The name [Ant Clemons](https://www.instagram.com/antclemons/?hl=en) has been circulating music blogs since roughly 2018, when Kanye West dropped his album “Ye,” and a distinctive falsetto could be heard carrying the tune of “[All Mine](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrQ7w1bdNvY).” The falsetto was eventually attributed to Clemons, and from then on he became a staple collaborator of West’s. The famed rapper has a name big enough to swallow up the hype for just about any artist new to the scene, but out from under West’s considerable shadow, Clemons has been doing just fine making a name for himself as a stand-alone musician.
Last February, Clemons dropped his debut EP, titled “Happy 2 Be Here,” an apt description of the man who turned a job at Red Lobster into a music career that has him palling around with the likes of Pharrell Williams, Jeremih and Timbaland.
To hear more about Clemons’ turn from writing songs for rent to writing songs for Kanye, and his admirable stint as a Michael Jackson impersonator, take a look at our conversation below.
**You're wearing this great red beanie in everything. How did that come to be a signature for you?**
I started wearing it in February, 2017, right before I moved out to LA. I went to New York and ended up in a session with Chris Brown just by happenstance. One of my friends was in a studio and Chris was in one of the different rooms. As I'm walking outside, Chris walked outside and I was holding the door for him and Chris is like, "Yo, thanks so much blood," and I'm like, "Oh my God. Chris Brown said 'what's up' to me!" So the goal was, I just didn't want to take the hat off until I was able to work with him again. I ended up moving to LA a couple of months later and essentially when I came out to LA, I didn't really have too much money. I was damn near homeless, I actually was homeless, and really the hat was one of the only things I had. It was a way of me still keeping a promise to myself, because I told myself I wasn't going to take it off until I worked with Chris, but it was really just a cool ass way to hide me not being able to get haircuts for a little while. So it really, really got me through. What ended up happening was I did finally get a chance to work with Chris a few years later, but by that time I became so known just from wearing the hat every day. It just became like a part of my identity and it's really hard to take off cause people don't even notice me without it.
**Do you feel kind of stuck with it now or are you still happy that it's what you're known for?**
It's definitely a happy thing. You know, it sucks sometimes when I get dope ass hair cuts and I can't really show them off.
**In LA, you were writing songs every day in exchange for rent and I just thought that that was an insane thing. I can't imagine writing something new every single day. How do you keep up that momentum and output?**
Well, I would say I'm extremely, extremely grateful and just really, really, really blessed. I give all my glory and honor to my heavenly father, for real. It's like the work ethic has nothing to do with me. I put work in, but I'm only allowed to do what my God allows me to do, so I'm just happy that I'm able to be in this position to just, to work. I look at it like I had the opportunity to do a whole bunch of songs as opposed to like, a task. It's a honor. A lot of people don't write a lot. I have too many songs in my head sometimes, so a song a day for rent was a walk in the park for me. I'm doing about five or six songs a day anyway. It got to the point where \[the place\] I was staying at, they had to keep up. I'm like, "Yo, y'all need to keep up. I already did my month's worth of songs in four days. So we got to figure this out." But I'm so appreciative of what God did, just blessing me with that opportunity, because I know that is something that doesn't even happen every day, friends that you sort of knew back home, but when you come out to LA become family, just embracing you and just welcoming you, knowing where you're at and meeting you where you're at, as opposed to judging and making it way harder than it had to be for somebody to come out to LA. I can't do nothing but thank my brothers Scott, Ali and Dre for letting me live in their house.
**You've talked about your faith a lot and how it's present in your music. Is that something that's always been a big part of your life, even growing up, or is it something you have come into as you get older?**
I think like with any relationship, they develop when you put time in with it. So as a kid, I definitely grew up in a Christian household. We were always in church. My parents were in the choir. They did Bible study every Thursday. So we were like actively in the church, but the later years, before my parents ended up getting divorced, they kind of stopped going to church and we kind of stopped going, just because when you're living in the house with your parents, you don't have to do it if they don't have to do it. My relationship with the Lord really developed when I moved out to LA and I had nothing else but just God to depend on. Before I met Scott and Ali, or not met them, but linked up with them to live at their house, I was trying to find a place to live literally every other night, sleeping from couch to couch. But I didn't worry because I had that faith embedded in me from a kid, and I knew that in times of need, God would provide for me always. And he always has. So moving forward, I absolutely see myself at least bringing awareness to where I'm at in my walk with Christ.
**It seems like that's becoming even more prevalent in popular music. You've worked with Kanye West a lot, and him with Chance the Rapper. They really fuse elements of gospel and rap. Why do you think those two genres work so well together?**
I think what it comes down to is just the soul, like Kanye is known for making soul beats and really his first record was “[Jesus walks](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fpkdSfPzio).” So this isn't anything relatively new for Ye. I think Chance is just taking the torch and running with it a little bit, you know, like furthering it. I think it's a beautiful thing. I think it makes sense because gospel music is food for the soul and Ye is known \[for\] chopping them soul beats up. So it's nourishing and it feels good at the same time. It's music with the right message.
