Who is Arizona Zervas? The Roxanne rapper climbing the charts after TikTok popularity

Arizona Zervas has achieved the rare feat of scoring a UK Top 40 single without being signed to any kind of record label.

Now based in Los Angeles, the 24-year-old singer/rapper from Maryland, US, debuted at Number 42 on the Official Singles Chart in November with his song Roxanne, which seemingly came out of nowhere. The following week, the track entered the Top 40 at Number 24 - and then climbed to Number 10 the next week.

Roxanne's popularity has been boosted significantly by TikTok. On the video sharing site, the song has been used in over 300,000 videos. That's led to huge success on charts across the world, including a Number 1 placing in New Zealand, a strong start on the Billboard 100 at 34, Number 13 in Ireland and Top 5 placings in Australia and Norway.

Billboard reported the song will have experienced an added boost because the track wasn't immediately available on streaming platforms, meaning TikTok fans had to wait a little longer to binge listen their favourite new track. TikTok has made stars of Lil Nas X and Regard famous this year, with the former scoring the longest-reigning Number 1 ever in America after his success on the viral app.

If you're into Post Malone or Juice WRLD, then Arizona's vocal styling and hip-hop beats and tracks will be right up your street. Writer and engineer of all his own material, Roxanne is the latest of 30 singles of Arizona's uploaded to Spotify since 2016, most of which were standalone singles that are perfectly placed to slot into the latest playlists every few months.

In addition to Roxanne, other tracks No I In Team and FML have also surpassed 10 million streams on Spotify. Coupled with the fact that just 28% of Arizona's US streams come from playlists, there's clearly a growing appetite (80,000+ social media followers) for the rapper's back catalogue and future releases; so much so that a deal has finally been done and Arizona has signed with Columbia Records.