by Gabrielle Emem Harry.
Emo-Afrobeats singer, Ckay’s 2019 sleeper hit, Love Nwantiti was No. 50 on the Billboard Hot 100 as of last week Friday. This follows the song becoming Shazam’s number 1 track of September 2021 and Ckay becoming the most streamed African artist of the same month. The catalyst of Ckay’s meteoric rise? TikTok. The video-sharing app has caused an undeniable shift in the global music industry, bringing a new dimension to virality and democratising fame.
While it may be one of the most remarkable cases, Love Nwantiti is far from the only track to be launched to success by TikTok. Know You, the buoyant, romantic duet by Ladipoe and Simi also exploded on the app in the middle of 2020 after Ladipoe posted a video of him lip syncing to the track and encouraging fans to duet it. The song quickly became a quarantine anthem, with the hashtag #knowyouchallenge amassing almost 11 million views.
The Duduke challenge started by singer Simi in May 2020 after she announced her pregnancy with the music video of her song Duduke, is another notable example. The #dudukechallenge which had people with real and fake baby bumps dancing to the chorus of the song now has over 68 million views on TikTok.
Dance challenges are some of the most popular on the app, with some particular steps recurring in different challenges. One of these is the signature slow motion walk which was a feature of the #jowochallenge for Davido’s track Jowo and showed up again in the #infinitychallenge for Olamide’s hit song Infinity featuring Omah Lay. Both challenges were almost impossible to escape on TikTok with Jowo being used in almost 261,000 videos and Infinity being used in close to 122,000.
Apart from dance challenges, TikTok users find other engaging and creative ways to utilise sounds. One example is a recent challenge which uses a short clip of the global summer anthem of 2021, Essence by Wizkid featuring Tems which had Tiktokers exchanging the original lyrics of the song with humorous captions of their own.
A slightly more unconventional challenge which has recently drawn the attention of social media users is the #alcoholpourchallenge which has users pouring everything from water and wine to palm oil and okro soup on their faces and bodies with a snippet of afrobeats artist Joeboy’s new single, Alcohol playing in the background. Even though the challenge has been called “disgusting” and “disturbing” by some, with the #alcoholpourchallenge boasting almost 385 thousand views and some of the most popular videos garnering over a hundred thousand views and thousands of likes, the challenge has no doubt fuelled the song’s popularity.
Although TikTok presents an exciting and effective new platform for afrobeats artists to promote their music to a global audience, there are concerns that artists, especially upcoming African artists looking for their big break, may not find the app as useful a tool as they might hope. When the remix of Love Nwantiti featuring DJ Yo and Axel began to blow up, there was some controversy concerning where exactly the song came from and whose it was exactly, with some TikTok users claiming it was actually a Moroccan song. DJ Yo and Axel originally released the slowed-down version of the track that went viral without permission from CKay, with both parties only later agreeing on an official release.
With anyone being able to upload and name a sound, artists are not always properly credited for their music. This is a significant concern for upcoming African artists hoping to leverage the potential for virality that the app holds because it’s completely possible for their songs to blow up, but not carry them along.
Despite these concerns, it is undeniable that TikTok is an excellent asset for afrobeats artists and other African artists creating different genres of music who lack the resources that their more established, Western counterparts may have. With a bit of social media savvy and a lot of luck, TikTok is a door to a whole new stage.