Adeem the Artist

Adeem the Artist was born Adem Bingham in 1988.[1] They were born in Locust, North Carolina but when they were 12 years old, their family moved to Syracuse, New York.[2][1] When Adeem was in their 20s, they began performing on cruise ships.[3] They later moved to Knoxville, Tennessee with the intent of being a pastor, but later abandoned this plan and began recording music. In 2016, they performed tribute shows for John Prine and Joni Mitchell in Knoxville.[1]

In 2021, after releasing several independent albums on Bandcamp,[4] Adeem released the album Cast-Iron Pansexual. Adeem largely funded the album through Patreon and wrote most of its songs in 2020 and premiered its tracks on the website Audio Femme that March.[2]

Rolling Stone editors Jon Freeman and Joseph Hudak selected the title track of Cast Iron Pansexual as a "pick of the week" after the album's release, stating that the song "stakes out their place as a born Southerner armed with a radical outlook and a brain that won’t just ease up".[5] American Songwriter described Adeem as having a "scruffy timbre". The editors of this site also selected "I Wish You Would've Been a Cowboy", a response to Toby Keith's 1993 hit "Should've Been a Cowboy".[6] Adeem co-wrote the song, which is critical of Keith's patriotism, with Palestinian-American poet Summer Awad. Steve Wildsmith of The Daily Times wrote that the album had a "rich currency of exploration, past-life condemnation and present-day illumination."[3] Following the success of this album, they began touring with American Aquarium in 2021.[3]

Adeem the Artist is non-binary and uses they/them pronouns.[3][2] They are also pansexual and married to their wife Hannah. Adeem told The Daily Times in 2021 that some of the themes of Cast Iron Pansexual deal with their own gender and sexual identity issues, particularly since they grew up in a Christian household in the Southern United States.[3][2]

• Cast Iron Pansexual (2021)

• Official website