ASHNIKKO
Reclaimed Autonomy
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UPROXX
BY // CAROLYN DROKE
AUGUST 31, 2023
What would you say to an alien if you got the chance? Maybe you’d lead with a cliché and ask if they come in peace. Or, perhaps you’d inquire about the mechanics of their UFO or how long they have been coming to Earth. But Ashnikko has a different, more thoughtful answer. After first screaming her head off at the sight of an alien, of course, Ashnikko would have one question on her mind. “I would ask them if they're kind to each other on their planet,” she says after some thought. And more importantly, “How do they maintain kindness?”
Ashnikko is no stranger to living in a fantasy world, as is apparent on her just-released debut album WEEDKILLER, and she often finds herself listening to podcasts about aliens. But until our conversation, she hadn’t yet heard the news about the US congressional hearing on UFOs that had taken place the day prior. Asking aliens about how they practice kindness probably wouldn’t be the first question on most people’s minds during a close encounter with the third kind. But kindness is something Ashnikko thinks about a lot, especially as someone who’s received just about every nasty online comment you could think of — as well as the ones you don’t want to — thanks to her overnight blow-up on TikTok.
Anyone who had a TikTok account before the app’s mainstream popularity in 2020 could recognize Ashnikko’s auto-tuned cackle in their sleep. Her 2019 track “Stupid,” a collaboration with Baby Tate, has her laughing into the microphone before belittling a particularly insolent man from her past. Not only was it her first song to gain international recognition, but it was among the first songs to go viral on TikTok, ever.
The success of “Stupid” was a surprise to many, but especially to Ashnikko herself, who didn’t even have a TikTok account when the song began racking up hundreds of thousands of views on the app. Eventually, the song was accompanied by a dance so popular that even Miley Cyrus and her then-boo Cody Simpson made a video to it. “I knew that song was at the forefront of music changing through TikTok,” Ashnikko recalls over the phone. She is on a press tour abroad to promote WEEDKILLER, which she admits is "weird to be releasing” so long after her viral moment first catapulted her into internet fame.
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“I knew
that song was at the forefront
of music changing
through
TikTok”
Ashnikko’s successes didn’t stop on TikTok. Her songs “Daisy” and “Slumber Party” — which arrived on her 2021 mixtape DEMIDEVIL — have nearly twice as many streams as “Stupid.” Her entire discography boasts 2.5 billion streams to date and her YouTube channel alone houses over a billion views. Since collaborating with Baby Tate on “Stupid,” Ashnikko has gone on to make a song with Grimes (who recently said Ashnikko has the “best fashion in the game”) and even co-write “Boss Bitch” with Doja Cat for the Birds of Prey soundtrack. Now, Ashnikko is gearing up for a headlining tour that’s nearly sold out — not bad for someone who just put out their first proper album.
Thanks to her unexpected viral moment, the world was introduced to the singer, born Ashton Nicole Casey. They were also introduced to her silly, sex-positive, and generally bad-ass blue-haired persona who was happy to throw up a middle finger to the patriarchy and instruct young women on the importance of owning a vibrator. “Stupid” summed up Ashnikko perfectly: “I know you think about me in the shower / Pornhub in your browser / Fantasize about the pussy power / Think about me with your hand down your trousers,” she sings. The kind of in-your-face vulgarity in “Stupid” and her other early music made many fall in love with the relatable rage and empowering sexuality Ashnikko exuded. But it also pissed a lot of people off.
For the singer, Ashnikko was always an alter-ego. Ashnikko became a persona where she could separate from her real feelings of anxiety and self-consciousness and instead channel an endless well of confidence and razor-sharp assertiveness. After all, it takes a certain valor to release a song called “Clitoris! The Musical” that essentially reminds straight men how bad they are at pleasuring a partner. But the more she healed, leaned into queer relationships, and reflected on her career journey, the more she wanted to reclaim her sexuality on her own terms. “There's a lot of bravado in my earlier music that I think I just don't have anymore,” she says. “That's what younger me needed as a tool to feel that power in myself, to feel my own autonomy. And it was definitely an archetype that I tapped into to feel that.”
