In the weeks after his mother died, Tony Bontana sequestered himself in the apartment that doubles as his studio, located in an office block in Selly Oak, Birmingham. There, he worked on his album L\u2019Humanit\u00e9, often through the night, tussling with his grief over a symphony of manipulated gospel and quiet-storm loops.<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember recording Sittin\u2019 on a Star (Freestyle), unable to get through a verse without crying,\u201d he says today, over a cup of tea in a London cafe. \u201cIt was literally all I could do. Writing and performing give me that instant outlet, and it really helped. It\u2019s vital to my survival, to be able to work through these emotions, to talk about them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bontana is an underground MC who deals in emotions and vulnerability; a visionary beatmaker with an unmistakable style who\u2019s cooked up tracks for US luminaries such as Lil B and Billy Woods; and overall, a restless creative who switches between genres as his mood takes him. By 2024, when he released L\u2019Humanit\u00e9, his Bandcamp page already hosted dozens of tracks and albums, with Bontana putting out each one almost as soon as he\u2019d finished recording it, \u201cregardless of whether it was good or bad, because it\u2019s a journey. Like, \u2018This is this, and the next thing will be the next thing; we\u2019ll keep on going.\u2019 It\u2019s precious to me, but I\u2019m not precious over it.\u201d L\u2019Humanit\u00e9, however, was different: \u201cI\u2019d conceived it as an actual body of work.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Bontana had grown up in a house full of music: his dad\u2019s funk and Pat Metheny LPs, his mum\u2019s love for bashment and Anita Baker, an older sister into drum\u2019n\u2019bass and an older brother swearing fealty to the Horrors and Enter Shikari. MTV introduced Bontana to Missy, Busta and OutKast, but heavy music was his first love. \u201cPeople didn\u2019t understand,\u201d he grins. \u201cThey\u2019d be like, \u2018You listen to devil music!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
He wrote it, too. He had got his first guitar at nine after being hospitalised with asthma, and taught himself to play. Today, alongside his hip-hop projects, he fronts \u201cgrungegaze\u201d group Pay the Stranger and hardcore-punk outfit Spew, \u201cthe outlet for my anger, the darker side of my emotions\u201d, he says. \u201cOne of the reasons I do it is to show Black kids it\u2019s OK to be into this music. Seeing bands like Bad Brains, or Stout, or Suffocation,\u201d he continues, grazing the gnarly print of his Suffocation tee with his hand, \u201cwhere there were Black guys in the band \u2026 that was fuel for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018I\u2019ve got to make this happen from Brum\u2019 \u2026 Tony Bontana performing live. Photograph: Jago Stock<\/p>\n
He started making hip-hop after moving into the apartment above the office block, making beats on his flatmate\u2019s MacBook. US outsider rapper Lil B was, he says, \u201can inspiration, the first time I saw that level of freedom within an artist: \u2018I\u2019m just gonna do it and put it out.\u2019\u201d He started up his own record label, Everything Is Perfect, and began pumping tracks out via Bandcamp. Along the way, he developed his own style, which he has dubbed \u201csplayed\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cSplayed is about vulnerability and honesty, genuine moments and genuine emotions,\u201d he explains. Early-00s alt-rap auteurs Madlib and J Dilla were \u201cthe godfathers to me, for their unrestrained thought processes\u201d, though other inspirations hail from closer to home. \u201cThe music of Birmingham is undeniable: Black Sabbath, UB40, the Streets,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019d love to collaborate with Mike Skinner. And Birmingham hip-hop \u2013 when I was growing up, the Oddysee were amazing. But nobody knows about them.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Oddysee example taught Bontana that making it happen from Birmingham would be a challenge. \u201cThings aren\u2019t set up like in London. There aren\u2019t the venues. Getting people out to see you is a struggle.\u201d But Bontana\u2019s resolve is unshakable, even if running his operation on a shoestring while juggling a day job as assistant community manager in an apartment block is tough. \u201cI\u2019ve got to make this happen from Brum,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019ve got to be the change I want to see in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
New album My Name is the first he\u2019s pressed on vinyl and sold in shops, another \u201cintentional\u201d release, like L\u2019Humanit\u00e9 (and thus distinct from the eight or so albums and mixtapes he\u2019s released in between). His most realised opus yet is Bontana\u2019s treatise on identity, though it also continues to explore themes of grief, along with the genocide in Gaza (Soft Dreams, where he declares, \u201cI could never turn a blind eye\u201d). \u201cI\u2019m not saying every artist should be writing protest songs,\u201d he says. \u201cBut if we want a world where people can live in peace, we have to speak on those things, to get to that place.\u201d<\/p>\n
He says he is not trying to preach. \u201cBut we have to look at what\u2019s going on, and be aware, and have conversations. Witnessing the genocide has affected me, so I have to speak on it, the same way I have about my grief.\u201d The catharsis in what Bontana does is crucial to him. \u201cI\u2019ll go to hardcore shows at the weekend, so I can be calm the rest of the week,\u201d he grins, but then he gets serious. \u201cI\u2019ve seen people go through the maddest shit and not even talk about it. I\u2019m guilty of it as well. But the more I express, the more I\u2019m honest about what I feel, the easier life is.\u201d<\/p>\n
My Name is out now on Everything Is Perfect<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the weeks after his mother died, Tony Bontana sequestered himself in the apartment that doubles as his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":516277,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[49,48,75,341],"class_list":["post-516276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=516276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516276\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/516277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=516276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=516276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=516276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}