The Rise of R&B Artist Maggie Kiing and the Impact of TikTok
Image courtesy of Maggie Kiing // @maggiekiing
18 year old up and coming R&B artist Maggie Kiing joins me via Zoom from the sunny state of California. Right away the singer begins by telling me the interesting way in which she was introduced to music—her local church choir. The sounds of gospel spoke to her, and “really gave me hope, “ she says. The emotion and passion that her choir sang with was something that always stuck with her—and is something she hopes to translate through her own music.
“When people listen to my music, I just want them to get the message that I’m human too and we’re probably going through the same thing,” Kiing says.
In the age of an international pandemic, this message is more important than ever. Kiing felt the COVID-19 blues herself, saying that in the beginning months it gave her an excuse to really dive into creating her content, but after a while it felt rather discouraging. Since the young artist claims to get a lot of her ideas from her own personal experiences, she had to search for meaning in the little things.
“Everyday is an experience,” she claims. “You can find $20 on the floor and you can make a song about ‘yo I’m gonna get my bag!’”
Another one of her inspirations comes from artists she heard growing up; Kiing mentions that her parents often played a variety of soul musicians around the house. She specifically remembers hearing the famous whistle tones from fellow R&B singer Mariah Carey. In lieu of all this soulful music in her childhood environment, Kiing began to experiment with making music herself at the ripe age of 11. But finding her own style wasn’t so easy. “I was kind of all over the place,” she laughs. When she turned 15, she began to experiment with different genres, namely R&B and emo-rap under the influence of Lil Peep and XXXTentacion.
Now, the young artists’ sound has matured to a laid-back vibe composed of smooth vocals, chill beats and poppy melodies. It’s also worth noting that Kiing records, produces, and mixes her own music — a talent that is rare among young musicians.
“My girlfriend has been telling me to do that,” she says with a beaming smile. “She was like ‘you’re so talented you should try to make your own beats!’ so I was like alright, I’m gonna do that.”
Kiing’s self sufficiency has gotten her pretty far already—she’s been continuously dropping her singles on SoundCloud this past year. She says that SoundCloud is her main platform for now due to the devoted fanbase that she has collected on the app. Many members of her current following on the platform found her from a viral TikTok featuring her single “That New New'' that garnered 2.5 million views since last spring. Ever since that video unexpectedly blew up, she’s had many listeners tell her how much her music meant to them.
“Tiktok has definitely helped me out so much. All this recognition and all these people telling me they listened to my music has definitely been an eye opener, cause i’m like, dang, my music really does something.”
Now that she has an audience, Kiing states that her goal is to be able to financially support herself with her own music. The 18 year old’s dream is to one day make it to the top of the charts, announcing she wants to be on “radio stations, billboards,” and even “on some grammy stuff”. Eventually she hopes to work with her current favorite artist, rapper Trippie Redd. For now, Kiing is focusing on creating as much content as possible. The musician is currently working on getting together her debut album, and hopes that it will make it to a wide variety of streaming platforms by the end of 2021.