"Faaathom"

A fathom is a nautical unit of measurement equal to about six feet, which is just enough water to go over most people’s heads. But if you allow yourself to relax and go with the flow, you float instead of drowning. This is what Malik Cumberbatch had in mind as a tenth grader when he chose Faaathom as his stage name.
“I remember very, very, vividly. I was in English class and the teacher passed out a vocabulary sheet,” he recalls. “I saw the word fathom and I don't know why I liked it so much. I guess it was just the way it sounded. I looked it up and I discovered that it's a unit for measurement, but it also means to understand. It clicked because I wanted to make deeper music that people can understand.” The 24-year-old Pittsburgh resident lives up to the name with thoughtful yet relatable lyrics and a propensity to dig beneath the surface past tired subject matter and overused sounds and flows.
Faaathom’s love of music started as a small child when he and his family lived in Atlanta for a period, and he couldn’t go anywhere without hearing Sean Kingston’s massive hit “Beautiful Girls.” Before he knew it, he couldn’t get the syrupy pop tune out of his head. “Now I look back and understand it's probably the melody of it. That was the first song I was actually singing, like trying to figure out how to make it sound right. And I just locked on.”
That love of melody was lasting, and he began making music of his own at age 12. It also carried on into high school and adulthood, informing his approach to music as an artist and producer. “I make musi… Read More