Cookiee Kawaii - Sugar, Spice and All Things Nice
Make it stand out
If you were to tell our 2019 selves that the next big sound of the summer would involve a viral TikTok dance, to a song about shaking your ass, layered over a beat manufactured from a squeaky bed frame, whilst being stuck at home during a pandemic; I’d tell you to back it up. But now we’re in it, and Jersey club angel Cookiee Kawaii’s breakout hit ‘Vibe’ is just about everywhere, there are no complaints from me. Whilst we’re all glued to our devices and frothing at the mouth for entertainment or human interaction, Cookiee’s warm vocals dancing against a truly chaotic collection of samples — including angry birds, whips cracking and squeaky toys — have provided us all with a welcomed relief from All That Is Going On. We caught up with our new favourite viral star over a particularly glitchy Zoom call to find out how it all happened.
“I’m still shocked, to be honest!”, Cookiee tells us from the comfort of her home. Though both the song and her personality are undeniably on the sillier side of fun, she tells me how some fans have slid into her DMs explaining how ‘Vibe’ has held their hand through dark depressive states. “It’s a party song, I’m not saying those songs don’t make people feel good but you’d think people wouldn’t wanna listen to that kind of music in those situations. You’d think they’d listen to something a bit calmer, but the fact that during this time people are wanting to throw it back and have a good time, I mean that’s amazing to me.”
Having experienced huge amounts of people dancing to her songs IRL in the Jersey club scene, this wasn’t exactly a brand new feeling, albeit one massively magnified. However, this time was hitting differently. “At first, I didn’t have a TikTok account so I didn’t have any idea what was going on, until my friend who’s a dancer, she was like ‘your song’s gone crazy on TikTok’”. Creating a new account in early February to see what all the commotion was about, there were only around two thousand videos using the clip. Fast forward to now and there are over two million videos of fans straight-up vibing to her music.
It’s soundtracked everything from Doja Cat throwing it back in her living room, to makeup tutorials, skate tricks, and cooking videos. It’s instantly obvious that ‘Vibe’ has become synonymous with every conceivable genre of viral video. “This song kind of built up a little history,” Cookiee considers on how the song gained traction. “It’s been out a whole year and people used it in different YouTube videos, things like that. It’s one of those songs that goes out and kind of drifts.”
“The first video they found with it on was just like a joke video, it wasn’t anything like a dance or too serious, and then it just progressed.” Having personally noticed the track just about every day since I first heard it, ‘Vibe’ has happily become virtually inescapable. “It’s on everything! And I was like, why? It’s not like the lyrics are particular in some of the stuff everyone is doing in the vids. I think they just like the song, and they put it in the background of everything. I’ve seen otters twerking to it. I’ve seen otters, ducks, someone had their frog, every animal, goats, I’ve seen a lot of stuff.” I’m nearly crying laughing. “The otter probably threw you off?”
Yes. We love a twerking otter.
“Once I dropped ‘Vibe’, I kept going and kept releasing singles. There was no plan and that’s also the beautiful part of it, there was no ‘I think this is gonna be the one’ for me.” How it all came together seemed predestined. “My producer posted the instrumental on Instagram, he does that a lot where he puts beats up there to see ‘hey, who wants to collab on this?’ and as soon as I heard it I’m like “take that down! Send that to me right now, I want that!” So I just wrote it, sent him the vocals and we did it. After that, we moved on, we didn’t think “this is gonna be it right here” we just moved on. I released a whole club EP and I forgot about ‘Vibe’, and you guys kinda reminded me about it. I’m like “oh, that’s going viral, really?”
With music management desperately seeking to build the next big viral song, notably handing out TikTok 101 leaflets at marketing meetings and panel events, it’s refreshing to hear that the true originals can’t be replicated by formulas and algorithms. “I have songs that I probably would say were gonna go viral before ‘Vibe’ did. I’m not mad at it though, I’ll take it. But that’s great cus then it’s like... I feel like if that’s not my best then the people that are falling in love with me because of it are gonna be in for a really fun surprise when they dig deep and get to see who I am as an artist.”
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Having grown up with two DJ parents, Cookiee was probably always going to have a music career. “My mum would take me to the guitar centre because she would have to get equipment and I would automatically, nyoom”, she imitates a car zooming off with her hands, “run off from her and instantly go to the piano. She told me that’s how she knew I’d get into it, I was always by the pianos and it was always just there.” Hearing everything from jazz to techno, rock, and beyond from childhood, there’s a lot of different genres directly influencing her own music.
But the game isn’t always so easy. “I’ve always had to level up, and level up, and level up, and get to the next point. There was always a boss at some point that I’d have to defeat to get that next level.” The current challenge is fighting boredom during the coronavirus pandemic and staying connected, a place we’re all at on a level. “Everyone thinks that I’m probably having the best time of my life but in my case, I hadn’t really done much. I’m really just engaging with my growing fanbase, and social media in that aspect of it; meeting new people, seeing people make covers of my stuff. That’s really kept me going, to be honest, because other than that, it’s just a whole bunch of stress.”
“I go live, and I talk to my supporters, sometimes I throw out some instrumentals and just vibe out with them. Even though we’re in the house and we’re quarantined: watch a new series, read a new book, just try new things, cook something, bake you a cookie or something like that. I don’t know if anyone hasn’t watched Avatar: The Last Airbender but they just made it available on Netflix, so if anyone doesn’t know that then they could check that out."
And it goes without saying that Cookiee has been working on new music during this downtime, with both the Club Soda Vol 2 EP on its way as well as a currently unnamed debut album. “I’m hoping to get some major collabs like with SZA or Reazy Renegade, he actually sent me some production, so I’m hoping to really nail that out, and I’m hoping to talk to SZA’s people as she’s been very supportive of my music. It’s going to be Jersey club music because that’s what I do, I’m a Jersey club music artist, and I want to give people an introduction to who I am because that’s what your debut album is supposed to be.” When we’re all allowed a bit more freedom and venue events start to make a comeback, Cookiee is excited to tour and connect with people from all over the planet, collecting souvenirs and trinkets for her collection along the way. “It’s the best of both worlds that you can have a passion like making music, where you can both connect with people and learn new things. I get to learn about cultures and get to perform. That’s like, the best, I don’t see how you wouldn’t enjoy that.”
And besides, “there’s no way I can’t just have fun as an artist now, because the world is throwing it back.”
Words: Hatti Rex | Photography: Savanna Ruedy | Cake: The Gemini Bake.
