(NewsNation) — A young internet phenomenon has captured the attention of TikTok users with her singing and raps, and she just may have created the next summertime anthem for all ages.
Savannah McConneaughey, also known as “VanVan,” has a fan base of thousands, and with the help of her parents, the Charlotte, North Carolina, rapping tot entertains through her original freestyles and dance moves in videos across TikTok, Instagram and Twitter.
“During COVID, we used to listen to music a lot. And I used to cut on beats and when she used to stand in front of the TV just kind of looking at Disney movies and mimicking everything and saying everything after each character — I was like her memory is fantastic,” said Reggie McConneaughey, VanVan’s dad, who runs her TikTok account. “She and her mom used to sing songs together; that’s where it all started.”
Her parents said they recognized her musical mind and gift of rapping as early as 1 year old.
“Around 1 or 2, I would sing something and she would sing after me or try to mimic just by humming,” Kenya McConneaughey, VanVan’s mother, said. “Just by humming her words or just listening and playing it back using whatever she knew at that time.”
VanVan recently dropped her first single, “Play Outside Every Day.”
“My name is VanVan, I like to rap/by 2 o’clock I take a nap,” she says while doing a two-step in a viral clip that currently has more than a million views. “I eat a snack and I roll over/I like to draw with my Crayolas.”
VanVan told NewsNation that her favorite artists are Beyonce and Halle Bailey.
Reggie’s advice for other parents with young aspirational children is to, “Let it come organic.”
Everything that we’ve been doing as a family has been organic,” he said. “I was just recording her at a young age just for fun. It didn’t come from anything else, just being us.”