Ali Gatie was born to Iraqi parents, in Yemen, in 1997. His family moved to Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates before settling down outside of Toronto, Canada. Ali Gatie started pursuing a music career at the age of 18 and started to record in 2016. This decision later caused him to drop out of university where he was studying business. In 2017, he won an online RhymeStars competition hosted by Joe Budden. After releasing a string of singles in 2018, he was signed by Warner Records. The song “Moonlight” would turn out to be his first commercial success, garnering nearly 14 million views on YouTube. However, the release of “It’s You” in June 2019 would become his mainstream breakthrough; an “explosive streaming story”, as of December 2019, it had exceeded 650 million streams. On 8 November 2019, Gatie released his debut EP, You. A 12-minute film accompanied the release, which included seven new songs.