Berhana’s story and music are rooted in relaying the stories of others who represent his heritage and message.

The Atlanta-born multi-genre artist pays tribute to his East African roots, both sonically and conceptually, in his latest single/video, “Gone.” The song celebrates Abebe Bikila, the first Ethiopian to win an Olympic gold medal, for his back-to-back barefoot marathon wins in the 1960s. Berhana gives this nod to the history-making runner during the song’s chorus, which is a metaphor for behaviors he knows he shouldn’t constantly engage in.

“Gone off the goose, Abebe Bikila / Gone off tequila, I lost both my shoes,” he raps. “Talked with my dudes, they say I don’t need her / Say I can’t read her, but nobody do.” Berhana says his specific inspiration for the song came from his own family, who have cherished the runner for decades.

“It's just such a cool story that nobody really knows about and that's one of the legends that I learned about when I was so young,” he explained during a recent interview with BET. “I thought it was the coolest story. My mother, when she was a girl and when he got the gold after he won in Tokyo the second time, he came back and my mom gave him flowers when he was going through the country and people were celebrating. She has a photo of that and she's so proud of that, she's shown me that since I was a kid. So I've always held him and that story close to my heart.”

Furthermore, these themes of self-expression, vulnerable candor, and more are employed throughout his upcoming album Amén (The Nomad’s Dream). The project spotlighted East African music, featuring instrumentals and melodies rooted in the Horn of Africa while joining forces with more modern and direct R&B production. Even with this intention, it’s Berhana’s goal that any immigrant child or person, in general, can relate to the element of individualism.

“What I want people to get from this is just what it means to be an individual, be wholly yourself,” he explains. “I think with this album I was trying to create something that felt exactly like me and what I'm going through, what I'm searching for, and coming to a place of real acceptance. Of course my story isn't going to be everyone's story, but I hope that it sparks something in others to really lean into to who they are, their interests, where they come from, and where they want to go.”

As a child, Berhana was a student of the compositions of Sam Cooke and Erykah Badu and specific albums like A Tribe Called Quest’s Midnight Marauders, among others. Their music wasn’t only something he later drew inspiration from to create, but were simply the sounds of his childhood, as his parents would have them playing throughout the house. It’s the “element of soul,” Berhana says, that kept him intrigued.

As a musician, Berhana is looking to build on the already substantive catalog he’s built over nearly the past decade. His self-titled debut dropped in 2016, with his acclaimed LP HAN seeing its release three years later. From there, the success of the latter’s single "Grey Luh" brought him even more focused attention, particularly after it was featured on Donald Glover's hit FX show Atlanta.

Now though, the ATLien is looking to turn the page to his newest sounds, which he says are a culmination of the lessons he learned in life and the music industry as he’s attempted to navigate both over the past four years.

“I'm trying to be more connected with who I am and just be authentic throughout whatever,” he explains. “Just creatively as like a human, understanding myself from different levels was like, yeah – of course the familial and historical context – but also who I am now in the present and what I genuinely believe in, and act accordingly.”