Reversing one of TikTok’s favorite challenges, a newly surfaced video proves the kids just might be alright. While the app has become known as a launching pad for some artists’ careers — artists like Bella Poarch, Foushee, and Lil Nas X — it’s also a place where the generation gap couldn’t be more evident as teens challenged their older relatives to identify stars of today like DaBaby, Lil Baby, and others. However, one parent flipped the trend, showing photos of stars to her toddler, and the wholesome video rapidly accumulated a huge number of views, jumping to other platforms as well.
Seeing photos of Beyonce, Cardi B, Chance The Rapper, DaBaby, Doja Cat, Nicki Minaj, Pop Smoke, and Saweetie, the child correctly identifies most of them, getting extra excited for Cardi B and Doja, although we’ll give points for effort for exclamations of “Baby!” and “Pop Soaps!” However, one of the more inexplicable answers is for Megan Thee Stallion, who for some reason, the baby identifies as “Grandma.”
As these acts all hover in the upper echelons of the Hot 100 whenever they drop new music, it’s no wonder they’re kid-approved — or maybe it’s the other way around. In any case, judging by this toddler’s reactions, Cardi and Doja look to have long careers ahead of them — and Megan Thee Stallion might want to check her mail for that AARP card.
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
When most fans think of TikTok dance trends, the songs that spring to mind are usually poppy, upbeat tunes with simple, repetitive lyrics that lend themselves to the format of exuberant teens waving their arms in synchronized, somewhat goofy choreography. Griselda Records wouldn’t seem to fit the bill, with its members’ mostly gloomy beats and intricate, belligerent bars about harrowing street encounters. However, fans got the bright idea to combine the two seemingly opposed ideals, resulting in an atypical TikTok trend that prompted some hilarious reactions from the rappers themselves.
When HipHopDX posted the above clip of a fan working some complex choreo to Benny’s verse of Westside Gunn’s “Gods Don’t Bleed,”, it caught the eyes of both Benny The Butcher and Westside Gunn, who both quote-tweeted it with their impressions in the form of emojis. While Gunn seemed delighted, writing, “I needed this” with a handful of laughing emojis, Benny was a bit more nonplussed, posting a blushing emoji that spoke volumes.
While Conway, Daringer, and Armani Caesar all have yet to react, seeing the Griselda top dog’s approving reaction could very well prompt a new, albeit unusual dance trend on TikTok, bringing a different type of hip-hop to prominence on the app. More versions began popping up in the comments, putting his movements to songs from Danny Brown, Sade, and more. So, if you’re looking for the new trend, that’s probably the one to really take off — editing incongruous songs over footage of ubiquitous dance routines.
Check out the full version of “Gods Don’t Bleed” below.
The idea of a laid-back rapper like Lil Baby participating in a TikTok challenge may seem unlikely, but since one of the latest challenges tests users on their knowledge of artists’ lyrics rather than memorizing complicated, air traffic control-esque choreography, it would seem like he’d have at least this one in the bag.
Spoiler alert: [In extremely “Morgan Freeman as narrator” voice] He did not have this one in the bag. Confronted with a line from his 2018 song “I’m Straight” from breakout tape Harder Than Ever, Lil Baby was unable to recall the follow-up to “I’m cool on the love and the high-fives / You n***as can’t keep up with my guys,” which should have been “You can’t get all this drip in a lifetime.”
Now, to be fair, rappers forget their lyrics all the time, especially ones with extensive catalogs like Baby’s (see: Eminem, Lil Wayne, Nas). Despite only being around for half a decade, he’s accumulated the sort of output rappers in the ’90s would envy, with six full-length solo projects and two joint albums to his name in that time (and another on the way). Those albums are also very long, and while the general trend in hip-hop has been to shorten verses and songs overall to accommodate shorter attention spans and the greater prominence of streaming, Baby’s rather endearingly stuck to full-length verses with as many as 24 bars at a time.
