{"id":86239,"date":"2021-09-01T16:46:27","date_gmt":"2021-09-01T14:46:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/?p=86239"},"modified":"2021-09-02T12:29:04","modified_gmt":"2021-09-02T10:29:04","slug":"ato-a-tale-of-a-few-cities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/ato-a-tale-of-a-few-cities\/","title":{"rendered":"ATO: A tale of a few cities"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Any favourite tropes of hip-hop music videos are abruptly flipped for the second part of the video for ATO\u2019s new single \u201cNo Caroline\u201d for which the visuals switch to mirror the musical shift from melodic trap to twitchy drum and bass. A rapper as likely to sing hooks as he might chat bars – ATO is an exciting new storyteller unafraid to bring vulnerability and honesty to the table and offer an alternative to the oversimplification of the Black-British experience via his Northern lens. Having called New York, Seoul and Edinburgh home by the time he was a teenager, the talented lyricist grew up in North Yorkshire of Ghanaian and Danish descent before moving to London to pursue a music career and then returning to Leeds, connecting along the way with Dublin based producer EDEN with whom he released the 2015 mixtape ATO X EDEN<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking ahead to the release of Side A, PAM jumped on a call with ATO to talk about belonging, music, and music videos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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You spent time in a lot of different countries growing up and moved around quite a bit. What music did you bump into during that time? And how did that influence the music that you’re making now?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s a good question. So the first 10 years of my life I was moving around a lot. And so it wasn’t necessarily the music per se<\/em> that I was drawn to because I was more into painting and writing stories at that time. But the cultures and being so exposed to the cultures I think, especially looking back retrospectively, I can see how those experiences opened my mind and gave me a sort of broader identity and allowed me to feel comfortable. Yeah, I felt like it gave me a feeling of confidence to be able to connect with different cultures and I think that gave me a license when drawing or writing or making music to have no boundaries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Your music and your videos are very complete concepts in terms of how the imagery and the music go together. When you write a song do you have the visuals in mind?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah, I think the whole process for me is quite a visual process. I like to visualise the world that I’m writing about, but I don’t necessarily imagine how the videos would look, once the song has sort of realised itself. I like to sit down and talk with the directors and talk about ways in which I feel that this song could visually reach its potential. And so I\u2019ve found more recently that it’s important to involve myself in that area – Although I don’t like to overstep my mark and I like to leave people to their own devices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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