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

For run ⇡ #4, I’m looking at a Dutch producer who has the secret sauce for TikTok trends, plus new Deutschrap, German gabber, Belgian garage and a mid-career pivot from two of the UK’s most recognisable rappers.

This playlist is dedicated to club genre exports from the UK and Europe. Next week, cherry soda ⚭ explores new pop from markets across Asia.

Reply to chat, feel free to share 💌

run ⇡ 

1. Más Tiempo — ‘Can’t Play Myself (A Tribute To Amy)’ (UK)

On the cover of Mixmag this month are Skepta and Jammer, telling the story of their collaborative house project Más Tiempo which launched last summer on the terrace of DC-10 in Ibiza.

Their latest track ‘Can’t Play Myself’ featuring Amy Winehouse’s ‘Tears Dry…’ vocal is on basically the entire playlist suite for electronic music across the UK and Europe at the moment, with adds on mint (6m), Housewerk (1.9m), Massive Dance Hits (1.3m) and so on. Más Tiempo are also billed as a label imprint under Island Records rather than their own artist project, meaning that Skepta is the one pulling this dance audience into his existing one.

Skepta followed this release up pretty quickly with the five-track 48 Hours EP, a collaboration with UK rapper Ryder that landed last week. Launch track ‘#skeptacore pt.3’ has already pulled 2m streams and sits on key UK rap playlists like Who We Be (765k) and Rap UK (1.3m). Releasing these projects in parallel allows Skepta to significantly expand his potential audience while these campaigns are in play.

It’s exciting to see mid-career pivots like this. It’s also a really smart way to use the layout of commercial streaming, which is dominated by genre and mood-specific playlists, to your advantage. It’d be cool to see more artists make moves like this and release parallel artist projects in different genres.

Más Tiempo’s next big show is in front of 15k at Drumsheds in London.

2. YellowStraps — ‘Slowdown (girl what’s up)’ (Belgium)

YellowStraps is an artist from Brussels whose cover of French rapper Hamza’s ‘Slowdown’ is currently climbing viral charts across Europe.

First released way back in 2016, Hamza’s original version was taken from his second album Zombie Life. YellowStraps’ version was officially just released two weeks ago but first teased on socials back in September. Interestingly, at least by today’s standards, this track is more of an Instagram success story than a TikTok one.

YellowStraps uses their IG channel to regularly perform covers in the same format, sat side-by-side with their mirror image playing an accompaniment. Having sufficiently developed this audience over a long time, when this cover landed it travelled far and now sits at over 632k likes, kind of proving the rule that these episodic social ideas can take a long time to properly grow before becoming hugely useful.

Not many people have really interviewed YellowStraps yet but this one with CLASH around the release of their most recent album tentacle is worth a read.

3. Sonny Wern, Lyente, Quinten Circle, ZANA — ‘Dance For Me (1, 2, 3) [Stutter Techno]’ (Netherlands)

‘Dance For Me (1, 2, 3)’ was first released back in January without Sonny Wern, the producer responsible for the “Stutter Techno” version that has been enjoying a ride on TikTok since debuting in September. The track is about to hit 20m streams on Spotify.

This is Wern’s second big TikTok hit following ‘Red Lipstick’, a track he released in 2021 with Dutch producer duo HUTS (who also run his label HMG which is distributed by Virgin). He now has around 60k followers on the platform and is seemingly quite good at catalysing trends.

The world of EDM TikTok is complex. The platform is filled with small channels that have an outsized impact, as is the case with the account that was the fourth to post this song (the first three were Sonny Wern) who, despite having only 7.7k followers, pulled 4.4m views with this post. In contrast, a much bigger AI visuals channel called waivey_vibes (130k followers) was sixth to post the sound and achieved 100k views. The song also sat in the ASMR space pretty early on with some of the more successful early posts discussing how the production “makes their brain feel fuzzy”.

Later in the song’s release cycle, it was picked up by more established music creators on TikTok like BXT and DJs like Michael Amani whose posts grabbed 3.4 million views a piece. Viral Hits playlists provide access channels between TikTok and Spotify. The track moved through major ones like Viral Hits Deutschland (413k) and onto a ton of playlists dedicated to gaming, working out and my favourite: Bass Boosted Car 2023 🔥🔊. It’s now sitting on the biggest global genre playlists like mint (6m followers) and Dance Hits (3.8m) among so many others.

