by Thore Damwerth

Michael Ekow is a multifaceted artist whose soundscape spans indie, hip hop, R&B, and house. With Ghanaian roots and a life spent moving through England, Germany, and now the Netherlands, Ekow’s sound is a blend of diverse influences. A poetic wordsmith, he captures emotions and existential reflections in his work. Inspired by greats like Rod Stewart, Kendrick Lamar, and Frank Ocean, Ekow has carved out a distinctive presence in the music scene. His ambitious drive led to numerous live shows over the last year, with a monthly residency at Kanaal40 in Amsterdam, inviting fellow artists and a dedicated crowd to join his journey. His new EP, ‘You Don’t Know What’s Going On, Talk To Me Nice,’ featuring guitarist and producer May, once again demonstrates his storytelling prowess and genre-blending artistry.

We sat down with Michael and talked about his new EP, his diverse musical influences, and how personal experiences shape his artistry.

Congrats on your new EP ‘You Don’t Know What’s Going On, Talk To Me Nice’! How has the rollout been for you so far?

It’s been really enjoyable. It’s been a while since I put this together – three or four years. This time around I’m getting into it all over again. Combining it with posters, doing pop-ups, and touring around has been really fun. It’s been a great experience.

Yeah, you were travelling around a lot! I saw you were in London last month. You had shows there, in Germany, and in the Netherlands. What was all that like?

Yo, it was mad! We kicked off the tour in Berlin, and it was super fun just playing there because it felt like playing at home. In Berlin, they’ve got this thriving R’n’B scene in the Anglophone community. Everywhere we went, we tried to go into the existing community in the area to build long-lasting relationships as I find it so fascinating how different artists also have different crowds. Same for London. There it was more of an eclectic hipster scene, and it was a bit more mixed but very specific at the same time. It’s a bit more indie. And the ones a bit younger than me, the 20/22 year olds, they’re all into Jersey music. And then, when we were in Paris with K LYPSO, it was really interesting because she made a bit more ambient music, which took a lot more jazz components with it, and that’s also been one of the things that I haven’t encountered too often. But jazz, being one of the most popular forms of live music at the moment, made collaborating with her amazing. It all brings the same people together, apart from the real indie stuff, which brings the hipsters out there.

Having tapped into all these different musical genres must have influenced your own sound a lot. Your music ranges from hip hop to R’n’B and house. How do you navigate and blend these different styles in your work?

I think it’s basically the expression at that moment in time, like what’s the story that I feel like I want to tell. I feel like with the project that we’ve been rolling out now, there were a lot of stories that changed my ways of thinking regarding how I view myself, how I view making art, and how I want to present myself. I used to see creating as throwing paint against a canvas.

“Now, for ‘You Don’t Know What’s Going On, Talk To Me Nice’, I see it as bleeding onto a canvas because it involves a lot of my personal stories about things that really challenged me, which I then put forth into the music.”

But if I do top-lining for an EDM track or so, it’s like my voice is an instrument. Then it’s less about the story I’m telling and more about how my voice and words enhance the feeling of that musical piece, that vibe that I’m trying to communicate. So, in my own journey, with my sounds that I drift through, they really just tell the story of that moment or serve as the soundtrack of that era. The sound I’m shifting into now after this is more indie alternative pop.

You were already touching upon the themes you’re exploring in your new EP. Can you elaborate on these themes and their background?

