Who is Anas ‘Katnuf’ Kasmi, creator of the summer hit of 2022?

When the Dutch singer Anas Kasmi, aka Katnuf, released his song being mine at the beginning of July, he decided to involve his 217 thousand followers in the settlement. “Should this be my next release?” he asked his Tiktok fan community as a video of the track in question rolled by in his music software. He also let the text flow into the picture: ‘Still a hundred questions haunt my mind. So answer me and this will all be over.’ Comments please.

‘Great song but something is still missing’, Amalia Maximiano responded. “Maybe the pace a little faster or something?” Another follower: ‘Song is already in my head 24/7 so drop quickly.’ All followers agreed on one thing. being mine could well become the summer hit of 2022. And yes, it eventually became.

Katnuf saw the previews for his new single already go viral, with more than 60 million views. He decided to cut short his holiday in Morocco to be able to quickly finish that new single at home, behind the PC, and so indeed: drop it. Appeared over two weeks ago being mine on the streaming platforms. Three days later, the single was at number one in the Spotify rankings, and then and to date at the top of all Dutch charts.

Artist of his time

being mine is also really a summer hit in blistering form, cast in the youngest pop sound of today. Katnuf sings about an autotune and so his declarations of love to ‘the one’ always hit the right pitch, hiccuping. ‘Don’t you want to be mine? Just be mine? Once in a lifetime?’ His poetry resembles that of the better life song writers and would also do well in a brown café, but Katnuf clearly seeks out the sun in his music. being mine floats on very light reggaeton and above all lots of fresh afrobeats: one of the biggest global pop movements of the moment.

But being mine is in more ways a hit of today, and Katnuf an artist of his time. Anas Kasmi (21) was born in Rotterdam, the oldest son in a family with Moroccan roots. At the age of 6 he moved to Belgium, to the municipality of Roeselare. But he kept his eyes on the Netherlands and especially on Dutch artists he admired, such as the Amersfoort DJ and rapper Bizzey and of course Ronnie Flex.

In 2020, when the corona pandemic broke out, friends advised him to open an account on TikTok, to have something to do and to maintain virtual contacts outside the door. Kasmi posted funny videos in which he was fooling around with his younger brothers, or in which he tried in vain to do the necessary shopping with a mouth cap and fogged glasses.

Interacting on TikTok

As the subscriber base started to mount, Kasmi threw his other hobby into the TikTok battle. He posted musical videos under his pseudonym Katnuf, a corruption of the French ‘quarante-neuf’ (49), the prefix for the Moroccan city of Berkane where his family comes from. He involved his followers with his ideas from the start, even getting them to vote on what his new clip should be.

“As the only foreigner around, I used to get bullied a lot,” Kasmi said in an interview with the culture blog Complex. ‘Because of this I didn’t really dare to share with people that I was making music. During the lockdown I thought: shit. We’re indoors all day, so nobody’s going to see me. I’m just going to drop music.’

At the beginning of last year he threw his first music video on TikTok. “I’m going to clip one of my songs in two days and I need your help,” he posted. After which he excerpts from the tracks Cloud, mom vie and Unextinguished let pass. In the comments he could sweep the career advice together: the followers liked to participate in his private song festival and the hearts poured in.

Record company

Katnuf’s music then skyrocketed in the playlists of the streaming services. Two months ago he already scored a small hit with the song Interesting, made with the Belgian rapper Jinho 9 and the Dutch Bizzey. And his songs swelled his TikTok subscriber base again. Katnuf single-handedly built a spiral of modern fame, and completely manipulated the videos app. Who is now looking for being mineruns into hundreds of videos from TikTokkers who each ‘clip’ the summer hit in their own way.

Katnuf connected another medium to his music. When his songs started to pick up some momentum, he sent an old-fashioned demo to Sony record company. He recognized the talent of the rapper and immediately incorporated him.

Then his single being mine reached number one in mid-August, Sony immediately sent out a happy response from the acquisition. “I can’t wait to continue building my dream.”