Behind Ashnikko’s cobalt blue hair and colorful but fierce cosplay-esque costumes is an extremely down-to-earth creative genius behind multiple hit songs and music videos, including “Slumber Party.”
Ashton Nicole Casey, better known by her stage name, “Ashnikko,” is brimming with interesting and unusual dualities. But the more you get to know Ashnikko, it just makes sense, and that’s what’s really cool about her.
Ashnikko’s songs and music videos cover a variety of feminist issues, ranging from confronting sexual harassment to embracing female sexuality, including a catchy musical about the clitoris. She also has a trilogy of songs titled “Halloweenie,” inspired by her love for Halloween and all things goth misfit.
Artist Ashnikko sits in spiky high-top boots, bound with leather straps
Lewis Vorn
Her latest hit is a collaboration with Princess Nokia called, “Slumber Party,” which Ashnikko wrote as a sexy song about a girl she had a crush on. The song is part of the mixtape, Demidevil, which also features Grimes.
Our conversation was refreshingly authentic, and full of insights on feminism, social media, writing, and creativity.
Ashnikko’s Love-Hate Relationship With Social Media
Tiktok helped launch Ashnikko’s music career when her single, “STUPID,” featuring Yung Baby Tate, went viral in 2019. The song currently has over 140 million streams on Spotify, and 59 million views for the YouTube music video. Despite Ashnikko’s powerful social media presence, it’s clear from our conversation and her recent online posts that she sometimes finds the internet to be a toxic and unhealthy place, especially for young women.
Given my own experiences as a female creative, and the conversations I’ve had with YouTuber Ashley, “Bestdressed,” and musician, Qveen Herby, it’s hard to disagree with Ashnikko’s opinion.
Ashnikko feels the “world is obsessed with humiliating women,” and that this really upset her in the past. For a while, she ruminated deeply on questions like, “Why is the internet so mean to women? Why do people just relish in the downfall of women? Why can women not be successful and supported?” However, these days Ashnikko is trying to focus her energy on her art and career instead of letting this sad truth consume her.
“One way to replenish your [creative energy] really well is to stay off social media for 48 hours. Or at least give yourself a break. You don’t need to be on it every day. You’re not missing anything,” says Ashnikko. Instead, she enjoys taking her dog on long walks, cooking, or doing crafts and other creative activities with close friends. “Cooking and baking really replenishes my energy because it’s very meditative because I do nothing else but focus on the food,” explains Ashnikko.
Baltic culture shock & fierce determination
Casey grew up in Greensboro, North Carolina, but her dad decided to study abroad in Eastern Europe, moving her to the Baltic at age thirteen. Casey spent most of her teenage years struggling with language barriers and culture shock inside a Latvian public high school.
At age eighteen, Casey moved to London by herself as a way to escape Latvia, while still staying in Europe. She began accomplishing her childhood dream of living in London, while establishing a music career through relentlessly resourceful determination.
How having an alter ego can make you bolder
When she was a young teen, Casey’s cool aunt downloaded M.I.A.’s “Bucky Done Gone” to her pink iPod nano. Her aunt had to ask her parents for permission “because it had a bad word.” Casey was so excited, and played the song on loop endlessly for years, in love with M.I.A. ‘s album “Arular,” and her activist themes.
The boldness of M.I.A. and other badass female artists inspired Casey to grow into herself as both an artist and a woman. But creating the “Ashnikko persona” helped her deal with issues like imposter syndrome.
“I’ve taken elements of my personality and blown them up entirely, exaggerated them because it helps me to have this powerful character I can come to when I need a confidence boost. I just tap into that character, and it helps me to feel like I’m completely capable and sure of myself, and deserving of my success and opportunities,” shares Ashnikko.
She goes on and says, ““In my daily life, I think I’m a little bit more shy and a bit quieter than Ashnikko is. I’ll have people meet me and say, ‘Wow, I expected you to be wilder.’ And I’m like, ‘Babe, if I was Ashnikko all the time, I don’t know what I would do! It would be exhausting!’”
But Ashnikko isn’t Casey’s only alter ego. “I have some other alter egos who help me deal with other aspects of my life. There’s ‘Treehouse Ash,” which is very ‘zen Ash,’ who lives in a treehouse by a beach, and speaks to birds, and communes with nature.” She says that ‘Treehouse Ash’ is “very in touch with her place in the universe,” and that it helps her to be immune to the toxicity of the internet, and care less about the “constant opinions and criticisms of others online.”
A glimpse behind Ashnikko’s creative process
Ashnikko is an avid reader and writer who keeps “crazy amounts of notes on everything that happens in [her] life.” So far, many of her songs have been very autobiographical, but she embellishes details to make things more interesting. “Not all the songs are about one thing. Sometimes I take inspiration from multiple people or hurts or love that I’ve had. And I write a collage; a collage of experiences,” says Ashnikko.
Some of these people Ashnikko has written songs about have come to her and said, “You have totally dramatized the whole situation!” But Ashnikko’s response is, “Yah, it’s show-biz, baby!” One of her favorite parts about songwriting is the ability to “take one tiny little detail; something small that happened to you, and embellish it and blow it up! And just dramatize the sh*t out of it, and turn it into a whole song.”
As Ashnikko works on her next album, she’s currently trying a new fiction-based songwriting strategy, where she explores the many “fantastical stories” in her head. She’s also inspired by various fiction authors, including her favorite author, Neil Gaiman. “The way he builds out a world, and the way he makes it so visual to readers is a huge inspiration to me. I like everyone to have a clear mental image of my music while they’re listening,” says Ashnikko.
“I want to evolve in my songwriting and do new things. I think going down a more fictional route feels quite natural to me. I’m enjoying taking my fantasy short stories and turning them into songs.” She plans to move more toward a “super fantastical fairy realm” in her future work.