While she admits some of her early songs were created with what she thought people wanted to hear in mind, many of them were written as a reminder to her younger self. If she could create a “powerful unapologetic” archetype, maybe some of that power and confidence could rub off on her in real life. And, it didn’t hurt that her Ashnikko persona helped give her a voice to tell off the men who treated her poorly in the past. “I think I was writing those songs just out of exasperation and heartbreak, really,” she says. And because she grew up in a conservative southern town with a distinct lack of sex education, she created songs that celebrated her body and sexuality. “Being in the Bible Belt [I had] so much shame attached to any sort of pleasure that I wanted to seek out,” she adds. “So, writing a lot of those songs was me ridding myself of those thoughts.”
By the time “Stupid” put her music on the map, it had been nearly five years since Ashnikko moved to London to pursue a career in music and chase her breakout moment. But the once-enticing idea of fame turned into the harsh reality of sexist criticism from keyboard crusaders. Practically overnight, her life opened up to the critique of millions of strangers on the internet — and it was terrifying. “I just remember, the amount of eyes that were on me went from zero to 100 in the span of a month,” she says. "It's quite sobering when something that you've wanted for a good decade of your life actually happens and you realize that, ‘Oh wait, this is dark. There's a dark underbelly of this.’”
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“the amount
of
eyes
that were on me
went from
zero
TO 100
in the span of a month"
Ashnikko wasn’t equipped to handle the sudden fame. As a self-described “paranoid person,” the publicity was hard to cope with. “I just remember having a fucking panic attack in an Arby's parking lot, being like, ‘Oh my God, I can't do this.’” That anxiety has since subsided but hasn’t vanished completely.
As someone who has faced hordes of online trolls, Ashnikko wouldn’t wish that kind of fervent hate on anyone. But she also doesn’t see the epidemic of online hate as anything new to our species. To Ashnikko, picking apart someone’s appearance in their comment section is akin to a Medieval visit to the gallows or an afternoon spent watching gladiators fight to the death. "We really haven't evolved from watching people be torn apart by lions in an amphitheater,” she says. “We love watching people get torn to shreds, especially women and femmes.”
Ashnikko herself identifies as gender fluid and uses both she/her and they/them pronouns but acknowledges her experience in life (and on the internet) is through the lens of her femme-presenting appearance. She’s confounded by witnessing online trolls’ lack of self-awareness and cruelty. "I watch people tear apart other artists, and I'm like, y'all are fucking psycho. You're literally telling this person to kill themselves.” And as someone who’s been on the receiving end of those kinds of comments, she had to find a way to detach for her own sanity.
One way she’s learned to do that is by creating a smaller community. Rather than opening herself up to public discourse, Ashnikko surrounds herself with the people whose opinion she actually cares about; her friends, family, people she works with, and her sizable fanbase who she describes as “genuinely kind and intelligent, and nice to talk to.” Sure, she replies to some comments under her social media posts, but she mostly interacts with fans through her 12,000 member Discord server. Ashnikko describes her Discord server as a “nicer” place to engage with fans thanks to its better moderation. Those who join are greeted by a “rules” page, which instructs users to foster a safe community and stay respectful to others. But more than anything, it’s a place for Ashnikko’s fans to introduce themselves, connect over their favorite songs and books, and post selfies with their favorite manga titles.
Along with fostering a kind community of fans, the best way Ashnikko disconnects is by seeking out nature. “I have to have a few good days a month of just being outside and not being on my phone and just sinking my toes into the mud,” she says. A brief scroll through her Instagram feed and you can see why she describes herself as a “fantasy, sci-fi loving, psychedelic forest sprite.” She posts photos of herself frolicking in streams, lounging on mangled trees, and in her own words, “admiring moss.” She credits her appreciation of Mother Nature to her North Carolinian roots. She grew up on a small hobby farm in the tiny town of Oak Ridge (which she refers to as “the sticks”) and spent her early years picking fruit from the trees on her property, bathing in the streams, and having mud fights. It was a time she felt truly free, but admits her focus on getting her music career off the ground in her early 20s made her lose touch with that part of herself. “My love for being outside was dampened a little bit by the incessant grind culture that wears you down when trying to exist in the music industry and support yourself,” she says.
