Fortnite content creator Tiko is known for silly videos using a voice changer, for his song “Fishy on Me,” and more. His popularity, however, came overnight after one voice-changer video went viral. A young teenager when this happened, Tiko spent years building a brand as his fishy persona but wants to expand his content, his music career, and be known as Jayden, his real name, too.
Game Rant recently spoke to Tiko, whose real name is Jayden, about the success of his hit song, his experience with internet stardom at such a young age, his future projects, and more.The following transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.
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Q: Okay, so could we start with a brief introduction?
A:My name is Jayden, otherwise known as Tiko online for my fish persona.I make Fortnite videosmostly, but I also do a bunch of different gaming videos. You guys probably know my song “Fishy on Me” – if you’ve ever heard of me, it’s probably from that. That’s a song that I made when I was just starting out with music, and it was just kind of like, a freestyle. Like, I just made it for fun. It wasn’t even supposed to be a song. But I kind of became known for that after a period of time, and it helped to build out my whole fish persona as Tiko.
Q: Great. So you started YouTube in 2018 with your main channel, what inspired you to start creating YouTube content? And were there any YouTubers that influenced your content?
A:There weren’t any influencers that influenced my content, but I made videos literally just because I like seeing people’s reactions. I would make videos for my classes and see everyone’s reactions looking around the class. When I was a little kid, just seeing people laughing at my video playing up on the screen or whatever made me really happy, and it just kind of sparked something inside of me. I feel like ever since then, I’ve just been really driven. I just love making videos and putting them out there for other people to see.
Q: Your channel blew up around the time you started using the voice changer, right? Can you tell me a little bit about what inspired you to start making those kinds of videos? And did you expect them to be as popular as they became?
A:Sothe original video with the voice changerthat blew up, I made it as a joke with my friend because I just found this voice changer one day and I thought it was funny. I noticed that a lot of people can’t actually sound like a little kid when they used it, but I could. So I just made a video messing with my friend, and I didn’t think it would do good. I literally asked for 80 likes for a part two, and it took eight months to hit 80 likes. I was a man of my word, because eight months later, even though the video flopped completely and shattered my heart, I made a part two, and for some reason, posting a part two made the part one go viral. And it kind of went viral overnight. I remember waking up, and I was like, ‘what the heck, a million views!?’
It was horrible! No, it was the worst thing ever, I wish it would have blown up a week later. Because when the video went viral, I couldn’t post because our internet was down. But eventually, it got back up, and I kept using the voice changer for voice trolling. Not really like a part of my channel, it was just kind of like, ‘hey, guys, I’m trolling.'
But then I got a lot of comments like, ‘hey, you should keep using the voice changer, you should keep posting with the voice changer’ and all that. ‘Put it in your normal videos.’ So I was just like, alright, so I started using it in my normal videos. I kept using it. And that’s how Tiko kind of came to be.
Q: Can I ask how old you were when that first voice changer video blew up?
A:Oh, gosh, um, I think I was like 14.
Q: So, you were going to school at that time, right?
A: Yeah, I was in eighth grade when it went viral.
Q: What was it like to show up to school after something like that happened?
A: Well, the main thing was a lot of people were just congratulating me, just being like, ‘hey, your video’s doing really well, congrats’, and nobody was really being weird about it. It was just kind of overtime my life just changing and, you know, opportunities coming into the door. That’s really the main difference.
Q: So your first track release was “Fishy on Me.” Can you tell me a little bit more about what it was like making that song?
A:I’d say “Fishy on Me” was my first song, even though it wasn’t really supposed to be good. It was just like a random thing that I put out as a joke. I had previously made kind of similar things in the past, but none of them had really done that well. And basically “Fishy on Me” was like, the second one that I actually put out, and it was interesting. It did well at first, and then it just took off after a few weeks.
Q: Did you expect it to take off at all? Was there an inkling that it was going to do well, or was it really a complete surprise?
A:I didn’t think it’d be that big. I was like, okay, clearly, people watch my videos,they want me to make a song, so if I post a song, it will do well. That was kind of what was going through my mind. So I kind of had high hopes for it, but it really just blew everything that I expected out of the water.
Q: After “Fishy on Me,” you’ve had a few more single releases as well as several albums. Could you tell me more about the difference in the creative process between “Fishy on Me”, a song that you weren’t really sure about how successful it was going to be, versus having the pressure of a successful music debut and then creating more music after that?