All pretty insane when you consider what this song actually sounds like.

4. YAKARY — ‘sonnenbank.mp3’ (Germany)

Brand new rap out of Germany from German-Kurdish artist YAKARY. ‘sonnenbank.mp3’ came out last Friday and has already peaked at #1 on Spotify Germany’s Top 50 chart.

YAKARY had a previous life as an artist called Cano (unclear if Kano made him change it) who released an album back in 2021 and two EPs in 2022. Despite this overhaul probably setting him back a little, YAKARY has managed to rebuild his audience and currently boasts 1.6m listeners mostly spread across Germany’s major cities.

Last month, Philipp Kaspar wrote a piece for the Chartmetric blog called The Sounds of Deutschrap and Germany's Thriving Hip-Hop Scene. Within, they highlight rap & hip hop (locally known as Deutschrap) as the biggest genre in the market, above pop, buoyed by the success of superstars like Luciano. The article also cites Luciano as a great example of a German rapper who has broken out of the confines of his local scene via collaborations with UK artists like Aitch and Central Cee.

It’d be great to see more UK artists adopting this approach to try and break into this otherwise locally-focused audience.

5. Zerb, Sofiya Nzau — ‘Mwaki’ (Kenya/Brazil)

TH3RD BRAIN is an independent electronic label based in LA and it just released this collaboration between Kenyan vocalist Sofiya Nzau and Brazilian producer Zerb earlier this month. The track peaked at #1 on Spotify’s Global Viral chart on November 16th just 6 days after its official release and is currently holding at #2. It was just selected as Pete Tong’s Essential New Tune on Radio 1 and is trending all across Europe.

TH3RD BRAIN is an artist management collective responsible for some major success stories in house and EDM, with producers like Gallant and ZHU on their books. Although the streams on this track seem reasonably strong, I think a creator campaign is what got them these chart results. This track was first posted to TikTok 10 days up front of release and picked up straight away by Hato DJ, a DJ and electronic music reviewer with 3.2m followers, as well as other similar pages like theonlymajed and Steve Cardigan. It was also posted four times by ADITONYA, a creator you can pay to use your track in some dopamine bait videos compiled with clips from Frozen and the Minions movie. On YouTube, the track has also been heavily reposted by big EDM channels like Chill Nation (10.7m followers) and Valiant (506k).

Alongside the track’s runaway success on global streaming platforms, it’s also becoming a hit in Kenya. 55k of Zerb’s 1.7m monthly listeners are based in Nairobi and both artists have been covered by Kenyan news platforms like Citizen TV.

+ Five More…

6. Amaru, Gringo Bamba — ‘Blonde Chaya (Sped Up)’ (Germany)

The next big track in Germany’s really fun and seemingly unstoppable gabber wave is Amaru and Gringo Bamba’s new single ‘Blonde Chaya’ which currently tops Spotify’s Hot Hits Deutschland playlist.

7. Sammy Virji — ‘If U Need It’ (UK)

Swiftly signed to EMI’s dance sublabel Positiva after his viral Boiler Room set, Sammy Virji started this month by releasing ‘If U Need It’, which currently sits atop Spotify’s Dance Rising playlist.

8. Evian Christ, Bladee — ‘Yxguden’ (UK/Sweden)

British trance producer Evian Christ enlists OG sadboy Bladee for this track released last month on Warp. It’s taken from his new album Revanchrist which Resident Advisor describes as a “passionate ode to his one true love: trance”.

9. Scarlett O’Malley — ‘Say Yes To The Groove’ (UK)

West London DJ Scarlett O’Malley just shared her new EP The House Joints on the Kaoz Theory label. She also covered Moxie’s slot on NTS last week and it was brilliant.

10. Eliza Rose, Calvin Harris — ‘Body Moving’ (UK)

After defining last summer with her and Interplanetary Criminal’s smash hit ‘B.O.T.A’, Eliza Rose shares her latest single ‘Body Moving’ with a slightly bigger producer: Calvin Harris. It’s out now on Ministry of Sound.

The Playlists