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Libianca will always remember last year’s Friendsgiving — after all, she ran to the bathroom sobbing in the middle of it.
The former contestant on The Voice had recently quit her job as an independent living skills worker, and had been questioning her future as a professional singer. She was no longer interested in covering already established hits; she wanted to create a life-changing one of her own.
“I was talking to God, [thinking], ‘This life is so hard.’ I don’t know what the next step is, but I was working, working, and working, and not seeing anything in return,” she recalls over Zoom.
But the Friendsgiving breakdown left her inspired, and later in November, the embattled singer — who has been diagnosed with cyclothymia, a rare mood disorder that can cause extreme emotional highs and lows — chose to detail her pain through songwriting. She went on YouTube and found a beat that captured her discomfort, then recorded on Apple’s Logic Pro. Within a day, what began as a therapy session formed the foundation for “People,” the 22-year-old R&B-Afrobeats artist’s breakout hit and long-awaited ticket to stardom.
Born in Minnesota, Libianca Kenzonkinboum Fonji moved to Cameroon with her family when she was 4. There, she drew inspiration from her first babysitter, who enjoyed singing while cleaning around the house. Their relationship sparked Libianca’s initial love for singing, and by the age of 10, she began writing her own songs.
At 13, she moved back to Minnesota and joined a local choir, learning how to engineer, record and mix her vocals soon after. By her late teens, she was covering songs like SZA’s “Good Days” and Billie Eilish’s “Everything I Wanted,” the latter of which she also performed on The Voice in 2021.
Though she was ultimately eliminated after making the show’s top 20, her departure was soon followed by a string of independent one-off releases, including her cover of “Everything I Wanted” at the end of 2021 and a spin on Doja Cat’s “Woman” the following spring.
Libianca photographed on March 17, 2023 in Los Angeles.
Liam Woods
Yet the original single “People” is the one that cut through — and is a shining example of how sourcing your pain can have impactful results. While the track bursts with Afrobeats flavor, poignant lyrics like the opening line “I’ve been drinking more alcohol for the past five days/Did you check on me? Now, did you look for me?” ground the song while addressing the impact of substance abuse on mental health.
Libianca played the song for her manager M3tro, whom she met five years ago during her time as a student at the University of Minnesota (the two creatives became fast friends, and eventually roommates). And while he raved about the record, he instantly became concerned while listening to the lyrics. “Once she played the song, I asked her, ‘I know something’s going on, but what’s up?’ ” M3tro remembers. “That’s when I was like, ‘I really have to pay more attention.’ ”
Several days after writing and recording the breakthrough hit, Libianca posted a teaser clip on TikTok in which she was holding a bottle of wine as a snippet of the song played in the background. According to M3tro, within 30 minutes of uploading the clip, likes and comments started flooding her notifications. “Waking up the next morning to so many people feeling so connected to the song [was special],” Libianca says. “I saw families sending me videos of their babies singing the song, and [had] women messaging me about the sh-t that they go through in their homes and how this song needs to drop ASAP because it’s calling to their hearts.”
To date, the viral clip has compiled more than 4.8 million views on TikTok. Less than a week after the initial post, she upped the ante with a live rendition of the track in front of a simple color backdrop. The DIY clip has since earned 1.3 million views on Instagram and 2.5 million on TikTok.
The buzz surrounding the unreleased track soon caught the attention of acclaimed U.K. producer Jae5, who quickly reached out in hopes of signing Libianca to his 5K Records label, and did so last December — just one month after her memorable Friendsgiving. Once the deal was done, Jae quickly mixed the record and helped with the song’s final arrangement before its official release on Dec. 6.
“When it comes to music, that man is my big brother for life,” says M3tro of Jae5. “Not only is he that, but he’s also humble and genuine. He comes in like, ‘How can the music be the best way it needs to be?’ And we applaud him for that.”
Libianca (left) and M3tro photographed on March 17, 2023 in Los Angeles.
Liam Woods
“People” debuted on the Billboard U.S. Afrobeats Songs chart in mid-December — where it has held at a No. 2 high since January — and has 288.7 million official on-demand global streams through March 30, according to Luminate. The song also became Libianca’s first entry on the Billboard Global 200 and Billboard Global Excl U.S. charts. And in March, she dropped multiple remixes to maximize the crossover momentum, including one with fellow Afrobeats stars Omah Lay and Ayra Starr and another with Irish singer-songwriter Cian Ducrot.
