I bet you’ve heard an Ayesha Erotica song recently.
Maybe not intentionally. They’re certainly not blasting her songs on the radio. She isn’t any sort of chart success. But if you’re online, you know that bratty voice anywhere. In many ways, she’s the sonic face of Y2K. All with music that began release in about 2014.
The music does not sound like the era it is referencing. No part of 2000s radio was ever this frantic and disconnected. Nor does it really sound like the DJ/remix culture of the time. Yes, you could find music with unconventional grooves, but Erotica created a sonic landscape that feels unhinged and often alien.
Which is exactly what the kids want.
There are a handful of artists who have managed to consistently hold focus on TikTok. Nicki Minaj, Lana Del Rey, and Taylor Swift are probably three of the most obvious examples, and all three have responded by consistently engaging with the community on that app, even from a distance. It’s an unavoidable marketing opportunity. But then you have Erotica and her unmistakable dominance.
Scroll through TikTok, and you’ll hear at least a few of her songs in rotation at any point in time. A creator associating their brand of being hot with her track ‘Yummy’. A trend of makeup artists showing of their work to ‘Nasty’. People editing their favourite messy characters to a mashup of ‘Vacation Bible School’ to Doja Cat’s ‘Streets’. Her music has been adapted to a snippet culture that finds the hooks that even she might not have realised was so catchy.
In many ways, her music doesn’t so much as emulate the 2000s as it redefines the decade. Much like how so much music in the early 2000s was an attempt to repackage the 1970s, Erotica clicked into what the era represented, rather than a faithful recreation. It’s not quite as bright and glamorous as the club bangers the music is nodding to. The vibe is significantly darker. Her music matches the chaos of a time where the most famous tabloid journalist in the world complained that the wrong young star had died in 2007 (Perez Hilton, you will cough–), without the hang ups…unless you could the insane amount of racism in her catalogue.
Because Ayesha Erotica is not just her nostalgia bombs. She’s a person who has used racial slurs in her music dozens of times. Plural of a plural. A piece of work who you can now find being absolutely embarrassing on Twitter. Which is…well, not fine. But totally expected for the type of persona she inhabited for so long.
She also seems to despise her own popularity.
Part of this is clearly jealousy. A quick scroll through her socials show an extremely insecure person who is always mid-rejection of any sort of attention, while still claiming ownership on a sound that she doesn’t want to do anymore. Her particular ire for Kim Petras is fascinating in this context.
Neither is actually “successful” by most metrics of mainstream success. Erotica’s virality never really translated into actual stardom (partially on purpose) and Petras has embarrassed herself by chasing commercial success her music cannot support. However, the broad, parodic style Erotica’s work through the Soundcloud era embodied could easily be seen as influencing Petras’ current, forced-camp persona. She at least has some legitimate cause for concern. That concern extending into transphobia isn’t great, but I’m also not a trans woman and am not about to decide where the line is for what is an inter-communal argument.
Furthermore, this is a woman who has publicly admitted to struggling with addiction. That doesn’t excuse any of her choices, but it can provide context into her current online choices. At least the recent ones. Or maybe not. It’s hard to say, considering even a cursory glance at her online footprint makes her look terrible. But as she has repeated multiple times over, she is not famous.
But her music undoubtably is.
I’ve had a lot of these thoughts swirling around in my head for over a year. Erotica’s music has made an indelible imprint on culture, because the current generation of young people who are obsessed with pop and pop iconography are listening to her. Every song that goes viral does so multiple times over. And since they’re mostly devoid of her context, the vast majority of listeners will never know or care about her. Which is probably for the best.
TikTok has decided that the 2000s as a decade is no longer to be represented by its own music. Actual famous people are overplayed and have too much baggage. Why settle for someone who can disappoint you, when there’s music by a nobody at the ready?