**You have a lot of collaborators on your album. Kanye has a ton of collaborations on his album. When you have so many different people working on a track, how do you keep it as one unified vision? How do you keep it going in the right direction when you have so many creative people bringing different things to the table?**
Well, it all depends. Different projects offer different things and different teams call for different role players. On one team I may be the quarterback \[while\] I'm a wide receiver on another team. Or I'm running back on another team, or I'm playing defense on another team. It's about adapting to your circumstances and stripping yourself of your ego. Once there's no ego in the room, you're able to just create the greatest thing possible, because the sole focus is how can we get whatever this thing is that we're creating \[to its\] best possible potential.
**I love that in one of your songs, "Aladdin," you have these video game noises sort of worked in there. It works really well with the animated music video. Were you just playing around with a cool sound or did you have the vision for the video and everything from the start?**
The "[Aladdin](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dD8HFlHKGes)" record was a complete blessing. It was just my brothers Ray and the Stereotypes, we were all in the studio working, and it was actually one of four records that day, if I'm not mistaken. I think the last song we did. I heard the first two seconds, the "dun-nun-nun, dun-nun-nun," and I was like, "Oh no, no, that's what I want to do with this." After we left the studio, I started putting together in my head how I wanted the video to connect. I really wanted it to feel like Michael Jackson's "[Moonwalker](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Jackson%27s_Moonwalker)." That was a real big inspiration throughout the album. It was just capturing the magic and the things that I fell in love with as a kid, and being able to try to adapt it and bring it to my artistry. So we kind of had the song done for like half a year, but we just knew we needed a feature on it. I met Pharrell in Miami and went down there. We were working and it was amazing. Pharrell's like my big brother now. I was locked in with Pharrell for about three weeks, played him a few songs. Then he heard "Aladdin" and was like, "Yo, what's up?" I'm like, "What's up?" He was like, "Yo, I would love to hop on that." And I'm like, "Stop playin. You're Pharrell. You might just be saying this," you know what I mean? But he kept asking me about the song and he's like, "Yo, so what's goin on with the song? Let's do it." And he loads it up. It was just the perfect timing because it was like the last day before I had to turn it in. We got the feature in hours before all our different channels were closed. So it was just a blessing, the whole song.
**You said it had some “Moonwalker” influences. I read on Wikipedia that you used to be a Michael Jackson impersonator at birthday parties. Is that true?**
Wait a minute. That's on Wikipedia? Yo, they know everything!
**That is on Wikipedia. I read that and had no idea if it's like confirmed or someone just threw that in there.**
That's hilarious. That sounds like my mom went on my page and edited that in. But yeah, I actually used to do little birthday parties, like when I was a kid, I'd go around the neighborhood as a Michael Jackson impersonator.
**That's a great reflection now, at this point in your career.**
Absolutely. Absolutely.
**My favorite song on the album is "**[**Mama, I made it.**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCWu09WkcUo)**" It's just such a sweet moment. Did you get any reactions back from Kanye or your mom when they heard it?**
Before last year we had "[Four Letter Word](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZ9IeK0yZKY)" like, in the rumblings, but we hadn't released it. We were still trying to get everything together for that song. I really just wanted to put a song out in the meantime and I was like, "Aw man, this song I did for my mom would be really, really cool just to kind of help along the story" to let people know before "Four Letter Word" comes out, hey, this is a little bit of my story. I was like, Mother's Day would be the best day to do this because it's a song for my mom, let's do it on Mother's Day. I did a soft release on YouTube and we didn't put the song out on any \[digital streaming platforms\] yet, we just did a little video where we put together a whole bunch of different clips of me and my mom and my sisters and my dad, all growing up. The response I got from it was amazing. \[My mom\], first of all, she cried, and it's never a great thing to see your mom cry, but it was a happy cry. I was really, really excited to be able to provide that for her. After I did the video, I played it for Kanye at one of the "Sunday Service" rehearsals and he loved it. He was like, "Dawg, that's so cool. Like, that's such an amazing moment." He was just really, really excited and I was happy to be able to share that moment with him.
**What can we expect from you going forward? Do you have anything coming up in the near future?**
The plan is absolutely to keep going. I have a lot of stuff coming really, really, really soon. So I'm super, super excited. Stuff should be coming out sometime at the end of this month if everything goes the way it's supposed to.
**With everything related to COVID-19 that's happening right now, is it a weird time to be a musician, or have you been able to keep things on track and keep things going?**
Well, the blessing about being a musician is we're kind of able to do it remotely, anywhere. At my house I have a home set up and I'm able to just knock out songs left and right. But the impact of what's going on for all the others around us is really, really impactful, especially when it comes to, at least for me, when it comes to inspiration. I try to just be a light in the midst of this dark time and try to use my light however I can. Music is the outlet right now that, although we are all practicing social distancing, it's a way to kind of unify everybody together because a great song can change the world.
Check out Ant Clemons and Pharrell’s video for “Aladdin” below.
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Photo credit: Nailah Howze
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