cousin.world is a regular newsletter on global music.

Each week, I’ll update one of the following playlists with 10 ascendant tracks from world markets and provide analysis to explain how they’re breaking:

• run ⇡ — club tracks from euro & UK dancefloors

• cherry soda ⚭ — breaking k/c/p-pop, city pop and indie

• the grid ✚ — sounds of urbano, reggaeton, funk

• magnitude △ — afrobeat, dancehall and amapiano rising

Today, magnitude △ looks at one of the fastest-rising tracks in the world from Tyla, COLORS Studios’ new partnership with Spotify Africa, the first signing to Burna Boy’s label 7G plus new ones from Ninho, Ayra Starr and The Ascension.

Next week, it’s back to run ⇡ again for breaking club tracks out of the UK and Europe.

Thank you for tuning in for two months ❤️ 

magnitude △

1. Tyla — ‘Water’ (South Africa)

This song has been on a ride since it was released in July.

Responsible for the huge TikTok dance challenge that I’m sure you’ve already seen, Tyla’s song ‘Water’ has scaled pretty much every chart you can think of in the last 10 weeks. It’s currently #1 on Billboard’s afrobeats chart, #4 on the UK singles chart and just broke into the top 10 most-streamed tracks on Spotify globally. On Tuesday night, Tyla made her US TV debut performing the song for Jimmy Fallon.

TIME (among others) have written about the now-famous dance challenge, started by Tyla and her choreographer Litchi in late July/early August. The trend picked up in South Africa around early September before broadening to include markets like Nigeria. These are the TikTok analytics for the song in SA showing creates increasing around then and peaking a few weeks ago, by which time the track was already a huge smash at streaming globally.

There are now over 883k videos using the sound on the platform accounting for 1.4bn views (per Chartmetric). Whenever a track has this kind of trajectory on TikTok, it enters into a set of algorithmic playlists dedicated to TikTok trends and viral hits, which in turn broadens the audience for the track globally. As is often the case with afrobeats and amapiano, Tyla’s biggest streaming city is now London with approaching half a million monthly listeners on Spotify. Meanwhile on YouTube, South Africa is Tyla’s fourth largest market for monthly views behind the Philippines, Brazil and the US.

In 2021, Tyla signed a joint deal with Epic Records (Sony) and a Johannesburg-and-NYC-based label called Fax Records, releasing her first single ‘Getting Late’. At the time, Epic CEO Sylvia Rhone said she had “all the makings of a career superstar” (per Hits). ‘Water’ is her fifth single under this development deal which is clearly working pretty well.

According to the same TIME piece I linked to above, Tyla will release her debut EP next month.

2. Xenia Manasseh — ‘Wild Ride’ (Kenya)

Last week, COLORS announced a partnership with Spotify Africa.

The collab saw both parties organise a writing camp in Nairobi, Kenya for local R&B artists. COLORS will release one session per week from participants in the writing camp throughout autumn. The whole thing has been organised around Spotify Africa’s Tantalizers, their flagship playlist for afro-R&B artists.

Xenia Manasseh, one of the 18 participants, recorded her song ‘Wild Ride’ for the latest episode of the series. Manasseh is signed to Apple’s artist services company Platoon which has had a strong presence in South Africa since their expansion into the market in 2018. A lot more info about that in this Billboard interview with Platoon’s South Africa born CEO Denzyl Feigelson.

Spotify do a lot of IRL events and partnerships to promote their flagship playlists. Six years ago, Spotify UK held their first live event at Alexandra Palace as part of their Who We Be programming, which is now an annual event and key piece of the UK’s streaming infrastructure.

Somewhat on the other end of the spectrum, they also recently held a Midsommar-esque fireside dinner to launch their new folk playlist juniper. All of these partnerships can be read about in detail on their Newsroom page which I find pretty useful to better understand what Spotify are focusing on. There’s also an interview with the participants of the Nairobi writing camp, including Xenia Manasseh, which you can read here.

3. Musgan, DJ Obi — ‘Bùje’ (Nigeria)

It’s quite hard to find information about Burna Boy’s recently unveiled label 7G, perhaps because it was officially launched in the metaverse. Even so, this track ‘Bùje’ from Nigerian artists Musgan and DJ Obi is the first release on 7G, a label collective headed by Burna Boy and headquartered in Lagos, Nigeria.