“We were very particular about who else was gonna hop on this song, because the message is very crystal-clear,” says Libianca. “[‘People’] is very vulnerable, and anyone that comes on there has to be vulnerable as well in their own way.”
Libianca says that her next single, due later this month, will be about “a bunch of real sh-t we don’t like to talk about.” An EP will soon follow. “It doesn’t have to be sad, per se, but if it’s not something I can feel, I’m not gon’ release it,” she explains. “I want every single one of my songs to be an experience rather than just doing what I need to do to get the next check.”
A version of this story originally appeared in the April 1, 2023, issue of Billboard.
While 26-year-old rapper-singer Baby Tate had her eye on music stardom since she was a little girl, she also had an even more pressing childhood dream: becoming a cheerleader. “I was a huge Bring It On fan,” she says of the 2000 cult classic film. “I wanted to be a cheerleader real bad but I went to a performing arts high school, so we had no sports at all.”
Although she never had the chance to yell “go team!” from the sidelines at a high school football game, she still achieved her pom-pom filled dreams on her own terms when the cheer-tastic “Hey, Mickey!” — her 2016 single interpolating Toni Basil’s 1982 Billboard Hot 100-topper “Mickey,” which itself was a cover of 1979’s “Kitty” by British pop group Racey — began bubbling up on TikTok, seven years after its initial release. “It’s really crazy the things that that app can do,” she says today, biting into an egg roll at Hollywood’s Luv2eat Thai Bistro.
The latest example of the TikTok-virality-to-charts pipeline, “Hey Mickey!” began racking up listens in January, after a few K-pop fans began using the sound on edits of their favorite acts, including Stray Kids and BIBI, and posting to social media. Soon after, Quinn Goydish — who manages Tate alongside LVRN partner/executive vp/GM Amber Grimes — noticed a bump in the song’s daily plays, from dozens of streams to a few thousand. “I feel like for Quinn, checking my Spotify for Artists is his daily newspaper,” jokes Tate. Since, the song has accumulated more than 1.6 million user-created videos on TikTok and grown into her first entry on multiple Billboard charts.
At the time of the song’s inception, she was a budding artist performing as Yung Baby Tate and living in her hometown of Atlanta. She recalls rocking “synthetic wigs,” seeing some SoundCloud success and bringing in a couple hundred dollars per show. “I remember a song doing 300 streams in a day and I was so excited,” she says. “It’s so crazy how [our] perspective of success can change.”
Baby Tate photographed on February 22, 2023 in Los Angeles.
Joelle Grace Taylor
After receiving the beat from a producer who often sent sounds her way, Tate recorded Basil’s famous “Mickey” chant atop the wonky production on a Snowball USB microphone, and it stuck. The lyrics tell the story of an attractive guy named Mickey that Tate meets and goes out with, only to find out that he’s gay. “My whole schooling was in performing arts and I was always surrounded by LGBT culture and community, so for me, the people that I was dating in high school were gay,” she explains with a giggle. “[‘Hey Mickey!’] was the best song of all of my old songs to go viral.”
Since then, she’s dropped the “Yung,” signed a label deal with Warner Records in 2021 and management deal with LVRN in 2022. Warner initially approached Tate in 2019, she says: “I wasn’t ready mentally. I was kind of all over the place as far as where I wanted to go with my music.”
But Tate says she grew a lot during the pandemic, and in December 2020, she released one of her most successful singles “I Am,” through a partnership with Issa Rae’s label Raedio, as part of her EP After the Rain (Tate is no longer affiliated with Raedio). Her monthly Spotify listeners have ballooned to 10.6 million and gone are the days of a few hundred dollars per show.
Baby Tate photographed on February 22, 2023 in Los Angeles.
Joelle Grace Taylor
As soon as Tate’s management team caught wind of “Hey Mickey!” bubbling up, the dynamic pair of Goydish and Grimes — who have known each other for over a decade — kicked things into high gear, meticulously planning TikTok strategy, rereleases and remix ideas. “Tate immediately leaning in on TikTok was the first thing that helped,” says Goydish. “We also decided to invest in a TikTok campaign. The second we saw an opportunity, we put money into outside influencers.”
By early February, “Hey, Mickey!” had reached Nos. 21 and 40 on Billboard‘s Hot Rap Songs and Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs charts, respectively, as well as a No. 5 high on the Bubbling Under Hot 100 list.
