As a high school sophomore, Spencer Polanco Knight obsessed over the mouthing techniques and sound effects in 1980s hip-hop music. He viewed any YouTube video on the subject he could find. The born and bred New Yorker perfected his craft by beatboxing for bystanders in Union Square and his YouTube viewers. All that led to the creation of Spencer X’s life as a beatboxing TikToker in 2019. 

Over the past two years, beatboxing zealots across the globe favored countless freestyling snippets on Spencer X’s TikTok page. To date, the content entrepreneur and TikToker has 53.7M followers.

Spencer X perfected his beatbox performances in New York’s Union Square. Now, 53.7M followers are watching him on @TikTok. #contentbusiness #creatoreconomy #contententrepreneur Click To Tweet

Last summer, this TikToker ranked sixth on Forbes’ list of TikTok’s top-earning stars for bringing in $1.2M from sponsorship deals with Uno, Sony, and Oreo, alongside other online streams of income. 

Why we’re a Stan: “Pursue the things you love doing and then do them so well that people can’t take their eyes off of you.” The key phrase in Maya Angelou’s quote is about doing them well. That’s the difference between a content creator and a content entrepreneur.

About the author

Shameyka McCalman is a wordsmith whose work often centers around fashion, art, and other creatives of color. She earned her communications degree from the University of Massachusetts Boston and enjoys sifting through clothes in local vintage shops, frequenting nearby plays, and gazing at exhibitions on view in museums.