Like Robot Boii, she has been a content creator for a number of years and a quick YouTube search will bring up a host of covers she released in the build-up to her stature in the game. Proving to be as versatile of a creator as she is an artist, the TikTok personality has the greatest of potential to turn into a fully fledged artist.