Tate’s “Hey Mickey!” visual — directed and choreographed by Nicole Kirkland — then amassed nearly two million views in a week, following its Feb. 20 release, and perfectly portrayed the story of Tate’s almost-boyfriend, Mickey. “Jumping on a [music] video as fast as we could made all the difference,” Grimes says. “We were able to capitalize in less than three months off of a visual to keep this going.” The same week, Tate’s team also released Hey, Mickey! — Full Pack, an EP including sped up, bass-boosted and slowed down versions of the song, a new strategy popularized by TikTok.
Two official remixes for the track are also set to release, the first being a Jersey Club mix from the famed DJ Smallz, paying homage to Tate’s East Coast roots, where she spent summers in New Jersey with her mom’s side of the family as a kid, learning the latest dance crazes and sharing Atlanta staples like Dem Franchise Boyz’s “Lean Wit It Rock Wit It” with her cousins. The second remix will arrive with what Tate calls the “official” music video (with a possible cameo from Bring It On star Gabrielle Union) and include one or two surprise features, including a fellow woman rapper. “It’s super cute and fun and girly,” she says. “But if the other person gets on, it’s still gonna be fun but not so girly. It’ll be gworly.”
Ahead of an album on the horizon, which she hopes to release this year, Tate moved to Los Angeles last month. “This is the first project that I’m beginning from scratch with both Warner and LVRN by my side, so I’m really excited to get into the creation of it,” she says, adding that she has yet to make a single song for the album. “There may be some songs that I’ve created throughout my long history of making music that might fit, but for the most part, I want to just start with a clean slate.”
From left: Amber Grimes, Baby Tate, and Quinn Goydish photographed on February 22, 2023 in Los Angeles.
Joelle Grace Taylor
A version of this story will appear in the March 11, 2023, issue of Billboard.
In early 2022, charlieonnafriday had just finished recording the last song for his first project and was about to drive away from the studio. Then his producer Tyler Dopps called. “He was like, ‘Wait, there’s one more thing that we have to do before you leave,’” the 19-year-old artist recalls. Dopps played him a languid loop, and the singer-rapper wrote down the lyrics that ultimately became the hook to his pop-leaning breakup track, “Enough.”
The song wasn’t ready at the time to make the project, so he stashed it away in his phone. But months later, ready or not, “Enough” took off on social media. While driving to Los Angeles from his native Seattle with a friend last June, charlieonnafriday (born Charlie Finch) played the song and belted along to the chorus — which his friend filmed and posted on TikTok. The clip not only went viral but became charlieonnafriday’s breakthrough hit — two things he’d been building toward since childhood.
He started uploading vlogs to YouTube at eight years old and continued creating content on TikTok with his friends throughout high school. Inspired by his hometown hero Macklemore, he developed an interest in music, and in the eighth grade, after seeing his friend’s older brother producing in a home studio, started making his own. Over the next few years, the two stockpiled “hundreds of songs” as charlieonnafriday honed his rap skills during their daily sessions. “Every time I made a song, I felt like I was getting better slowly,” he says. “That’s what really interested me. I wanted to see how far I could take it and how good I could get.”
After taking a break to focus on school and football, he was motivated by the pandemic lockdown to pick the craft back up — this time on his own. Charlieonafriday started recording with Logic Pro and leaned heavily on YouTube tutorials to show him the ropes, admitting the hardest part was learning how to mix his own vocals. On the production side, he decided to trade in the trap drums that grounded his early music for more melodic beats, creating a pop-rap hybrid. “The artist always has that vision in their head,” he says, “but if you know how to do it, then it’s seamless.”
Charlieonnafriday photographed on January 23, 2023 in Los Angeles.
Michelle Genevieve Gonzales
He then “started flooding TikTok” with snippets of new songs — advising viewers to “live every day like it’s Friday,” inspiring his moniker — in hopes of building a fan base outside of Seattle. At the start of 2021, he made his first significant splash when he teased the intoxicating “After Hours.” Months later, the song caught the attention of Geoff Ogunlesi, CEO of The Ogunlesi Group, who signed on to co-manage charlieonnafriday (along with the company’s Sam Weiss, charlieonnafriday’s day-to-day manager, as well as Anthony and Ameer Brown, CEO and president, respectively, of digital marketing company Breakr). By the end of the year, “After Hours” surged to a new level of virality, with two live performance clips that have collected more than 13 million views.
