This week’s pick comes form one of my favorite new artists. She performed to the Neptune earlier this month and I fell even more in love with her after seeing her live.

Total girl crush.

Dream Team by Niykee Heaton

As you can tell by her album cover, she presents herself as a very sensual singer – but her music goes much deeper. She is a 21-year-old with South African roots whose YouTube cover of Love Sosa went viral overnight – bringing her to fame while she was still in high school.

Seeing her live was great because I was able to hear her contextualize almost every song. She paused before singing this particular song and explained how she wrote it for her BFF/Manager, Lauren Piscoiotta, at the time when they were trying to get signed. Labels they were interviewing with all wanted her to fit in a certain mold, so she took a break from the process. She decided to go back and record more music that truly enveloped her as an artist before ultimately finding a record label that embraced her for the artist she is – Capitol Records.

I love this song because it is all about how your friend group is an amazing source of love, empowerment, and resilience. Even when people underestimate you, you can rely on each other to band together and exceed all expectations.

“Hands up, hands up if you wanna fuss
Stand up if you fucking with the underdogs
Dream team, if you’re new, come and fuck with us
NBK, 9 to 5, man it’s only love
It’s only love, yeah, it’s only love“

NBK stands for Natural Born Killer, the title of one of her songs that has become an identifier for her and fans alike. Another thing I love about her is her positive body image and role modeling for young women. She has  beautiful and curvaceous figure that she is never afraid to flaunt – and it inspires others to know beautiful comes in many more sizes than zero. Don’t get me wrong – this girl is ripped, and can work a stage like no other. I pitied any girl who brought her boyfriend to the show.

Her most popular song, Bad Intentions, is currently the only one for which has has an official music video, but something tells me she is far from a one hit wonder. I am excited to see how she evolves as an artist and anticipating her next album will continue to push her into the spotlight.