Ant Clemons

One Liner: R&B singer who got his break with Kanye West

Wikipedia Genre: R&B, rap
Home:  L.A.

Poster Position: 15
Both Weekends.

Sunday at 3:15 on the Tito's Stage.

Thoughts:  Wikipedia says he got his start while working at Red Lobster.  Which is beautiful.  I, too, suffered through a stint slinging cheddar bay biscuits and shrimp scampi.  You never could get all of that butter sauce out of the khaki pants.  He lived in Philadelphia, and every two weeks he would take everything he had saved and fly to L.A. to try to meet with songwriters and producers and find a break.  Clemons was featured on a few smaller time tracks, but then Kanye West heard one of them and added that song onto Ye, launching his star immediately.  Which is amazing, because its a terrible freaking song.  "All Mine" on Ye has a bad beat, a lame set of lyrics, and a bad-sounding hook (which I guess is from this guy). He also ended up on several of the tracks for Kanye's bad Christian album Jesus is King.

His top song dances in between gospel and a Justin Timberlake R&B tune.  "Better Days" has 10.9 million streams.

Oh, hahah - Justin Timberlake is on the track!  He kind of sells himself short on Spotify by not listing JT as part of that track.  I bet he'd get a lot more streams with that information in the listing!  Sounds like this was Ant's own song, and for a virtual fundraiser for Stacey Abrams, they collaborated and performed it to raise money for the Georgia Senate runoff election in 2020.

One album - 2020's HAPPY 2 BE HERE, which was re-released again in 2021 (?!?!) as HAPPY 2 BE HERE (Anniversary Edition).  Weird.  The anniversary edition adds one extra track (and not "Better Days" or the one that Kanye loved).  Even with that extra song, the album is only 22 minutes long.  The album was up for a Grammy in 2021 for Best R&B album.  The most popular track on there is more R&B action.  "Excited," which features Ty Dolla $ign, has 7.5 million streams.

He's got a great voice, but you're just never going to find me wanting to go back for more R&B music.  The video is very mysterious!  Where is the waitress bridesmaid taking him?

YouTube just auto-played right into a Tiny Desk (Home) concert with Ty Dolla $ign, and Clemons is right there with him, in that red beanie.  Is Clemons part of the Steve Zizzou fan club?

I think I'm okay without seeing this one.  Red Lobster 4 LYFE!