It wasn’t until lockdown that Ashnikko tried to reconnect with that part of herself. She was basking in the success of her just-released 2021 mixtape DEMIDEVIL, which included other big hits like “Daisy” and the Princess Nokia-featuring ode to cunnilingus “Slumber Party.” But when it came to writing new music, she felt stuck in a rut, recalling the time as “a massively uninspiring section of my life.” Not only was she struggling to feel inspired, but she was crippled by the pressure, both from fans eager to hear new music, and from herself. “Everyone was like, ‘When's the album coming out, sis?’ And I'm like, I don't fucking know, because I don't know what to write about,” she recalls. “I think there was a lot of pressure for me to one-up myself.”
Ashnikko was by no means a one-hit wonder at this point, but she felt pushed to re-create the viral success of “Stupid” – an especially impossible task for someone who played no part in the song’s initial blow-up. With the help of some nature walks and psychedelics, she decided to clear her head and re-shift her goals. She started asking herself what she really wanted from her career. “I don't think it's accolades, and it definitely isn't fame or virality on the internet,” she says. “Those things make people sick, and the pursuit of them makes people really sick.” Instead, what she wants is simpler. She mostly wants to be happy and make music she’s proud of, which she admits are very different goals to what she had at age 21: “I've put out a lot of songs that I thought other people would like, or I thought my label would like, things that would help my career. And ultimately, I don't enjoy playing any of those songs live, and they fester in my heart. If I'm going to be singing songs for the rest of my life, I need to be writing music that I'm proud of. So that's what I'm trying to do.” It was time for Ashnikko to make music for herself.
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"If I'm going to be
SINGING SONGS
FOR THE
REST
of
MY LIFE
I need to be writing music that I'm proud of"
Enter WEEDKILLER, an album conceptualized from one of her own short stories. As an avid fantasy reader, cosplayer, and anime lover, Ashnikko began creating worlds of her own. She built a world where Fae (human-like fairies who oftentimes have magical powers, for those who aren’t familiar with fantasy novel lingo) formed a society called the Nimb. The heroine in Ashnikko’s story sprung into action after the cyborg enemies, dubbed Weedkillers, razed everything in their path, killing her fellow Nimb people, her family, and her lover.
The narrative Ashnikko envisioned for WEEDKILLER further comes to life in her visuals. Living out her cosplay faerie queen fantasies, Ashnikko bathes in pools of black goo in “You Make Me Sick!,” becomes reborn in a ritualist ceremony in “Possession Of A Weapon,” and brings her dystopian Mad Max steampunk world to life in “Worms,” where she leads a magical rebellion that unfolds like a bad acid trip. Even offscreen, Ashnikko plays the part of an otherworldly figure. She’s seen sporting elf ears in press appearances more often than not and her infamous BRIT Awards look had her covered in bulging boils and draped in an alien-like membrane (trypophobes, beware). The look landed on a few worst-dressed lists, but Ashnikko’s response to the backlash focused on the bigger picture: “You’re still talking about me, bitch.”
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The biomatter-eating robots and wasteland imagery on WEEDKILLER are clearly inspired by climate anxiety, something at the forefront of Ashnikko’s mind while creating her fantasy wasteland. In some ways, Ashnikko sees humans as the Weedkillers. Throughout history, humans have prioritized rapidly evolving technology without considering its environmental impact. Ashnikko is the first to admit she’s someone who doesn’t have all the answers about solving climate change. But she does understand how harmful her profession can be — particularly touring and traveling for press events — when it comes to emissions and her carbon footprint. “I do not work in conservation, or the environmental industry at all,” she says. “But I'm just being more mindful and thoughtful about my impact on my planet — our planet — and just trying to ask myself questions about how I run my business and deal with the grieving of our loss of wild spaces.”
Not all of the songs on WEEDKILLER exist in the fantasy world, however. There are a few songs on the album, like “Cheerleader, “Miss Nectarine,” and “Possession Of A Weapon,” which instead reflect stories from Ashnikko’s past. They take aim at the dystopian realities of misogyny and homophobia in our own world, something Ashnikko took a lot of time to reflect on while reconnecting to herself and her creativity.