That said, it’s still pretty awkward and funny to watch a rapper known for his lyrical output experience a complete brain fart during a quiz of their own lyrics, and pretty bold of him to let the TikTokers put him on blast like this. Watch Lil Baby flunk his own test below.
It goes down in the DMs. Just weeks after Lil Nas X made a TikTok using a screenshot of his Instagram DMs to put Tekashi 69 on blast after Tekashi tried to troll Nas with homophobic jokes, another artist has adopted the format to take her own thirsty messengers to task.
Apparently, ever since she broke up with Playboi Carti, Iggy Azalea‘s inbox has been flooded with direct messages from famous followers shooting their shots. However, from the screenshots she uses in her TikTok video, in which she dances in the foreground while the screenshots appear behind her, plenty of these famous followers could use some game lessons.
Among them are men who go way too graphic way too quickly, while others offer money for Iggy’s company. One takes a day’s worth of silence from the Australian rapper as license to start insulting her, and another simply obsessively repeats “I love you” over and over again. Take notes, gentlemen: These are all what not to do — not just to famous women, but to anyone online. There’s shooting your shot, then there’s lobbing the ball toward the gym from the parking lot and expecting it to fall in the hoop through the skylight. Just don’t do it.
Meanwhile, Iggy herself has been promoting a new single, “Sip It,” her second collaboration with Tyga after “Kream,” and has been on an anti-music industry campaign, claming she’s been blackballed. You can check out the new single here.
Sometimes the best new R&B can be hard to find, but there are plenty of great rhythm and blues tunes to get into if you have the time to sift through the hundreds of newly released songs every week. So that R&B heads can focus on listening to what they really love in its true form, we’ll be offering a digest of the best new R&B jams that fans of the genre should hear every Friday.
Brent Faiyaz — “Show U Off”
Brent Faiyaz has taken a step back from his usual toxic R&B slow jams this week to celebrate women with his newly released cut “Show U Off.” Its the latest in a string of singles the singer has unleashed this year, so hopefully that means a follow-up to 2019’s F*ck The World is coming soon.
Giveon — “All To Me”
Giveon delivered Take Time in 2020 and When It’s All Said And Done in 2021. This week, he combined the two into one and offered an extra song to go with it titled “All To Me.” The song is so good its a wonder why it wasn’t included on either projects originally, or perhaps Giveon just never misses.
Jacquees — “Freaky As Me” Feat. Mulatto
Jacquees and Mulatto connect for the R&B singer’s sensual slow jam “Freaky As Me.” The song is set to appear on his upcoming project P.T.O.F: Vol. 1 and is the follow-up to his previously released cut “Put In Work,” from last year.
Fousheé — “Sing About Love”
Following the release of “Single Af,” rising R&B star Fousheé offers another lively cut in the form of “Sing About Love.” Fousheé is on a streak, proving she’s more than her popular TikTok song “Deep End” and absolutely here to stay.
SZA — “Good Days”
The video for SZA‘s “Good Days” is here. She teased the number at the end of her song “Hit Different” with Ty Dolla Sign and now she offers a music video for the magical song which takes place in a psychedelic rain forest filled with mushrooms as well as a library that sees SZA showing off her pole dancing skills. At the end of “Good Days” is a special treat for all the fans who are waiting for the TDE princess to release her yet-to-be-officially-named song “Shirt,” which has essentially blown up on TikTok. Now we can hear what she’s saying in 4K.
Jhene Aiko — Sailing Soul(s)
When Jhene Aiko released her debut mixtape Sailing Soul(s), fans had to download a zip file to hear it or head to DatPiff. 10 years later, the singer has it officially placed on streaming services. Listen to good vibes such as the famed “stranger,” “hoe” featuring Miguel and Future (which was repurposed for her 2020 album Chilomobo), as well as a few SoundCloud loosies like “2 Seconds.”
Feather — “Juke”
Shortly after sharing her new single “Juke,” Feather has dropped off its accompanying video directed by Noyze. A clear ode to Chicago style of music, the visual features the ultimate footwork battle in an underground basement as Feather croons “let’s juke” in between a smooth sample of DJ Rashad’s “Juke.”