Record labels were calling, but Ogunlesi was intent on waiting for the rising artist to release a body of work before committing to a deal. “It was risky because in this music landscape, moments are fleeting,” he admits. “You’re rolling the dice where, if and when ‘After Hours’ dies down, do the labels disappear? Do you lose an opportunity? [But] we felt really strong with our strategy.”
The artist’s debut project, the eight-track Onnafriday, arrived in April 2022 and soon after, he started taking meetings with the labels competing for him. He was immediately sold on Island, saying he was swayed by the label’s “family vibe,” and signed a record deal that summer. “A lot of the labels I met with two or three people, but with Island, I met everybody,” he says. “I knew that Island would put in a lot of effort. Labels are amazing for dumping gas on a flame.”
But “Enough” still didn’t have more than a refrain at that point — and as it began to take off online, he started feeling the pressure. He recalls with a laugh his team’s mentality: “Get [co-writer] Club 97, Tyler [Dopps] and Charlie in a room and finish it, [because] there are videos with five million views on a song that’s not done.”
“Enough” was finally released in August, and soon crossed over from social media to streaming services to radio airwaves — which Ogunlesi refers to as “icing on the cake” — fueled by a promotional run set up by the label. “At the end of the day, a lot of life is built on relationships,” says Ogunlesi. “Nothing really beats meeting people, winning them over [and] having programmers that are fans.” By November, charlieonnafriday made his debut on Billboard’s Pop Airplay chart, where “Enough” has since reached a No. 22 high on charts dated Jan. 28.
Having recently moved to Los Angeles — where he lives in a house “full of the same homies I started with” — charlieonnafriday kicked the year off with his new single “That’s What I Get,” amid a 10-date college tour across the country that wraps in February. He’ll then head overseas, playing to some of the biggest crowds of his career and opening for an artist he calls “one of the greatest performers ever”: Macklemore. And though hesitant on announcing a release date, he’s planning to drop a deluxe version of Onnafriday later this year.
“We’re not just trying to build a song, we’re trying to build an artist,” says Ogunlesi. “It has to extend beyond just one moment.”
Charlieonnafriday and Geoff Ogunlesi photographed on January 23, 2023 in Los Angeles.
Michelle Genevieve Gonzales
A version of this story originally appeared in the Feb. 4, 2023, issue of Billboard.
Just before 2022 came to a close, Phony Ppl ended the year on a hard-earned high. One month after releasing its third album, Euphonyus, in November, the act celebrated with a pair of nearly sold-out shows at Sounds of Brazil in Manhattan’s Hudson Square neighborhood. The five-piece band opened the sets with “Nowhere But Up,” an uptempo, feel-good track that was beginning to take off at radio.
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“It’s one of those songs that’s just as easy to digest for a newcomer as a fan that’s been there for 25 shows in a row,” says drummer Matt “Maffyuu” Byas. “It invokes a lot of energy and optimism” — two things the band has in spades. Last year, Phony Ppl embarked on an 18-date Nowhere But Up tour, testing the song live long before it arrived.
Clockwise from top left: Matt “Maffyuu” Byas, Elijah Rawk, Aja Grant, Elbee Thrie and Bari Bass of Phony Ppl photographed on December 28, 2022 at S.O.B.’s in New York, NY.
Krista Schlueter
Formed as a nine-piece collective in Brooklyn in 2010, Phony Ppl’s members all met in high school, and the current lineup is a tight roster of classically trained musicians, including Byas, vocalist Elbee Thrie, guitarist Elijah Rawk and brothers Aja Grant (keyboard) and Bari Bass (bass). Phony Ppl’s debut, Yesterday’s Tomorrow, arrived in 2015 as a blend of soul, R&B, jazz and rock. Its second album, 2018’s mō’zā-ik, was the first official release on 300 Entertainment following a distribution deal in 2014, development deal in 2017 and a record deal at the start of 2020.
“The way they treat one another and the democratic style in which they operate is a very unique situation,” says the band’s manager Jon Kaslow, who worked as Kid Cudi’s tour DJ and musical director before getting into management (he first met Phony Ppl through former member Dyme-A-Duzin). “Transparently, sometimes you want someone to just say, ‘It’s my way or the highway,’ because then a decision gets made. But that’s not who they are and that’s not what our team is.”
“The thing about Phony Ppl is we have different angles of thinking about everything,” adds Grant. “We’ve put trust in each other.”