A:I tried not to let any of that pressure actually affect me. I just really focused on the idea that I want to make music that I feel my viewers will enjoy, and also that I’m going to have fun making. So, you know, I wanted them to do well. I attempt to take my time and produce something that I think my fans will enjoy.
Q: Are there any music artists that you like that maybe have influenced your music?
A:Probably Charlie Puth. Yeah, and I also want to say like,Dominic Fike.
Q: If you could collaborate with any artist, who would it be?
A: Probably JVKE, the guy that made Golden Hour.
Q: So you’ve continued to use that high-pitched, signature voice changer sound on your songs. What about venturing into producing music without the voice changer?
A:Well, I’ve made a few songs without the voice changer, and I’m definitely going to keep making more songs without them. I’m trying to build out my two separate brands: me as Jayden and then also Tiko as Tiko, because Tiko is technically a character, like a different person.
Q: Do you find it hard to differentiate between the two when you’re making content?
A:No, no, not at all. Not at all. I love making videos every now and then where I’ll actually collaborate with myself. I’ll have like, a recorded track of me talking, and then I’ll do a track of Tiko and just kind of throw them together, and boom. I feel like I really change my personality whenever I do Tiko. Tiko is like a crazy maniac, and I’m definitely a lot more relaxed, most of the time. So I feel like there’s that conflicting personality that makes it a little bit more differentiating.
Q: What if you’re thinking about the next 5 or 10 years? Are there any huge goals that you maybe want to achieve?
A:Well, I definitely want to get more into acting. I want to dosome type of movie, I don’t know what kind. Maybe a show, it could be anything – a commercial, I don’t even care. I just want to do acting. I feel like it’d be fun, so I’d do anything.
Q: Definitely. If you were to do acting, would you want to do it as Tiko or as Jayden?
A:I would do both because I feel like for Tiko I could do voice acting. Actually, I kind of am planning on doing Tiko voice acting. We’re working on my own animated Tiko show. So that’s definitely something that’s in the works. And then, you know, I want to do stuff as myself too, and I feel like acting is how I’m going to build out my brand as just myself as Jayden and differentiate myself from Tiko.
Q: Can you tell me a little bit more about the animated show? Or is that under wraps?
A:Um, well, I can say it’s a cartoon. It’s also still in very early stages. There’s not really a lot I can tell you, and that’s not because I don’t want to or I can’t, but it’s because there’s not really a ton to tell you.
Q: What would you say about content creators and following trends in terms of YouTube content?
I feel like, well,Fortnite’s really gone downhill in terms of popularity, but I think Fortnite can dig its way back out of the hole that it put itself into whenever they release Creative 2.0. Because right now making videos, it’s not really dry, but it’s just a lot harder now to have new ideas that people are going to actually be interested in within the game itself. Whereas if they make Creative 2.0 and put that in the game, you could pretty much do anything, so I feel like that would revive the game, hopefully.
Q: Okay, so let’s say Fortnite disappears tomorrow. What game would you pivot to?
A:Roblox! Roblox, straight away. 100%
Q: When you were younger, what kind of games were you into then?
A:Ah, I mostly played Minecraft. Roblox and Minecraft, that’s pretty much it. I was never really a huge gamer. I was kind of more into coding and making games.
Q: Yeah I saw that, your first YouTube video is a tutorial on how to animate in Scratch.
A:Yeah, yeah, I started with Scratch. And then eventually, I just stopped.
Q: So if you didn’t get into gaming content creation, do you think game production maybe would have been something you’d be interested in?
A:Yeah, I mean, I’ve made a fewgames within Fortnite. Just because, you know, I like creating an idea for a game and then following through with it. I wasn’t the one who actually really built the game, but I kind of hired a crew. I gave them my idea. I sat there. I watched them as they did everything and helped them out and guided them. And that was really fun. I really enjoyed that. We’ve also thrown around ideas about like, coming up with like a Tiko game or something. Just because I think making games will be fun.
Q: Yeah, definitely. So let’s say you’ve got the resources to make a Tiko game, what direction would you go with it?
A:I think it’d be cool to do a fish simulator or something, where you could get your homies together, and you could kind of build a little fish tribe. You know, I wanted a way where you could lay eggs and start an army of NPC fish babies to do work for you. You could actually build, and you know, kind of have an open world underwater. That was kind of my idea for something. I don’t know, it would have to have a lot more features to be something that would do well in today’s whole gaming society, especially for content because I would want creative features on it, so I could make content with it.
Q: What is your favorite part about creating content for YouTube?
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