About Running On My Mind

Ali Gatie wurde in Jemen als Sohn irakischer Eltern geboren. Zunächst wuchs er in Dubai auf, bis seine Eltern nach Mississauga, einem Vorort von Toronto zogen. Bereits in jungen Jahren von Musik begeistert, begann er mit 20 seine ersten Songs online zu posten. Dabei arbeitete unter anderem mit den Beat-Produzenten Shumxi und Phantum zusammen. 2017 nahm er an einem Wettbewerb RhymeStars der Website BeatStars teil, bei der Joe Budden seine Songs bewertete. Er gewann den Contest. Im Anschluss wurde er von Warner Music unter Vertrag genommen. 2018 erschien seine erste Single Can’t Lie, eine R&B-Ballade. Es folgte die Single Moonlight, die es bei Spotify auf mehr als 24 Millionen Streams schaffte. Mit seiner 2019 veröffentlichten Single It’s You gelang ihm erstmals der Einstieg in die internationalen Charts. Das Video zur Single wurde ein Viraler Hit.

Ali Gatie was born to Iraqi parents in Yemen in 1997. His family moved to Abu Dhabi before settling in Mississauga, Ontario. He grew up listening to Ed Sheeran, J. Cole and Frank Ocean, who influenced his music. Gatie started pursuing a music career at the age of 18 and started to record in 2016. This decision later caused him to drop out of university. In 2017, he won an online RhymeStars competition hosted by Joe Budden. After releasing a string of singles in 2018, he was signed by Warner Records. The song "Moonlight" would turn out to be his first commercial success, garnering nearly 14 million views on YouTube. However, the release of "It's You" in June 2019 would become his mainstream breakthrough; an "explosive streaming story," as of December 2019, it had exceeded 650 million streams. On 8 November 2019, Gatie released his first album, You. A 12-minute film accompanied the release, which included seven new songs. Gatie's snippet of his next single "What If I Told You That I Love You," released on the video-sharing social networking app TikTok, went viral, amassing over 20 million engagements. Released in January 2020, the single was described by Rolling Stone as "a breezy, springtime-fresh midtempo track" and peaked at number 36 on Billboard's Hot Canadian Digital Song Sales Chart.