Four years ago, when I was living in Berlin, I went through a phase of self-discovery where I started to question a lot of things I had believed in or was believing in. I had just stepped out of the church at that point, and I was pondering my faith, asking myself, ‘Okay, what do I believe in now? Do I believe in more Kemetic religions or Yoruba religions?’ While I take a lot of my morals and principles from Christianity, there were certain things I couldn’t align with at that moment in time.
I was also in a completely confusing relationship with someone – it was working backwards for both of us at that time. It took me a long time to see how love should actually mean clarity in many situations. The more you love somebody, the more you desire to be understood by them because you want to have their connection close to you. But a lot of the time, I feel like when you’re younger, you don’t really understand how love is supposed to be communicated clearly. That person put a lot of insecurities onto me, and I thought I could maybe help them without realising that it was something completely out of my hands. At the same time, that person hid a lot of information about themselves from me – about what they were doing and their whole mental situation. That ended up having a negative effect on me because I didn’t know what I got myself into and didn’t know what I was dealing with. I found myself in so many weird experiences where I was so conflicted, and I got so depressed at some point, but I had such a difficult time communicating that with other people.
I put this all into the music. ‘Sleep Paralysis Clench’ really describes the state of mind I was in – this panicky, paranoid state induced by this person who made me feel like I didn’t have autonomy over my life, as if my life sort of belonged to them. And then the story goes on. Two tracks into the EP, you have ‘Jamunia’, which talks about that moment of self-actualization and realising that we could make things so simple for each other by just being clear about what we really want and feel. Instead of doing that, there’s so much ego and pride that goes into these interactions, and you don’t behave how you want to because that person’s actions affect you. You think, ‘You know what? Forget it. I’m not going to be the bigger person and step up.’ So for me, that project was like painting a beautiful haunted house because it was how love almost became this horrific nightmare for me, but at the same time, it gave me so much because this horrific nightmare ultimately led me to understand myself even more.

This seems to have been a very toxic and manipulative experience for you. Has songwriting helped you cope with it in a better way?

Yeah, definitely! I tried therapy for a little bit, and it didn’t really work out well for me. But putting my feelings into these songs and listening back to them was something where I was like, ‘Oh, wow, this feels crazy. I know exactly the moment in time that I’m referring to when I’m talking about, you know, cautiously watching my back every moment. I remember being so paranoid. I remember that feeling it gave me,’ and it helped me to close off that chapter, being like, ‘Okay, this is there now. I might still feel it, but I don’t have to really live it anymore.’ So, yeah, it was a big help to try to just express what’s inside.

How did you come to these moments of sitting down, reflecting, and writing – how was the creative process throughout the EP production for you?

There were three significant points where I had ideas that started coming to me. Number one was when I was still in Berlin, just around the time when COVID hit. I was living in Kreuzberg at the time, and I was just sitting in my room at my desk. It was so sudden – there were so many things on my mind, I was just putting on instrumentals and kept writing, writing, and writing. I didn’t know a lot of people there at that point, but I was depressed, so I didn’t really want to be in places. Music and writing in that period became the most cathartic thing to do for me to feel like I could actually just share it and let it out and not bottle it up inside me. I was just like, ‘Okay, let me actually just be brutally honest and write down my experiences, so then at least I can validate them for myself.’
Then I moved to Cologne, and I was at my mom’s for a little bit, for like three, four months. I remember there the name ‘You Don’t Know What’s Going On, Talk To Me Nice’ came to my head when I was cycling back to my mom’s place. And it was just like, ‘Ultimately, that’s the story of everybody’s life.’ You go through so much, and then you wake up, you go out, you might see someone next to you, and you have no idea what this person is going through in their life, and they have no idea what’s going on with you either. But we have this thing of needing each other to survive; we have to be nice to the next person because you never know what they’re experiencing. Just smiling at somebody or giving them a compliment about whatever they’re wearing, or something interesting they’ve said, can do so much for someone.
A lot of the time, I feel like our culture makes it all about us, and you can do what you want whenever you want, which sometimes makes us not as empathetic towards the next person, especially strangers. That was the thing for me – I realised in that period how important it is to be nice to people because people could be going through the worst day of their life.

“You’re just an interaction in someone’s day, but you have the power to maybe add a little bit of joy or a little twinkle of hope, you know what I mean?”

That’s a beautiful approach to living life, spreading this good energy – it’s precious. You were just saying that you moved around in Germany. But you also lived in England, now you’re living in the Netherlands, and you have Ghanaian roots. How have these different cultural environments influenced your music and your artistic expression?