Clockwise from top left: Aja Grant, Matt “Maffyuu” Byas, Elijah Rawk, Elbee Thrie and Bari Bass of Phony Ppl photographed on December 28, 2022 at S.O.B.’s in New York, NY.
Krista Schlueter
The sunny outlook of “Nowhere But Up” not only taps into Phony Ppl at its core, but signals the return of its mainstream momentum. The band hit a stride at the top of 2020 thanks to a collaboration with 300 Entertainment labelmate Megan Thee Stallion titled “Fkn Around.” The hand-clapping groove, which they live debuted during Meg’s NPR Tiny Desk concert in 2019, reached No. 7 on Billboard’s Adult R&B Airplay chart and put Phony Ppl on radio’s radar.
Then, the pandemic hit. “Especially since we couldn’t tour, they were great about doing call-ins and Instagram Lives with program directors and DJs at stations that were supporting the record,” says Kaslow. “The band learned that radio is important and our very strong performance on ‘Fkn Around’ gave us that initial momentum.”
And though the pandemic also delayed Euphonyus longer than the band would have liked, they now see the extra time as something that improved the album. “It allowed us time to really zero in,” says Byas. “And a lot of tracks that in 2019 were considered done, we got to open those back up — and make new songs.”
Grant recalls the night that producer Ivan Barias (who the band worked with on “Fkn Around”) hit him up with the idea for “Nowhere But Up” back in 2020. “At like, two in the morning, he was like, ‘Yo, Aja, listen to this song.’ I was thinking he was trying to put me on to something and I was like, ‘Ivan, I know this song.’ I’m not that young.”
Barias had sent him “I Didn’t Mean To Turn You On,” the synth-funk debut hit from mid-80’s rhythmic pop star Cherrelle. The producer then instructed him to open Ableton and play the chords, part of what Grant now calls “an experiment” during which the two jammed over Zoom. Weeks later, the band met in Philadelphia to finish recording the album and decided to add the new track. “When the music was presented, I just felt fireworks,” recalls Thrie.
But when he learned the song was built on a sample (unlike his bandmate, he was initially unfamiliar with the Cherrelle hit, written by songwriting duo Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis) he had hesitations. “My emotions changed about the idea. ‘How can I still feel excited writing this music knowing it’s not something we created from scratch?’ ” he questioned. “But at a certain point I was like, ‘Let’s just do what we can do.’ If we were to sample something, let’s make it the best we can.”
“It keeps songs and artists’ memories alive and sends it down another generation,” says Bass of sampling. “And I think that’s a lesson that we were learning.” Adds Rawk: “It’s important that whatever we’re trying to do, our intention matches our execution.”
From left: Bari Bass, Matt “Maffyuu” Byas, Elbee Thrie, Elijah Rawk and Aja Grant of Phony Ppl photographed on December 28, 2022 at S.O.B.’s in New York, NY.
Krista Schlueter
The end result was exactly what the band and its team had hoped for: a growing radio smash. Kaslow credits 300’s Shadow Stokes, executive vp of promotions, for getting Phony Ppl right back on the airwaves — and the airplay charts — today, as if no time had passed. “He went back and did the rounds with a lot of people. Like, ‘Hey, remember these guys that had that record with Meg? This is their new song.’ ” As a result, “Nowhere But Up” currently sits at No. 30 on the R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay and could soon enter the top 10 on Adult R&B Airplay.
And though Kaslow admits he sent “Nowhere But Up” to some A&Rs to see about a potential feature, he believes it was important for the band to have a hit without another name attached. Still, Thrie views the song as a collaboration of sorts, citing Jam and Lewis as unofficial features. “They cleared it, but I hope that they really enjoy the song,” he says. “And they’re not like, ‘These young motherf–kers just ran with our s–t!’ ”
Soon, it will become a sprint. Kaslow is preparing to get Phony Ppl back to “a full-time touring act, both domestically and internationally.” “Phony Ppl’s superpower is their live show,” says Lallie Jones, vp of marketing for 300 Entertainment, while teasing a global tour and upcoming festival appearances.
Meanwhile, the band is brainstorming just how far its hit can go — from a 50-piece orchestral rendition to a FIFA placement to becoming an airline’s official song. Grant’s wish is a bit more simple: “I just really hope this song goes nowhere but up — and that’s the corniest thing I could say.”
From left: Matt “Maffyuu” Byas, Aja Grant, Elbee Thrie, Bari Bass and Elijah Rawk of Phony Ppl and Jonathan Kaslow photographed on December 28, 2022 at S.O.B.’s in New York, NY.