‘Bùje’ came out one week ago and is currently holding the #2 spot on Spotify’s Viral 50 Nigeria. It seems that, save for two self-released singles you can find online, Musgan is starting with a relatively fresh slate. DJ Obi, on the other hand, is an institution in Lagos. He hosts a weekly Monday night party called DJ Obi’s House, inviting both local and international artists to perform alongside him and premiere new music. This is where ‘Bùje’ was first performed ahead of its official release.

There’s pretty much no other available information about the project or 7G Records as yet so watch this space.

4. Ninho, Ayra Starr — ‘No Love’ (Côte d'Ivoire/France)

As I touched on a bit last month, Boomplay is one of the most important streaming services serving Africa.

Within the Boomplay app, there are loads of different charts categorised by genre, by time period and for each of Boomplay’s active markets. This track ‘No Love’ by Ninho and Ayra Starr is in the #1 position on both the weekly and monthly Top 100 for Côte d'Ivoire.

This month, Music Ally published a Country Profile on Côte d'Ivoire (you can read it here if you are a Music Ally subscriber!) Within, the country is described as “one of the most dynamic music markets in the pan-African region [which] acts as a gateway to success across the continent for African artists.” That quote was given by Guy Constant Neza, Côte d'Ivoire’s Country Manager at Believe. Côte d'Ivoire is also expected to have one of the highest GDP growth rates across Africa’s key music territories at between 5-7% for 2023 (compared to 2-3% global average) making it a focus market for many music companies. Universal Music France opened their office in the market back in 2018 to better connect all the French-speaking markets worldwide.

Back to Ninho. This track ‘No Love’ is currently featured on huge flagship French playlists like Hits du Moment and Top 50 France but its popularity across Francophone Africa is more apparent on Apple Music, where the track peaked at #1 in pretty much all those markets including Côte d'Ivoire, Benin, Cameroon, and the DRC.

5. The Ascension — ‘I Said What I Said’ (Zimbabwe/South Africa)

The Ascension is (per Resident Advisor) “an immersive live experiment that combines South African electronic music — including global giants amapiano, gqom, and house — accompanied by ethereal vocal riffs and sound looping techniques.”

Officially, The Ascension are DJ Charisse C and multidisciplinary artist and vocalist Koek Sista. They both now live in London and first came to prominence after their Boiler Room debut in 2021. They’ve since performed at pretty much all the key arts institutions in London including the V&A, Fabric, Tate Modern, Somerset House and the Southbank Centre.

The duo were just profiled for Dazed’s On The Rise column, wherein Koek Sister explains her musical affinity to South Africa:

“I come from a country of music lovers. That’s just always been at the core of South African society. My mum is very into choral and gospel music and that’s influenced how I sing. I joined the choir when I was six years old. At family gatherings, we sing, we make music. When you’re out with your friends, you’re going to see DJs and experience music, live shows and things. Like Charisse said, it’s been at the centre of our friendships, and the world that I’ve built has been around music.”

The Ascension’s new self-titled EP is out now via Don’t Sleep.

+ Five More

6. Lisa Oduor-Noah — ‘For Keeps’ (Kenya)

The second of the two already-released sessions under the COLORS partnership with Spotify Africa is from Kenyan vocalist Lisa Oduor-Noah.

7. DJ Stokie, Eemoh — ‘Masithokoze’ (South Africa)

This track from DJ Stokie and Eemoh is currently covering Spotify’s flagship amapiano playlist AMAPIANO grooves.

8. Kizz Daniel — ‘My G’ (Nigeria)

Kizz Daniel’s new track ‘My G’ is out now via FlyBoy INC (distributed by EMPIRE). This cool microsite from Google Arts & Culture is worth a look if you are interested in his ascent and afrobeats in general.

9. AUNTY RAYZOR — ‘Tobaya’ (Nigeria)

This is the lead single from AUNTY RAYZOR’s album Viral Wreckage which came out last month on Hakuna Kulala. The album was selected as one of the best releases from September by Pan-African Music.

10. Rema, Ice Spice — ‘Pretty Girl’ (Nigeria/US)

One of the biggest stars of afrobeats, Rema, released his collaboration with Ice Spice this month. He talks to NPR here about his massive hit ‘Calm Down’ and the rise of afrobeats.

The Playlists