Ayesha Erotica

Erotica was born in 1996 and first began releasing music under the Ayesha Erotica alias in 2015. She rose to prominence from her SoundCloud-released singles while living in Huntington Beach in California and released her debut studio album, Big Juicy, in 2016.^[1][2] While in Los Angeles, Erotica began collaborating with singer Slayyyter in August 2018 with their single "BFF".^[3] The two released a host of other collaborative songs on SoundCloud, including a Christmas song and the That Kid collaboration "Dial Tone", which Steffanee Wang of Nylon praised as a "DIY triumph" and which Paper's Brendan Wetmore described as a breakout hit for all three artists.^[4][5][6][7] Several of the collaborations between Erotica and Slayyyter were included on Slayyyter's debut self-titled mixtape released the following year, with Erotica credited under the name Ms. Cheeseburger.^[6] Erotica took her music off of the internet and stopped making music using the name Ayesha Erotica in 2018.^[8][1] Many of her songs, including "Vacation Bible School", her 2017 song "Yummy", and several others, became popular TikTok audios starting in 2019.^[9] A mashup of "Yummy" with the song "Righteous" by Mo Beats, as well as Erotica's song "Juicy Couture", also found success on TikTok in late 2023 due to the virality of videos by influencer Sabrina Bahsoon on the London Underground in which they were featured.^[10][11] Erotica produced the majority of songs on That Kid's debut mixtape, Crush, which was released in April 2020.^[6]

In 2023, Erotica appeared in a livestream with singer Chase Icon, where she announced she would be returning to music.^[1] Erotica returned to releasing music with a series of singles released in the latter half of 2023. She then partnered with Mel 4Ever in a collaborative single titled "Tongues" in January 2024.^[12] She was featured on the Kets4eki single "Rock Your Body" in February 2024 and on the Odetari single "Break a Neck" in April 2024.^[13][14] Her song "Spread That Puss" was sampled in Doechii's song "Alter Ego", which was released in March 2024.^[15][16]

Pitchfork's Ashley Bardhan described Erotica as "a prolific hyperpop producer" whose music with Slayyyter was "half-joking and brashly sexual", while Cat Zhang of Pitchfork also identified her music as hyperpop and "airhead pop" and wrote that her "bubblegum tracks" contained "saucy, often scandalous quips" and "invocations of Juicy Couture and UGG boots".^[8][9] Zhang also compared her music to Kesha's in the early 2010s, particularly her debut studio album Animal.^[17] Katherine Gillespie described Erotica's music as "nostalgic and futuristic at the same time".^[18] For PopMatters, Nick Malone called Erotica "an online underground legend" with "playfully hypersexual imagery" and "a formidable back-catalog of pop-rap bangers indebted to the music of the mid-2000s".^[6] Steffanee Wang wrote for Nylon that Erotica was "Charli XCX-adjacent".^[19] Slayyyter has compared Erotica's production style to that of The Neptunes.^[20]

For Paper, Michael Love Michael wrote that Erotica "seems to come from nowhere but the dark web", while Brittany Menjivar of Passion of the Weiss similarly described her as "elusive" and as having "existed in the internet shadows since her 2015 debut".^[21] Menjivar added that Erotica's lyrics often use "crude storytelling to comment on social issues" and "religious imagery with a refreshing lack of self-seriousness".^[1]

Kim Petras and Aliyah's Interlude have named Erotica as an influence on their music.^[22]

Erotica is a transgender woman.^[1]