By Brandon Ousley, Jaelani Turner-Williams, Leah Mandel, and Vrinda Jagota of Third Bridge Creative
In this week’s installment of our column featuring emerging artists, we’re listening to nostalgic East London R&B, the singer-songwriter signed by Issa Rae, a folk artist making “sims 2 emo lesbian love” stories, the latest girl group from the team behind BTS, and the first solo excursion of a Little Mix star.
Essosa
Chartmetric Artist Rank: 40,035
Genre: R&B/Soul
Country: U.K.
East London-born artist Essosa brings a nostalgic blend of ‘90s and 2000s R&B influences to her boundary-pushing sound. Known for her gentle voice and melodic pop-infused R&B style, the 23-year-old newcomer’s breakthrough arrived with her 2023 single “Waste My Time.” The Michael Jackson-sampled ‘90s throwback has amassed 27.3 million streams on Spotify and became a TikTok smash, where it’s been used in 68k posts. On August 16, she crystallized her unique retro-modern approach with her new EP, Essie’s World. The seven-song project features the heartfelt Timbaland-influenced ballad, “Guilty” (150k Spotify streams), along with previously-released singles, “Waste My Time,” “Tell Nobody” (565k), and “Only One” (245k). With 806k Spotify monthly listeners and a bevy of additions to editorial playlists like R&B Weekly, Mood Ring, and Created by Women, Essosa is on track to becoming a rising UK R&B phenom for the Gen Z crowd.
Jae Stephens
Chartmetric Artist Rank: 57,201
Genre: R&B/Soul
Country: U.S.
R&B singer-songwriter Jae Stephens turned up the heat all summer with three fiery singles. Signed to Issa Rae-founded label Raedio, the Dallas-born, Pasadena-raised artist will introduce her energetic pop side on the upcoming project Sellout, due in September. Her fanbase — affectionately known as the “JaeBaes” — first got to know Stephens on her moody past EPs, f**k it i’ll do it myself, and High My Name Is. With writing credits for Jennifer Lopez and Chxrry22, Stephens made a splash with flirtatious new singles “WET” (93k Spotify streams), “Girls Don't Cheat” (76k streams), and “Body Favors” (64k streams), released back-to-back since May and landing on editorial playlists R&B Weekly and Bounce. While “Body Favors” recently experienced a viral moment on X, Stephens is also a rising star through her relatable and entertaining TikTok presence, where she has 18.2k followers. Since June, her Spotify monthly listeners have increased from 54k to 77k.
Gigi Perez
Chartmetric Artist Rank: 1,191
Genre: Indie folk
Country: U.S.
The first single from Brooklyn singer-songwriter Gigi Perez, 2021’s “Sometimes (Backwood),” was a melancholic track in the classic bedroom folk song tradition of sounding simultaneously intimate and far away. Since its release, it’s amassed 116 million streams on Spotify and was followed by a 2023 EP, How to Catch a Falling Knife. Perez has toured with d4vd and Noah Cyrus — a good summation of her vibe, which falls somewhere between emo and folk-pop. Her newest track and the third in a string of 2024 singles, “Sailor Song,” has landed at the top of Spotify’s “big on the internet,” and has gotten 58.5 million streams since its official release just over a month ago. It’s akin to the music of girl in red, in both sonics and virality — the song’s popularity on TikTok, even when it was just a demo audio posted by Perez, stems not only from posts (over 410k across different uploads) but fan covers and lyric breakdowns; Perez herself has 365k followers on the platform, and describes her music as “sims 2 emo lesbian love story but in the medium of music.”
KATSEYE
Chartmetric Artist Rank: 269
Genre: Pop
Country: U.S.
Last November, Geffen Records and HYBE, the entertainment company responsible for launching K-pop superstars BTS, announced that they had selected 6 members to be in a first-of-its-kind global girl group: KATSEYE, with members from South Korea, the United States, the Philippines, and Switzerland. Last year, the world got to know them and 14 other contestants as they competed in an intense training program to make it into the group. The competition was aired as a reality show on YouTube called The Debut: Dream Academy (we covered the hype around the show last year in a Trend of the Week). KATSEYE just released their hyperpop and R&B debut EP, SIS (Soft Is Strong), on August 16, along with a Netflix documentary series called Pop Star Academy: KATSEYE, which goes behind the scenes into the making of both the show and the group. All the buzz has paid off: KATSEYE’s Spotify monthly listeners have multiplied by over fivefold in the last month, landing them at 6.76 million monthly listeners.
JADE
Chartmetric Artist Rank: 2,775
Genre: Pop
Country: U.K.
You might not know Jade Thirlwall’s name yet, but you’ve heard her music. The British singer-songwriter has been making pop songs for over a decade as a member of the critically acclaimed girl group, Little Mix, who formed on The X Factor in 2011. They went on hiatus in 2022, and since then, Jade has been working on a solo debut. On July 19, she released her experimental pop track “Angel of My Dreams,” which samples Sandie Shaw's 1967 song “Puppet on a String.” The track reached a peak of #7 on the UK Singles Chart, boosted in part by buzz created on TikTok, where fake (and real) snippets of the song kept leaking. Since then, her profile has continued to grow. In the last month, her Spotify monthly listeners increased by 24% for a total of 2.76 million.
Portions of this piece are included in Sound Signal, a bi-weekly newsletter from Third Bridge Creative. Sign up here.
Visualizations by Nicki Camberg and cover image by Crasianne Tirado; data as of Sept. 6, 2024.