Trevor Jackson — “Get To You”
As Trevor Jackson gets ready for the release of his debut album, The Love Language, he shares “Get To You.” The rising singer’s raw voice sings of missing his ex and things he’d do to get to her. “Love is the universal language of all things and I hope this album gives people more confidence to understand their own love languages and how to communicate them,” he said in a statement. “The power of this music will not only bring people together but it’ll also bring people closer to themselves.”
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Eminem tends to drop controversial and/or inflammatory lyrics on a regular basis, and now young TikTok users are trying to get the veteran rapper canceled. Those efforts haven’t been fruitful so far, though, as it has just led people to poke fun at Gen-Z. Now Lil Nas X (a TikTok star in his own right with nearly 10 million followers) has joined in on the fun.
In response to a widely derided freestyle from a millennial TikTok user, Nas shared his own freestyle, in which he raps. “Generation Z wants to cancel Eminem? [laughs] / Generation Z wants to cancel Eminem? [laughs] / Yeah [laughs], listen up, Generation / Z, you’re a generation of Z / Z, generation of Z.” He ends by trailing off with laughter that increasingly lacks in confidence.
This comes a couple months after Eminem dismissed cancel culture, saying, “With me, it’s literally like every f*cking every other day. I’m canceled for whatever the f*ck it was. It’s funny because I see some of the same people or sites who b*tched about things back then that I said and then going back now and saying, ‘Why can’t he be that again?’ What the f*ck? When I was that you had a problem with that, too. I understand some of the sh*t, but for the most part, like for people who just sit online and they feel like they need to b*tch about whatever it is to feel like they’re a part of something. With cancel culture, it’s like no one ever really gets canceled, though.”
It’s rare for an artist to double back and shoot a video for a newly popular song from a year-and-a-half-old album, especially when the song in question wasn’t originally planned as a single or have a video in the first place. Yet, that’s exactly what Doja Cat did with the release of her video for “Streets,” the Hot Pink song from 2019 that became the basis for the red-hot Silhouette Challenge on TikTok. Capitalizing on the sudden viral success of the non-single in the middle of the rollout for her third album, Planet Her, Doja Cat has just made a case for a new paradigm for how artists should maneuver in this post-TikTok era.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Doja Cat can handle fame so well, or that she always seems perfectly equipped to ride the changing tides in the wake of a song’s breakout popularity. When she released her debut album Amala in 2018, it seemingly came and went without making much of an impact — and then she made “Mooo!” for fun in her bedroom with a sheet for a green screen and a silly rap about being a cow. Overnight, she became a sensation — then, rather than letting the buzz fade away or announcing a new project, she tapped into the colorful sights and sounds it turned out her newfound fanbase couldn’t get enough of.
Within a year of the breakthrough represented by “Mooo!”, Doja Cat had put out the videos for “Tia Tamera” with Rico Nasty and “Juicy,” adding all three new songs to the deluxe version of Amala nearly a year after its release, boosting it onto the Billboard 200 just as her second album, Hot Pink, was about to drop. Where any number of artists might have expected these successful viral hits to turn up on Hot Pink‘s tracklist, Doja instead used them to bolster sales of her debut, keeping the rollout for the new album wide open(-ish). A remix of “Juicy” featuring Tyga helped lift Hot Pink to No. 9 in its first week, despite the relatively lukewarm reception for its other singles, “Bottom Bitch,” “Rules,” and “Cyber Sex.”
But then, six months after the release of the album, TikTok user Haley Sharpe used “Say So,” a song that wasn’t planned as a single, as the backing track for a choreographed dance that caught fire on the app — and caught Doja Cat’s attention. With the dance lifting “Say So” to bonafide hit status on the app, Doja pivoted, turning the song into a single and fast-tracking the music video for it, employing Sharpe’s dance steps and giving the viral video star a cameo in the disco-esque clip. While constituting part of the trend of artists releasing singles and pushing TikTok engagement as a way to drive streams, the truly innovative aspect was Doja Cat’s willingness to not just “let the fans pick the single,” but to completely change her gameplan to incorporate the fans’ eager involvement.
