Amatus‘ life began in Southside Chicago where she spent a lot of time at her father’s mosque. As the daughter of a sharecropper and Imam in the Windy City projects, Amatus learned some interesting and hard lessons early in life.

After her parents split, Amatus spent her teenage years in Philly. From age 14 on, she began hanging around recording studios in New York which allowed her to sit in on sessions with the likes of Erykah Badu, The Roots, and Common. When she met Bass legend MeShell Ndegeocello and was given a sequencing keyboard, Amatus fell deeply in love with production and being her own artist.

In New York, she supported herself by making clothes for small boutiques as well as other artists. Her small clothing line known as 345prospect, inc was eventually picked up by Barney’s Co-op for two seasons.

In the midst of all this, she lost her brother to gun violence in Chicago in 2007, her cousin (to gun violence) in 2010, and then her roommate (also to gun violence) in 2011. These events sparked Amatus to take her production, writing, and performing to the next level….and she is doing very well.

She recently wrapped up scoring and sound design for the debut of Dominique Morisseau’s play Sunset Baby. She is currently scoring a documentary for Al-Jazeera America titled Daisy and Max.

She also has released her debut EP, Broken Compass.

Its intriguing blend of indie pop, hip hop, and layers of electronic music woven with live instrumentation proves that Amatus is finding her way onward and upward…with or without a working compass.

Produced, written, and performed by Amatus, the album also received instrumental support from Nate Jones, Butter, Matt Rubano, Jared Jacobs, Vince Ferguson and Mikaal Sulaiman. Andy Baldwin and Jamie Segal are responsible for mixing duties.

Broken Compass dropped on March 3, 2014 so go grab your copy. Then connect with Amatus on Facebook or Twitter.