How TikTok led Canadian R&B performers Shawn Desman and Jully Black to a new generation of fans

Maybe you haven't heard the name Shawn Desman in a while.

The 40-year-old R&B crooner behind hits like Electric, Shook and Get Ready — known to some as Canada's answer to Justin Timberlake in the early and mid-2000s, an energetic performer and dancer with a smooth, sexy sound —  hasn't released an album since 2013.

His life and luck changed this summer when his label urged him to download TikTok. He'd been riding the high of performing at Drake's OVO All Canadian North Stars show in July, a reunion concert in Toronto that featured the most popular artists from the heyday of Canadian R&B and hip-hop.

Over 64,000 followers later, Desman is making music again, performing to sold-out crowds — and he's found a new generation of fans to sing with.

"Let's just call it 2010, when I put out Night Like This, Shiver, Electric. If there was social media the way it is now, I feel like it would be a different day for me," Desman said.

A matured generation of Canadian artists who came up during the early and mid-2000s — an era without major social media megaphones and without digital music streaming services — are now turning to those platforms to stage a comeback.

"Social media and streaming has totally changed the game," Desman said.

Jully Black knows what he means. Until this year, the Toronto-born R&B veteran behind hits like Seven Day Fool and Sweat of Your Brow hadn't released an album since 2015.

She jumped on the TikTok train in early 2021 — and found a connection she didn't quite have when she was a fledgling artist in the mid-1990s and early 2000s.

"What I can appreciate now is being able to directly speak to the fans on social media," she told CBC News. She has over 26,000 of them following her on TikTok.

WATCH | How Jully Black and Shawn Desman found new fans on TikTok:

Amidst a string of high-profile 2022 performances where she sang with her contemporaries and her successors alike, Black released a new album, Three Rocks and a Slingshot, in September. 

As it racks up listens on Spotify, she says streaming feels different compared to the gesture of buying physical media.

"When you would sell a CD, an actual $10 CD, $15 CD, it was a whole other thing. Because you knew that person went to the store, they really wanted that song, they really wanted that album," she said.