Until recently ADN (real name Adien Lewis) was one of the music industry’s best kept secrets, having worked with well-known artists for over a decade while managing to stay out of the limelight himself. You probably didn’t know that he penned for BTS, wrote the biggest hardstyle track of 2018 and worked with many international DJs and Grammy winning producers and songwriters. But like many of the greats before him, Adien wasn’t meant to stay hidden forever; always striving to innovate and pushing the limits of R&B, electronic and pop music, it was only a matter of time before the young crooner would become an artist in his own right, lending his sultry vocals to genre-bending pop music and blending infectious hooks and experimental sounds with intricate melodies and thoughtful lyrics.
Growing up in the DC Maryland Virginia metropolitan area, Adien soon moved to the bay area to attend college in San Francisco where he studied CGI. It was during this period that life tested him seriously for the first time: his mother got diagnosed with a rare form of throat cancer and he vowed that he would give his all to make her proud and give her the best life possible. Soon he started posting self-recorded and produced covers on YouTube, slowly gaining traction and attention from fans and industry heavyweights alike, one who would eventually become his life-long mentor and manager: Curtis “Richa” Richardson, a well-known songwriter and producer who worked with global superstars such as J-Lo, Rihanna and David Guetta.
But the road to success is hardly ever straight and Adien’s journey is no different: he moved to LA to pursue his musical dreams but soon he would end up struggling to pay rent, commuting for hours a day and suffering from depression and anxiety, not knowing where he would get his next meal from. It was around this time that his mother told him that her only wish for him was to be happy and that she didn’t want to pass seeing him stuck in a dead-end job. Having found a new purpose and with his manager in his corner, Adien now had access to a studio and a gateway into the industry and his rise to the top can best be described as meteoric: in a matter of years he started working with Brian Kennedy (the executive producer for artists such as Chris Brown and Rihanna), collaborated with multiple international DJs such as Lemarroy, Luca Testa and Adrenalize, scored global hit records with K-Pop acts BTS (where he worked on their multiplatinum album “Map of the Soul: 7”) and Taemin (penning his smash “Move”), and sold over seven million records globally.
Even though most artists would at least consider slowing down after going through such a rollercoaster of career milestones and personal struggles, Adien’s decade-in-the-making overnight success only prompted him to go overboard and release his very first, self-produced solo EP “Alien Wave Volume 1”. This experimental R&B/pop/electro confection has the sole intent to open ears while shifting away from the generic and formulaic music that is dominating modern airwaves; mixing something familiar with something wavy, weird and experimental. With many exciting new projects coming up with some of the world’s biggest stars, Adien may very well risk becoming famous himself, but never at the cost of compromising what he set out to do in the first place: pushing the genre into a new direction and always putting music first.
