The TikTok Industrial Complex
The Savage (Remix) album cover (via YouTube)
Texas-based upcoming rapper Erica Banks accomplished a feat practically unheard of: on her first Billboard Hot 100 single, “Buss It”, she was able to score a remix with Travis Scott, a rapper known for only doing collaborations with other big rappers, such as Gunna, Young Thug, and Future.
So, how’d she do it?
Welcome to the TikTok Industrial Complex, where someone hitting the woah a couple of times can lead to an artist getting a Beyoncé feature, a few million streams later. TikTok is a popular video-sharing app, in which users can share 15-60 second clips of themselves doing just about anything — from lip-synching to music, creating elaborate POV videos, giving advice, and finally, creating dances to certain parts of songs. These dances have spread like wildfire, beginning with Jalaiah Harmon’s viral dance for the song “Lottery” by K-Camp, famously known as the Renegade. Since the Renegade, multiple other songs have been lucky enough to receive dances, such as “Say So” by Doja Cat, “Cannibal” by Kesha, and “Supalonely” by Benee and Gus Dapperton. These songs, resultantly, have been propelled into popularity, with them all receiving an increase in streams, and adding to the fanbase of the artist. This is the “pipeline” of TikTok: if one’s song is lucky enough to go viral on the app and even luckier to receive a dance, these songs suddenly push the artist into mainstream popularity, with increased radio play and streams, an increased fanbase, and an overall increase in exposure.
TikTok has created a pipeline to stardom, and nobody has used this pipeline better than up-and-coming female rappers, such as recent triple Grammy winner Megan Thee Stallion, Erica Banks, Doja Cat, and Miami-based rap duo, City Girls. The methodology works as such: first, a clip (called a “sound”) will be taken from a song, usually for the purposes of making a dance to it. However, other songs have been used as “memes”, such as “For that Cash” by notorious rapper ppcocaine. Next, the sound goes viral on TikTok, with the help of millions of users reusing it, as well as notable content creators with millions of followers, such as Charli D’Amelio and Addison Rae, with 110 million followers and 78.5 million followers, respectively. After that, the sound is known all over the app, with people googling the lyrics to the sound in order to find the full song. This is essentially the recipe for TikTok stardom, and for female rappers, this stardom translates into working with some of the biggest rappers in music.
Take Doja Cat, a Los Angeles-based rapper who is no stranger to viral success. One of her earliest singles was a viral hit titled “MOOO!", which catapulted her career into stardom. In 2019, TikTok user Haley Sharpe (her TikTok username is @yodelinghaley) created a dance to the chorus of “Say So”, the fifth single from Doja’s second studio album, Hot Pink. The dance went wildly viral, with Doja even going as far as to include the dance in her music video. The popularity of the dance led the song to also become popular on the radio, which led to her getting Nicki Minaj on its remix. The remix saw incredible success on the Billboard charts, with the remix being Doja Cat’s first #1 on the Billboard Hot 100.
However, Megan Thee Stallion is arguably the most successful female rapper to get a boost from TikTok. Megan Thee Stallion is a Houston-based rapper and has been rapping since 2013. Prior to her success on TikTok, Megan Thee Stallion had released an EP titled Tina Snow and a mixtape titled Fever, both of which saw the popular singles “Big Ole Freak” and “Sex Talk”, respectively. TikTok aided her success immensely, with her trademark “ahh” noise that she makes at the beginning of her songs becoming a popular sound, as well as snippets from “Sex Talk” becoming popular sounds in the summer of 2019. On March 6, 2020, Megan Thee Stallion released an EP titled Suga, with the song “Savage” quickly becoming a fan-favorite due to TikTok. TikTok users created dances to the song, with the most famous being Keara Wilson’s version (her TikTok username is @keke.janajah, and it should be noted that Wilson created the dances for the original “Savage” as well as its remix). The dance made the song incredibly popular, so popular that it led to Stallion getting Beyoncé to be featured on its remix, a difficult feat for any artist, much less an up-and-coming artist. “Savage (Remix)” debuted at #5 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart, and was nominated for Best Rap Song and Best Rap Performance at the 2021 Grammy Awards, both of which it subsequently won.
TikTok has had an unprecedented effect on the music industry, and it has helped female rappers gain prominence and respect in the music industry. So, every time you post a TikTok lip-synching to a funny part in a song, or participate in the newest dance craze, you could be part of the reason an artist gets the Grammy or Beyoncé feature that they’ve always been dreaming of.
Edited by Sha Frasier, editor of News
Cover art by Miriam Sills