In 2019, Ashnikko broke out after a viral hit on TikTok.
What if it wasnt a fluke?
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A voice laughs maniacally.
Logan Paul sways his hips.
A voice laughs maniacally.
Two college-age men, both shirtless, grab their crotches and sway.
A voice laughs maniacally.
Miley Cyrus lip-syncs along with the lyrics Stupid boy think that I need him.
This was the experience of being on TikTok in the fall of 2019.
2 most-used song on TikTok with 1.3 million video uses.
And in the months that followed, STUPID became inextricable from the TikTok experience.
You couldnt scroll through the app without hearing Wet!
On TikTok, its common to hear the same song over and over.
(Pee pee poo poo saved my life, she tweeted recently.)
Big companies dont get to dictate how a song develops on TikTok.
Ashnikko knows better than anyone that social-media users and the fans themselves have become the ultimate gatekeepers.
And that they can smell bullshit from a mile away.
She still carries herself with the bumptious pride of a 5-year-old who has just learned her first swear word.
Her mom, who is sitting behind her, sighs.
I dont like that you disrespected your teacher, she says, but it was written really well.
Everyone reverts back to a child when theyre around their mom, dont they?
she says at one point while ribbing her mom in a strong North Carolina drawl.
Go away, Mom, you slut!
and No, Mom.
I called you a power slut.
Its a good thing.
Aside from her brothers, she was the only American kid in school.
At night, she read Neil Gaiman books and wrote raps.
I wrote lots of songs; they were really bad, she says.
Then she found Tumblr.
She spent her first two weeks there on an Italian mans couch.
(Sometimes hed watch me in my sleep, she says.)
It was another two weeks before she began performing at open mics.
It was so long ago.
She says she also doesnt remember her first meeting with a music executive in 2015.
Ashnikko bristles when her older music is brought up too.
She says she can no longer listen to anything pre-2018; the songs fromSass Pancakesmake her want to cry.
Theres a clear before and after in her short discography.
Now Im confident in my ability to write songs, she says.
I feel like a songwriter.
Before, I was just trying to be that, but I had no idea what it took.
The success didnt come immediately, but it did come, she says.
In 2018, her years of bad songs and bad dye jobs began to pay off.
Thats when I started to be a full-time musician, Ashnikko says.
She cut off a lock of her blue hair and stored it in a vial.
It was my symbol of change.
Glossing over the small print, she signed on the dotted line.
I wish Id had better managers then.
(Shortly after, Various Artists Management came calling.)
In September of that year, Ashnikkos team saw her relatively small base expand dramatically.
The cause, her team soon realized, was TikTok.
The song had been incorporated into a users video for the first time that month.
Ashnikko has been engaged in promotional activities seemingly nonstop since the success of STUPID.
The content came in droves, the impact reaching even further than STUPID had the year before.
24 on the U.K. charts.
Ashnikko laughs at the success of the challenge and swears she is bewildered by it.
Ashnikko is a brand-friendly aggressor and transgressor who knows her cynical yet winnable audience better than anyone.
Today, you cant earn the big pop numbers shes angling for without that kind of insight.
Whoevers best at keeping the fan in charge wins.
