Drew Venegas has a background in choreography, and was a former member of The Lab, a dance group Steezy referred to in 2016 as one of the best high school dance groups in the country. Sasha Marie, an obviously talented dancer, who so far only has a very moderate social media following, seems to have come from the least experience.
Fuller’s partnership with TikTok makes sense. Not least because, since 2019, Tiktok has consistently made headlines for breaking out new acts seemingly out-of-the-blue, and for disrupting the top-down mechanics of the music industry. In the past few years, viral videos and sounds on TikTok have launched the careers of numerous recording artists, including Doja Cat, Ashnikko and Arizona Zervas.
Most famously, the rise of Lil Nas X in 2019 – an independent artist who gained immense fame overnight on TikTok with his song Old Town Road– supercharged the narrative that TikTok had the potential to diversify and democratise the music industry. Thanks to the app, anyone could become famous – and seemingly organically, too; without any industry mediation.
The potential fame of the everyman must have sounded familiar to Fuller. With Pop Idol, he essentially lured ordinary people towards the music industry with a storyline of meritocracy. The business model was simple, and worked in Fuller’s favour; the winner of Pop Idol – an anonymous individual with very little experience – would agree to sign a recording contract in exchange for for the nebulous bait of “stardom”. It seems the members of The Future X have been offered a similar deal.
The young group – almost all of them teenagers – are now expected to work and live together in a compound in Malibu, rehearsing extensively before their first tour in March, which will take place across Brazil and Portugal. The amount of work involved in being tour-ready after only a few months of performing together should not be underestimated. With Fuller’s name and ruthless reputation behind him, you can’t help but feel these fame-obsessed teenagers were persuaded to take a Faustian bargain for fame.
So far, the group has posted numerous clips together from their Malibu home onto their TikTok. From the looks of those videos, their interactions appear forced and manufactured; they’re not there to simply enjoy one another’s company, but to gun down virality and accrue “clout”. They’re simply there to be monetised. It’s a similar model to the TikTok Hype Houses that began springing up a couple of years ago – a kind of constant working-from-home scenario in which digital influencers work and live together, ceaselessly creating content – in the same way, it seems The Future X’s lives have been reduced to work. It’s no wonder the clips feel so laboured and joyless.
