It’s been eight months since Tommy Richman splashed onto the r&b and hip-hop scene with the single Last Nite. Now, he’s making waves with Million Dollar Baby, an alternative r&b song which is his third release this year and first song to go number one on Apple Music’s Top 100: USA Chart.
Last night, when Million Dollar Baby usurped Fortnight by Taylor Swift, Richman suddenly became one of the most talked about artists on the internet. The industry plant accusations began pouring in.
Richman isn’t an industry plant, but he has a powerful team standing behind him under Brent Faiyaz’s ISO Supremacy label. This indie label is working in partnership with Pulse Records whose roster includes Brent, Kehlani, Ty Dolla $ign, and Kaytranada. Richman, who is a Virginia native, began dropping music in 2016, but only started doing so consistently after 2019.
In 2023, he became the first artist signed to ISO Supremacy under which he released an EP titled The Rush, which included his breakout single Last Nite. That same year, he joined Brent on his F*ck the World, It’s a Wasteland Tour.
On Spotify, his following has grown to over three and a half million listeners and with Million Dollar Baby inching closer to 10 million streams, his following is sure to grow over the following days.
With numbers like these, you’d expect Richman to have a massive social media following, but that’s not the case. On Instagram, he has just over 90,000 followers, while his TikTok account totals over 180,000 followers.
These numbers sparked a conversation on Twitter led by Jermaine Dupri when he said he couldn’t wait to hear what A&R’s would say about Richman’s success despite his smaller following. In the thread Dupri used Richman’s success as an example of why record labels should prioritize signing artists based on the quality of their music and not the size of their social media following.
Brent Faiyaz has placed his bets on Richman and so far it’s paying off.
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