I think there have been different parts of my musical styles that you can find in the different places I lived in – different parts of my journey. One thing I noticed when I was living in Germany was its underground hip hop scene. These guys would write the craziest lyrics, and they were just giving it to you, straight and so real, so unfiltered. I love this feeling when you can connect with an artist’s work and it’s just so raw. It’s not about whether it’s good or bad or what it’s perceived as, or what you can or can’t say; it’s just what you honestly think. I used to have a very complex writing style, but living in Germany really helped me understand music as a universal thing and as a feeling. Sometimes it’s very difficult for people to understand the core essence of your music. Living in Germany also helped me understand, ‘How do records in non-Anglophone countries work? Why do certain records work better?’ Because it’s like, ‘Okay, cool, for your certain type of music, there is a way of communicating that.’
England gave me a vast variety of sounds. I got introduced to grime, punk, and lots of indie music there. A lot of my actual inspirations for my vocal style came from Jamie T, The Strokes, The Kooks, The Idles, and Mikill Pane back in the day. The way they made their voices sound was always so particular and special to me because it was like they were singing and rapping at the same time. But it’s sort of folky because they can tell the story so easily through this relaxed vocal tone, which is soft, accentuated, and has a very velvety structure to it.
Being Ghanaian, obviously, gospel music was really big for me while growing up. I think it always made me understand the spiritual aspect of music because I spent a lot of time in the church. Singing together with everyone in church was super emotional at certain points. It was really special because when you go to church and see the kind of songs that they sing – those are hymns. I grew up in a Baptist environment, and these hymns are like manifestos. They’re things that people sing to give themselves strength, to remind themselves of hope. When I write music, some of my songs are also like manifestos and lessons which I’ve learned. I have this one song called ‘Purpose,’ and I write in the beginning of the track, ‘Leaving self doubt straight in the mist, Me and bro had to switch, I could never listen’ That’s like a mantra for me, reminding myself, ‘Okay, cool. Don’t doubt yourself. Tap into this energy, tap into this understanding of who you are, and push forward.’ In different places, I’ve learned different lessons which just helped me combine it all together to make what I make today.

When it comes to influences from other artists, who inspires you and what elements of their work do you draw from?

Rod Stewart caught my attention around 2020 when I moved to Berlin for the second time. I was listening to ‘Atlantic Crossing,’ and he has this record on there, ‘I Don’t Want to Talk About It.’ I was mesmerised by the songwriting and the ability to capture an emotion. At that point, my dad told me I should go and study the greats, saying, ‘Don’t look around your peers, but go and study the greats and understand what they’ve done and how they wrote songs.’ It was crazy for me to see what these songs were like from ‘89 or ‘77, and the feeling in them is just so real, it’s insane. In the first line, Rod Stewart would be like, ‘I can tell by the look in your eyes, you’ve been crying forever.’ And I’m just like, ‘Oh, bro, what’s happened? What have you experienced?’ That’s something I took notice of –

“The opening line of your track has a lot of weight, which hooks people straight into what they’re listening to. It’s a moment where you’re looking for that connection.”

Florence & The Machine is more philosophical in her concepts. She has this folky feel, and her music sounds super spiritual to me. It’s like she’s leading a congregation. She’s like a priestess channelling the emotions of the community when she writes songs like ‘South London Forever,’ ‘Dog Days Are Over,’ ‘No Light, No Light,’ and ‘Seven Devils.’
Kendrick Lamar’s writing style is absolutely genius. I think he’s one of the artists who, when I talk about ‘bleeding onto a canvas,’ does that repeatedly. On his last album, ‘Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers,’ there were a lot of songs that people questioned, like, ‘Oh, can he say this? Can he do this? Can he work with this artist?’ But for me, it was like, ‘That is real art, right?’ It makes you feel something, and then you’re suddenly conflicted about what you’re listening to because it makes you question certain things. I love that layer of honesty in creating something – it takes on a life of its own.
Frank Ocean is one of my biggest inspirations as well. His writing style is how you’d think, you know, he’ll write something super real and profound, and then the next line is just something so random and out of this world. He creates this amazing sense of unison, connection, and nostalgia through those elements. It’s like you’re thinking about that person you love so much, and then you get distracted, and your thoughts quickly switch, and then they switch back. He does this seamlessly in his writing.

It’s impressive how you incorporate these elements in your own music and combine them with your signature sound. You’ve also had quite some big collaborations already, from Sunnery James to Oliver Heldens and Ryan Marciano, to name a few. What did you learn from these collaborations, and how have collaborative processes shaped your music?

