Rolf Jacob Sartorius (born October 2, 2002) is an American singer and internet personality who rose to fame via social media after posting

lip-syncing Lip sync or lip synch (pronounced , the same as the word ''sink'', short for lip synchronization) is a technical term for matching a speaking or singing person's lip movements with sung or spoken vocals. Audio for lip syncing is generated th ...

videos on

Musical.ly Musical.ly (pronounced "musically"; stylized as musical.ly) was a Chinese social media service headquartered in Shanghai with an American office in Santa Monica, California, on which platform users created and shared short lip-sync videos. The f ...

. In 2016, he released his debut single "

Sweatshirt A sweatshirt is a long-sleeved pullover shirt fashioned out of thick, usually cotton cloth material. Sweatshirts are almost exclusively casual attire and hence not as dressy as some sweaters. Sweatshirts may or may not have a hood. A sweatshirt ...

", which charted on the

Hot 100 The ''Billboard'' Hot 100 is the music industry standard record chart in the United States for songs, published weekly by '' Billboard'' magazine. Chart rankings are based on sales (physical and digital), radio play, and online streaming ...

in the United States and in Canada.

Early life

Sartorius was born in

Tulsa, Oklahoma Tulsa () is the second-largest city in the state of Oklahoma and 47th-most populous city in the United States. The population was 413,066 as of the 2020 census. It is the principal municipality of the Tulsa Metropolitan Area, a region wit ...

. Shortly after his birth, he was adopted and moved to

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth are ...

because his birth parents were unable to take care of him. He was raised in

Reston, Virginia Reston is a census-designated place in Fairfax County, Virginia and a principal city of the Washington metropolitan area. As of the 2020 U.S. Census, Reston's population was 63,226. Founded in 1964, Reston was influenced by the Garden City move ...

by his adoptive parents. At age seven, he began acting in musicals, where he discovered his love for performing. His

videos on

Vine A vine (Latin ''vīnea'' "grapevine", "vineyard", from ''vīnum'' "wine") is any plant with a growth habit of trailing or scandent (that is, climbing) stems, lianas or runners. The word ''vine'' can also refer to such stems or runners themsel ...

acquired more than 8 million followers as of August 2016 before its closure in 2017. He believed social media offered him an escape from bullying, stating, "Before Musical.ly, I wasn't the most outgoing. The app helped me goof off. It's like no one is watching besides the camera." In 2018, Sartorius was in a relationship with

Millie Bobby Brown Millie Bobby Brown (born 19 February 2004) is a British actress and producer. She gained recognition for playing Eleven in the Netflix science fiction series ''Stranger Things'' (2016–present), for which she received nominations for two Prim ...

Career

Sartorius' debut single "

" was released on May 3, 2016, and peaked at No. 90 on the US ''Billboard'' Hot 100. In 2016, he undertook the All My Friends Tour, a solo mini-tour where he performed in six cities. Three months later, he announced The Last Text World Tour, where he would perform in seven countries in 2017 in support of his debut

extended play An extended play record, usually referred to as an EP, is a musical recording that contains more tracks than a single but fewer than an album or LP record.

'' The Last Text'', which was released on January 20, 2017. In March 2018, he attended the Los Angeles

March for Our Lives March for Our Lives (MFOL) was a student-led demonstration in support of gun control legislation. It took place in Washington, D.C., on March 24, 2018, with over 880 sibling events throughout the United States and around the world, and wa ...

protest and spoke at the event. After the tour, he released two more singles, " Hit or Miss" and "All My Friends". With "Hit or Miss" debuting at No. 72 in the United States, it is his highest-charting single to date. In 2016, Google announced he was the ninth-most-searched musical artist of the year. On November 1, 2018, Sartorius released his EP ''Better with You''. Jacob Sartorius has since amassed over 23.8 million followers on

TikTok TikTok, known in China as Douyin (), is a short-form video hosting service owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. It hosts user-submitted videos, which can range in duration from 15 seconds to 10 minutes. TikTok is an international version o ...

Controversies

In 2016,

Mashable Mashable is a digital media platform, news website and entertainment company founded by Pete Cashmore in 2005. History Mashable was founded by Pete Cashmore while living in Aberdeen, Scotland, in July 2005. Early iterations of the site were a ...

reported that an anonymous user by the name of "aly" on

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

said that Sartorius forced her to send nude photos of herself through Facebook direct messages, sharing screenshots of the conversation as evidence. Representatives for Sartorius denied that the account was Sartorius', pointing to the fact that Sartorius' official Facebook page was created on March 18, almost two months after aly said the messages were sent;

BuzzFeed News ''BuzzFeed News'' is an American news website published by BuzzFeed. It has published a number of high-profile scoops, including the Steele dossier, for which it was heavily criticized, and the FinCEN Files. Since its establishment in 2011, i ...

described it as being a

catfish Catfish (or catfishes; order Siluriformes or Nematognathi) are a diverse group of ray-finned fish. Named for their prominent barbels, which resemble a cat's whiskers, catfish range in size and behavior from the three largest species alive, ...

account.

Discography

Awards and nominations

Tours

* All My Friends Tour (2016) * The Last Text World Tour (2017) * The Left Me Hangin' Tour (2017) * Night & Day Tour (opening act for The Vamps) (2018)

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Sartorius, Jacob 2002 births Living people 21st-century American singers 21st-century American male singers American adoptees American child singers American Internet celebrities American TikTokers Male bloggers People from Oklahoma People from Reston, Virginia People from Tulsa, Oklahoma Singers from Virginia Vine (service) celebrities