Krista Schlueter
Three years ago, Rosa Linn was writing songs in her free time and dreaming of a career in music. But she never expected a performance at a local village festival in her native Armenia would be her ticket to stardom.
Her standout delivery of an original rock song, backed by her band of friends, floored talent scouts in the crowd from record label Nvak Collective. Soon after, the team invited her to attend the company’s upcoming songwriting camp for women. “We really recognize the fact that talent is equally distributed — but opportunity isn’t,” says Tamar Kaprelian, Nvak Collective co-founder and Rosa Linn’s manager since last July, when the rising singer-songwriter also signed to the label.
Kaprelian says that while Rosa Linn was more introverted than the other songwriters at the camp, her personality beamed through the lyrics she wrote independently after songwriting lessons. When Rosa Linn returned to class one day, she presented the first verse of a folksy pop song about hopelessly ruminating over a romantic interest. That early draft became “Snap,” the global crossover hit that has catapulted her career and led to her first Billboard No. 1.
Inspired by her “first real love” in 2017 during her time as an exchange student in the United States, Rosa Linn returned home to Armenia feeling hung up. “I wrote about my readjustment process and mental state,” the 22-year-old says. “It was a very hard period for me. It’s just about life, and I think that’s why people relate to it.” Adds Kaprelian: “She came in with those deep lyrics, and I was like, ‘There’s something special here.’ ”
Over the next two-and-a-half years Rosa Linn fleshed out the rest of the song ahead of its official release this March. She says that the final product is “very close” to the original demo, and includes vocals she cut in a hotel room, as well as her own guitar playing, “even though I’m not the greatest guitar player. That’s why the song has a vulnerable feeling. It’s honest and not perfect.”
Kaprelian sent the track to local radio stations, but was determined to get the song noticed on a larger level, eventually submitting it as an applicant to represent Armenia at the Eurovision Song Contest 2022. Rosa Linn was ultimately chosen for the televised music competition this May (besting a finalist entry submitted by one of her friends), where she performed “Snap” to 161 million people across Europe. She placed 20th.
“We really saw it as a steppingstone,” Kaprelian reflects. “When she didn’t rank well, we could have been like, ‘We tried. Let’s move on to another song.’ Instead, we decided to double down on ‘Snap’ and I know that it might not have seemed smart, but we really went hard in the TikTok strategy.”
Rosa Linn (left) and Tamar Kaprelian photographed on November 11, 2022 in Malibu, Calif.
Martha Galvan
Turns out it was the smartest thing they could have done. Rosa Linn began “experimenting” with different videos on the platform, including acoustic performances, remixes and POV-style clips showing the behind-the-scenes action at Eurovision. And after a fan-made, sped-up version of the track was uploaded to TikTok, “Snap” began to go viral.
More than one million videos were uploaded to the platform using the quicker, pitched-up version of “Snap,” with users showing everything from favorite recipes to sweet moments with their pets, as well as participating in a wholesome trend in which people highlighted the “color palette” of their hair, skin and eyes. Its popularity on TikTok pushed “Snap” up the Billboard charts, leading to its Billboard Hot 100 debut at No. 97 on the Sept. 3-dated chart. It has since reached a No. 82 high and spent seven weeks at No. 1 on Adult Alternative Airplay. “After [seeing the song do well], that’s when I knew it was real,” Rosa Linn says. “‘Snap’ gave me the best and most productive year of my life.”
It also led to a major-label deal with Columbia Records, which Rosa Linn signed in August. The label has already set the artist up with top songwriters and producers, including a recent session in Los Angeles with Diane Warren and Dan Wilson. In late October, she released her follow-up single “WDIA (Would Do It Again)” with fellow Eurovision star Duncan Laurence — and then capped the month with her late-night television debut on The Late Late Show with James Corden. Rosa Linn is now in the process of curating her sound to represent her artistry, with hopes of releasing a debut studio album. “I’m very picky,” she says, noting she has no timeline in mind for her full-length. “I wrote a lot of songs in the past three years, but none of them got released because [then] I would write another and it was better. This period is me growing as a songwriter and trying to improve.”
“I’m always going to stay personal and honest,” she continues. “My music is a representation of what I’ve gone through. Coming from Armenia and now living my dream is unbelievable.”
Rosa Linn photographed on November 11, 2022 in Malibu, Calif.
Martha Galvan
A version of this story will appear in the Dec. 10, 2022, issue of Billboard.
