Dressing Room Diaries: Antslive

Music
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3 minute read

January and Summer are my favourite times of the year musically. Creator’s hide themselves away during winter getting ready for that fresh entry to the new year. This year, there was one guy who rode in and stole the show, literally. He’s not new to this though, and if you’re just tapping in now, you’re forgiven. One of London’s most exciting lyricists, AntsLive, came in hot with his huge single Number One Candidate and he made clear he’s only coming for pole position. A self-proclaimed “studio traveller”, he’s definitely put his 10,000 hours in. It’s amazing to see an artist and team plan, deliver and execute a great mixtape campaign. Ants forewarned everyone of his pending explosion and even cheekily named his debut EP “Matter Of Time”. Congrats to Ants and Tom on a sell out debut headline!

Right so last night I headed down to Omeara with my siblings Ed and Shammy. We made it just in time to catch the warm up acts and I can’t lie, opening up with Blaze is surefire way to get any crowd going. The House Of Pharaohs resident got it rowdy, 3 songs in he’s crowd surfing the place. Excited to hear what a track from Ants and Blaze sounds like.

Of course the one and only Mr I Am Next kept the audience going in-between the acts and made sure the energy levels were right for the moment everyone had been waiting for.

Ants ran through some of the mixtape favourites before checking how many OG fans he had in there. To my surprise, he actually previewed some unreleased music produced by the boy NJ Made It. At this moment, you know we all hit the mosh pit and it was pretty active. I can confirm the CRTZ 95’s are completely bomb proof though, unfazed.

At this point Ants slowed it down, getting his guys to help him hand out cups to the front so she could have a drink of Henny with the people (nice touch). He actually announced the winner for his Tiktok challenge, which was nice to see because most artists use them for free promotion and don’t unveil a winner! It’s great to see someone have so much humility and treat his fans as equals, bringing him on stage, shouting out his music – he didn’t have to do that. It’s his show, it’s his moment that he’s worked very hard for. For me, things like this show signs of an artist that can go very far.

This brought us to the climax that everyone had been waiting for, that song.

As soon as those trumpets came in, everyone lost their shit. The mosh pit extended to the sides of the room, absolute chaos ensued (in a great way).
Brilliant performer, great mixtape and it’s super exciting that we’re only a quarter into the year.

Watch this space!