Salem Ilese

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About

Salem Ilese, real name Salem Davern, is a singer and musician best known for her videos on TikTok, such as her contributions to the Open Verse Challenge. In addition to her solo music career, she has also composed songs such as Bella Poarch's "Build a Bitch" and K-pop group TXT's "Anti-Romantic."

History

Salem Davern was born on August 19th, 1999 in California.^[1] She joined YouTube^[2] on August 13th, 2013, and began posting to Instagram^[3] and TikTok^[4] on October 8th, 2019 and November 30th, 2019, respectively. She first saw success with her song "Mad at Disney" (shown below), released on TikTok in the summer of 2020, which soon became a popular sound and attracted usage by influencers including Bella Poarch.^[5]

Her growing success led her to compose Bella Poarch's debut single "Build a Bitch" (shown below, left) and write "Anti-Romantic" by K-pop act TXT (shown below, right).

Online Presence

Salem Ilese has been most active on TikTok, where she has over 3.6 million subscribers.^[4] There, she often will craft songs based off trending memes, such as Berries and Cream (shown below, left) and Emily Mariko (shown below, lright).

https://www.tiktok.com/embed/v2/7011521724411809030

https://www.tiktok.com/embed/v2/7018579977012645126

On January 25th, 2022, she posted an Open Verse Challenge video for her song based on the Me or the PS5 meme. The video went viral, gaining over 15 million views in five months (shown below).

https://www.tiktok.com/embed/v2/7057180852165512494

In the following weeks, multiple TikTokers replied with Duets, many of which were humorous in nature. For example, on February 1st, 2022, TikTok user @abdul_cisse responded with his own song about Fortnite's battle pass, launching a meme of the same name (shown below, left). On February 13th, TikTok^[15] user @nickiskindastrange responded with a freestyle in which he pretended to be a PlayStation 5 console tempting the viewer to choose him, which later started the "It's Me, I'm the PS5" Tumblr meme. The video gained over 131,600 likes in one month (shown below, center). On February 21st, 2022, the official TikTok^[16] account of K-pop band Tomorrow X Together (TXT) replied to the song, with the video gaining over 2.2 million likes in two weeks (shown below, right).