In May, regional Mexican act Grupo Frontera performed at Houston nightclub El Rodeo Disco to approximately 300 people. Three months later, in August, the act returned, and this time, much to the surprise of 19-year-old vocalist and bajo quinto player Adelaido “Payo” Solis III, the crowd had increased to 3,000. “I had to take off my in-ear to listen to everyone sing with us,” he remembers. “This was a dream come true.”
The experience would have been unfathomable a year ago, when Grupo Frontera was a local band from the Texas border town McAllen, creating music merely as a hobby. After recruiting Solis, fresh out of high school, into its now six-man ensemble — also comprised of Juan Javier Cantú, 29 (vocalist and accordionist), Julian Peña Jr., 26 (percussionist and animator), Alberto “Beto” Acosta, 30 (bajo quinto), Carlos Guerrero, 28 (drums), and Carlos Zamora, 32 (bass) — the group officially launched this March with an independently released debut EP that contained four cover songs, including Diego Verdaguer’s “La Ladrona.” “When choosing our covers, we decided to focus on timeless pop songs,” says Peña.
But it was a one-off released just one month later — their norteño rendition of “No Se Va,” a 2019 single by Colombian folk-pop group Morat — that catapulted them to fame. “We practiced that song just 16 hours before recording it,” says Peña. “Payo began singing it, then I added rhythms with the congas, and then Beto followed with the bajo quinto, and we all stared at each other thinking, ‘Wow, this sounds cool.’ We practiced it three times on a Wednesday, and the next day we recorded it live in one take.”
Following its release on April 28, its music video gained steam on YouTube on the heels of the EP, though at first the band still “didn’t understand why” it was performing so well, says Peña. “Then we went on TikTok.” Its engagement has sustained momentum on the platform, ultimately exploding due to a video from September that shows a suave man named Elmer and his dance partner, Erika, moving in rhythm to the song in Chihuahua, Mexico. The clip, which has now amassed more than 12 million views, “gave the song the push it needed to get to another level,” says Peña.
“No Se Va” debuted on Billboard‘s Hot Latin Songs chart in September and has since climbed to No. 4. Meanwhile, the track became only the fifth regional Mexican song in Hot 100 history, reaching a No. 57 high after entering the all-genre songs chart in early October. “Honestly, I think it was the seasoning that we put with the congas,” Cantú says of its runaway success. “It doesn’t sound like your typical norteño song; in fact, it sounds like something fresh with that reggaetón vibe.”
Despite Grupo Frontera’s success with its cover version, Morat’s original “No Se Va” has yet to appear on any Billboard charts (though the band did reach the Billboard Global Excl. U.S. chart in June with “Paris,” a collaboration with Argentine rapper Duki). While Grupo Frontera has not had any communication yet with Morat, Cantú insists the act deserves all the credit. “We wanted to pay tribute to a group that many of us admire,” he continues.
Amid all of its recent success, Grupo Frontera has added indie record label VHR Music founder Victor Ruiz as its manager. Ruiz — also the vocalist of Grupo Zaaz and manager of a handful of other Texas-based groups — additionally serves as the band’s booking agent and has already secured various performances in Texas, Arizona, North Carolina, New York, California, Florida and Mexico. Plus, he’s worked with the group to help boost its visibility, insisting on the importance of vlogging for each member. “I want them to get to the point that everyone can identify who’s who in the group,” he says. “People love seeing the intimacy of an artist, how they prepare for their shows and how they are behind the scenes.”
But beyond touring and vlogging, Grupo Frontera wants to keep testing its success as an independent act — even after multiple record labels have made generous offers, according to Ruiz. Adds Cantú: “I’m not saying that we won’t ever sign with a label but for now, we’re very happy this way. We want to see how far we can get as indie artists.”
Todd Spoth
The band plans to flood the space with new material, starting with a recent song titled “Vete.” Grupo Frontera aims to release at least five more original tracks before the end of 2022, with some help from reigning Latin Grammy producer of the year winner — and fellow McAllen native — Edgar Barrera. “I’m worried that they’ll become a one-hit wonder, and that’s why I tell them they need to release music constantly because if not, the momentum fades away,” Ruiz says.
“You’d think we’ve been playing together for 10 years, but we’ve only been out for eight months,” Cantú adds. “I still can’t believe everything that’s happening to us.”
A version of this story will appear in the Nov. 5, 2022, issue of Billboard.