With the release of the “Streets” video, she’s doubling down on that bet, against shifting gears in the middle of an album rollout to take advantage of the surprise boost in popularity of a track from her last album, rather than focusing adamantly on the future. This time, the song in question was even older — nearly 18 months past the release date of Hot Pink, past any album’s usual promotion cycle. However, this time, the Silhouette Challenge had caught flame, its popularity becoming so great that Doja herself was pulled into the fervor to contribute a TikTok video embracing the trend.
She also embraces the trend in the official music video, employing the same sultry crimson backlighting and poses as a nod to the challenge that prompted the video’s creation. Meanwhile, the video also incorporates high-concept visuals of Doja as a black widow spider, lending the video the air of months of planning, when in reality, it was created as a reaction to a sudden pop of interest and attention, not as part of a detailed plan to stimulate engagement in a past or upcoming project. But Doja’s previous experience with “Mooo!” reigniting interest in Amala likely informed her willingness to backtrack despite having a new album on the way.
The benefits are obvious; Doja directs the new fans discovering her through her viral moments back to her old projects, where they can begin to build rapport with her previous work, converting casuals into hardcore supporters. It also builds rapport with existing hardcore supporters, making them feel acknowledged, which they’ll in-turn reciprocate when the time comes to release her new project. And finally — and possibly most importantly in today’s fast-paced, saturated attention economy — it keeps all eyes on Doja to see what she’s going to do next, increasing her public profile, and generating more streams, never a bad thing at a time when touring is still effectively out of the question.
For proof of these benefits, look no further than Doja’s nearly tyrannical stranglehold over award shows and late-night television in 2020. She performed “Say So,” the song that wasn’t meant to be a single until fans made it one, no less than five times on high-profile shows like the MTV EMAs and VMAs, The Tonight Show, and the Billboard Music Awards — making her an inescapable, unavoidable household name. She also won Best New Artist at the Billboard Music Awards, just two years after her debut album failed to make an impact on the magazine’s charts. Her successes are duplicable — she herself has repeated the feat three times in as many years — and should be considered an example for all kinds of artists looking to maximize their media footprint.
With the advent of streaming and social media, the rules have changed seemingly every day, but one rule has remained absolute all this time: Content is king. To paraphrase the poet, the best-laid plans of mice, men, MCs, and media moguls often go awry, but being able to adjust on the fly might be the one skill that ensures that they all get lucky anyway. Doja Cat’s method of letting the tide take her to her next port of call would not only have been impossible before these new technologies came along, but the lukewarm success of her planned singles might have also ensured that she became known forever as a flop, relegating each new album to whatever shelf countless other underperforming projects have ended up sitting on.
Instead, by being open, creative, and willing to use her unprecedented access to fans’ whims, Doja Cat has demonstrated how an artist can not only serve their established fanbase but also weaponize them against industry expectations and the apathy of casual listeners. The positive feedback loop she created by refusing to get stuck to one idea of the perfect rollout has ensured that all of her rollouts end up being perfect — eventually. Wise artists and execs will take note, using the greater wealth of tools at their disposal to maximize their projects’ potential for success instead of writing them off and leaving money on the table. Meanwhile, Doja’s fans, old and new, will continue to eagerly await Planet Her to see what songs they can convince her to turn into hits next.
A new deal between social media app TikTok and Universal Music Group is a win-win. For fans, it will be easier to use music when creating TikTok videos; for artists, it will be easier for them to get paid for their music being used. TikTok + Universal Music Reach Fan-Friendly Agreement TikTok and Universal Music […]
: a.slayy/ IG pic.twitter.com/sGDVfpGc5q
or 
, We need a million likes for part 2 
stay outta my DMs uglies.