These songs came about from super long days and during periods in my life where I was in the studio almost every day. In those processes, as I was saying earlier, my voice becomes an instrument, you know? That has been super fun, because it was the more danceable music I have. I can use my lower voice and more sexy tones and just focus more on, ‘Okay, what kind of feeling does my voice give?’
Collaborating with these artists has also shown me a little more behind the scenes of what it is like to work with such big names and how they handle promotion and so forth. Those are some of the valuable things I’ve learned from the process. 

And you also have a long-term collaborator, right? Your producer and guitarist, May.

Yeah, exactly. That’s my brother. We have an amazing collaborative process. It’s one of my favourites. May is a genius. When we met, it just hit off the bat. We have such synchronicity when we’re creating – he’d be making an instrumental while I’d be writing at the same time. Through that, we managed to channel our ideas so quickly, getting into this flow state when we’re creating. It’s been an absolute pleasure to meet someone you’re on such an eye-to-eye level with creatively. May created the world for these stories to live in, he produced the entire record and also mixed the tracks. 

It sounds like the perfect kind of artistic synergy.
We’ve talked a lot about the sonic part of your productions, but you’ve also released some music videos alongside the tracks of the EP. These music videos and artworks must have been integral to the storytelling. Can you share a bit about the creative process behind these visuals and how they complement your music?

Yeah, the visual team for this has been awesome. Smoking GURB is a close friend of mine who handled the art direction, poster design, and photography for the artworks. Then there’s my brother, Malcolm Amonoo, Rudolf Wink, Niek Engels, and Smoking GURB as well, who worked on the visuals for the videos, and we came up with the concept.
The artwork is more in-your-face; it’s about instant communication. For ‘Hold Me By My Fears,’ the poster depicts me with my hands over my face, my eyes visible. It creates this haunting yet beautiful image we discussed earlier – conveying a continuous theme of ‘What is going on? Why this? Why something aesthetically pleasing yet haunting?’ It captures an ambiguous state effectively, which GURB did a great job in communicating through the artworks.
As for the visuals, they aimed to tell the story of my discoveries through love, exploring the complexities and challenges of relationships. The first visual sets the tone, depicting the relationship’s issues and nightmares while also touching on the spiritual aspect.

You’ve also been active in the live music scene so much over the last year, with 50 shows and your monthly residency at Kanaal40. How do your live performances influence your music? And how do they strengthen the connection with your audience?

To be honest, live music has been the biggest blessing but also very difficult to manage because Amsterdam doesn’t have a proper live music scene. There are a couple of venues, like Paradiso, Melkweg, and Skatecafe, where some artists play sometimes, but for a lot of local artists, you just can’t get into those rooms straight away. But getting around a lot has helped me with people getting to know my music and then being able to actually follow my journey, which has been extremely rewarding to see. That eventually translated into my residency at Kanaal40, which has been a big blessing for me and for our community of people that we’re working with.

“Playing live has given me a lot of understanding about how I want to communicate my music and how people actually connect with it. And performing has given me so much confidence, fun, joy, and fulfilment.”

In German, we have the expression ‘Gesamtkunstwerk,’ which means a total work of art. I feel like you really pushed your vision through the whole musical and visual aspect, the live performances, and community connection. 
What are your future goals for your music career in general? Are there any other new projects, collaborations, or gigs that we can look forward to?

We’re working on the next EP, and it’s slowly going to roll out after ‘You Don’t Know What’s Going On, Talk To Me Nice.’ It’s done, the second part of the story. It’s going to be a lot more indie, funk, and pop music. I want to delve into this world I was telling you about. I really love complex rollouts like ‘Igor’ from Tyler, The Creator, or ‘After Hours’ from The Weeknd. They make themselves like mythical characters, and you’re just there watching them, being like, ‘What is he gonna do now, how is he telling that story now?’ And it makes me so excited – I want to bring that into the next project, which will be about my reflections from leaving the church and living a more promiscuous lifestyle, trying to balance out what this actually makes me feel.

photography by MEREL DAANTJE