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“I'm just being
more
mindful
and thoughtful about my impact on my planet"
Her song “Cheerleader” flips the script on the popular American archetype. In the media, cheerleaders are "sexy, cute, popular to boot,” as Ashnikko sings; they literally perform femininity for a crowd for the purpose of supporting the young men behind them. As the saying goes, sex sells, and Ashnikko sees the cheerleader as the ultimate marketable female sex symbol. Ashnikko herself knows what it’s like to perform sexiness for the purpose of marketability, and it’s incredibly rigid. She calls this concept “fuckability,” which in her industry exists within the male gaze. She’s caught between needing to be sexy enough to sell music, but not so sexual that she’s seen as a vulgar turn-off. As soon as women in music decide not to cater to the male gaze, it feels like the public suddenly turns on them. “If it suddenly shifts away from the male gaze, I have never seen more vitriol in my life,” Ashnikko says. Maybe that looks like changing your style, shaving your head, or deciding to grow out your body hair. “It's so disturbing. Do you really think that this person owes you fuckability? And then as soon as they're not, they're a demon to you? Go to hell.”
Ashnikko doesn’t want her body to be seen as a commodity, especially in a time when women’s bodies are being regulated by the government. Her song “Possession Of A Weapon” was written in the wake of Roe vs. Wade’s overturning. In the song, she describes her vagina as a “weapon.” To her, it’s both powerful and something people are scared of (and therefore want to regulate). As someone who was so vocal about the importance of vagina-owning people to explore their own pleasure in her past music, “Possession Of A Weapon” is Ashnikko’s declaration of autonomy. She notes the “lack of compassion and empathy” in our political landscape, and how the incredible amount of grief and sorrow for women affected can turn “murderous and violent towards the people who are ruining lives.”
“I just think it's insane where we are right now, especially in the United States, that we feel that these old, decrepit, dinosaur-looking men feel like they can place Jesus into my vagina, into my uterus, and use it as a pawn in this bloody game that affects people's lives.”
But don’t get it twisted, there are still plenty of flirty songs on the album that exist for no other reason than being fun. “Some people hear me say, ‘I just want to make music that I'm proud of, that has a positive impact on the world,’ and then they'll listen to some songs on the album where I'm talking about titties,” she says. “And they're like, ‘Well, what about this one, you dumb bitch?’” But she wants her listeners to know it’s okay to make silly songs that don’t necessarily have a greater message. “Fun, sexy songs are good for the spirit,” she adds. “I love a little silly moment where you can step into your power. And I think it's still an important part of my songwriting.”
Whether she’s being silly, flirty, or confrontational in her music, the persona of Ashnikko has acted as an avatar to reclaim her own autonomy. But now that Ashnikko has done the internal work, she can write the stories and make the music she’s always wanted to. With WEEDKILLER, Ashnikko is creating a world she wants to live in, one filled with compassion for nature, powerful heroines, and, more importantly, kindness. Something even an alien would be impressed by.
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“FUN,
SEXY
SONGS
ARE GOOD FOR THE SPIRIT."
Writer: Carolyn Droke (@CAROLYN.DROKE)
AUGUST 31, 2023
BY // CAROLYN DROKE
Photographer/Creative Direction: Peter Donaghy (@donslens)
Stylist: Maleeka Moss (@maleeka.moss)
Hair: Arianna Blean (@ariannachayleneblean)
with Rare Creatives (@rare.creatives) using Kristen Ess (@kristin_ess)
Makeup: Zaheer Sukhnandan (@zaheersyn)
Digital Design: Daisy James (@djamesdesign)
Assistant Digital Design: Carlos Sotelo Olivas (@barlosx)
PhotograpHY BY: Peter Donaghy
EDITION 26 // AUGUST 2023
ASHNIKKO is a Warner Music artist.
Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
CGI: Rodolfo Hernandez (@rodolfo.olf)
Lighting/Grip: Drip Drizza (@d.drizza)
PA: SYD (@ourfriendsyd)