TIDAL Celebrates Homegrown Artists With New Rising Georgia Series

Global music and entertainment streaming service TIDAL announced today a special edition of its TIDAL RISING documentary series, shining a light on four emerging artists across multiple genres, all hailing from Georgia – Lunar Vacation, Sakura, SwaVay, and Tom The Mail Man.

For decades, Georgia has been a melting pot of diverse musical talent that has influenced music scenes nationwide and globally. TIDAL RISING is a program dedicated to empowering up-and-coming artists, and this new documentary series will introduce music fans to local talent and Georgia’s music culture.

Over the next month, all artists participating in the series will receive out of home and online marketing and promotional support from TIDAL to help them reach new and existing fans. In Downtown Atlanta, each artist will take over the billboard at 75 MLK to reach new and current local fans.

“It’s an honor to be selected as one of four artists that TIDAL has chosen to bring Georgia’s music scene to a global stage,” said SwaVay. “Atlanta has been home my whole life and has helped shape my own style and sounds. I hope others can find inspiration from the culture of this city that we’re celebrating through this installment of TIDAL RISING.”

“By design, TIDAL RISING is artist-first and everything we do is to help artists share their story and showcase their talent to engage fans,” said Jason Kpana, SVP, Artist & Label Relations at TIDAL. “Georgia’s musical heritage spans time and styles so it was only right that TIDAL is giving homage by partnering with four artists to show the range of emerging talent.”

Fans can watch the TIDAL RISING Georgia documentaries at tidal.com/rising.

Learn more about TIDAL and subscribe at TIDAL.com.

About The Artists:

Lunar Vacation

The members of Lunar Vacation met in Atlanta and created enough demos to fill a set and took to as many stages as Atlanta could offer them. They released a pair of well-received EPs, Swell and Artificial Flavors, after high school, and landed support runs for the likes of Remo Drive, Sidney Gish, and SALES.

With Dan Gleason (Grouplove) at the production helm, they recorded “Unlucky” and released it in early 2020, the song drawing attention as “swoon-worthy” from The FADER, “shimmering … wistful, sun-kissed indie-pop” from American Songwriter, and “equal parts Mac DeMarco and Snail Mail” from Paste Magazine. Lunar Vacation continued recording with Gleason in the producer’s chair for their highly anticipated debut album, Inside Every Fig is a Dead Wasp.

Following the release of the album, the band have toured heavily — selling out two Record Store Day performances at their hometown store Criminal Records in Atlanta and supporting The Beths on their North American tour. This spring they headlined the UK and EU for the first time, before returning to the US this summer for a national headline tour.

They are currently supporting Manchester Orchestra on a string of dates and will join The Front Bottoms and Joyce Manor for a show in Philadelphia this December. In March 2023, they will tour the East Coast with Rubblebucket.

Sakura

Nicole Sakura Watson released her first record, “Chasing Feelings”, in 2020. She was born to a mother of Japanese descent and father of Bahamian descent, and is a singer, songwriter, and producer from the Northside of Atlanta, Georgia.

Sakura grew up in a household full of music as her father is a producer, instrumentalist, and touring musician. As a kid, her parents owned a chicken wing stand in East Point, GA, where she remembers hearing, “Isn’t She Lovely” by Stevie Wonder …the record that inspired her to actively start listening to music.

In middle school, Sakura started playing the piano after attending a few classes provided by a close friend of her mother. During high school, she was gifted a guitar by her parents which she began to play regularly by teaching herself while watching YouTube videos of people playing her favorite childhood songs. She wrote her first record as a student studying film and music at Georgia State University, after buying a small MIDI keyboard and Logix.

Sakura describes her music as alternative R&B, indie soul, and indie R&B. Her musical influences include Stevie Wonder, Amy Winehouse, Jazmine Sullivan and Ne-Yo. Sakura’s first performed in 2019 at a Jelani Imani show and has had numerous performances throughout the year including a performance at Rolling Loud with Kenny Mason, performing their record “Angels Calling”. In 2021, she opened for recording artist Elhae Aisle 5 in Atlanta, GA, and went on to perform at numerous other musical venues to rave reviews from the audience in attendance.

Her debut project titled “Don’t Overthink It” is a self-produced and written EP that gives the audience a glimpse into Sakura’s life during its creation.

SwaVay

Few MCs have the musical depth and dexterity of the Atlanta native, whose brand of soulful trap fusion has earned cosigns and collabs from artists across genres. Now, with his major-label debut album coming via Giant/Def Jam Recordings, the rich and real ALMETHA’S SON, SwaVay is powered by a hard-earned confidence that his genre-traversing music is ready for hip-hop’s—and music’s—biggest stages.

In addition to his boundary-pushing sounds, the record encapsulates his relationship to his city while continuing to show off the many emotions and energies that he’s captured in his music so far. SwaVay put out his first solo project, Poet Talk (2012), while still in school. He followed up with several more indie releases while finding his place amid Atlanta’s bubbling trap scene.

SwaVay’s malleability and persistence paid off in 2017 when super-producer Metro Boomin signed him as the first act on his then-fledgling Boominati Worldwide label. Under Metro’s tutelage, SwaVay dropped his breakout 2019 mixtape, Pure Infinity. The same year, SwaVay earned a Grammy nomination for his contribution to the Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse song “Elevate.” In 2021, he appeared on James Blake’s “Frozen” (with Dreamville Records’ J.I.D).

Tom The Mail Man

Tom the Mail Man is from Monroe Georgia, a country town about an hour outside of Atlanta, GA. He’s a multi genre artist who emphatically avoids a label to his music, instead focusing on creating a world for his fans to come together as one community.

Tom has been featured in press pieces from Pigeons and Planes, Lyrical Lemonade, Paper Magazine, Uproxx, and TIDAL. He’s also crushed performances at Life Is Beautiful, Hard Summer, and Rolling Loud, with a headline tour run in 2022 which featured a sold-out date in Los Angeles at The Echo.

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About the Author

Dr. Jerry Doby Editor-in-Chief of The Hype Magazine, Media and SEO Consultant, Journalist, Ph.D. and retired combat vet. 2023 recipient of The President's Lifetime Achievement Award. Partner at THM Media Group. Member of the U.S. Department of Arts and Culture, the United States Press Agency and ForbesBLK.