NEO 10Y Wrote the Two Verses of ANTiDoTE for Two Different Audiences
5 min read
NEO 10Y Wrote the Two Verses of ANTiDoTE for Two Different Audiences
One Comes From Their Own Search for Peace, the Other From Lives Without a Voice
Start with the tally. NEO 10Y has released twelve solo singles since October 2020. Eight of them landed on a mirrored date: 10/10, 01/01, 02/02, 07/07, 04/04, 09/09, 06/06. ANTiDoTE arrived on 6 June 2026 and runs three minutes and forty-one seconds. The pattern is not decoration. It is the clearest signal available that this is an artist who plans a release calendar as carefully as a record.
You can listen to our full playlist which contains the artist’s music, and know more about the artist’s work by scrolling down the page.
Who NEO 10Y Wrote ANTiDoTE For
The London artist behind the name is Nik Thakkar. They make what they call consciousness-expanding alternative pop, and the sound is a blend of cinematic-grunge and industrial-R&B. They are independent, released through AWAL, and they direct and produce their own videos.
The song has two verses and each one speaks to a different group. That is the artist’s own account, and it is worth quoting at length because it explains the record better than a genre tag does.
NEO 10Y on the two verses: “The first verse comes from my own experience of searching for inner peace and balance in a dystopian world. The second verse is from the perspective of lives that don’t have a voice, souls that are confined, controlled, and waiting to be free – human and non-human animals.”
So the first audience is the listener who has felt unseen and wants a way out of it. That is the standard alternative-pop contract and it is well served here. The chorus works as a plea to be accepted, which is a shape a room can join in on.
The Second Audience Cannot Listen
That is the unusual part. NEO 10Y is an abolitionist vegan who has worked with PETA, The Vegan Society, Greenpeace and National Geographic, and who has headlined and hosted National Animal Rights Day in London. The second verse takes that position rather than describing it.
Reading the song without knowing any of this is possible. Reading it with that knowledge changes which lines carry the weight. Both verses run into the same chorus, and the artist has described the track as beginning in emotional isolation and growing into awareness.
That is the audience proposition in plain terms. It is a song for people who want a pop record to be doing something, and it is explicit about what it thinks it is doing.
The back catalogue supports the reading. ONENESS (WHO WE ARE) in 2023, CHOOSE LOVE / CRYING IN THE SIMULATION in 2024 and ASCETIC HEDONIST in 2025 all state the position before the first bar. The single immediately before this one, Quantum 3rd Eye Realness with Cosmic Caz, arrived on 11 January 2026. ANTiDoTE continues that run rather than departing from it. An audience that has followed six years of it knows what it is getting, which is why a catalogue like this holds its listeners between releases.
The Response So Far and the Community Around It
The numbers give the reading. NEO 10Y carries 28,000 followers on Instagram, 9,281 on TikTok against 54,200 likes, and 2,783 on Facebook. That TikTok ratio is the interesting figure. Likes running at roughly six times the follower count means the videos travel well beyond the existing audience. For an artist who directs their own videos, that is the metric that matters most.
The press position is longer established than the streaming one. Their own record lists features across sixteen outlets, including Billboard, Rolling Stone, Dazed, Paper, COLORS, the BBC, The Evening Standard, CLASH, Earmilk, Notion, L’Officiel, GQ and Interview Magazine. VICE described them as one of the premier creative minds in London. Playlist support has come from Glitch, misfits 2.0, TRANSCEND, Cosmic Playlists, Discover Weekly and Your Daily Mix across Spotify, Apple and TIDAL.
Where NEO 10Y Actually Plays
The live record covers the same spread. NEO 10Y has played the Roundhouse and Troxy in London, West Hollywood Pride, UK Black Pride, Secret Garden Party, and for Billboard in New York City, and headlined London’s official Royal Diwali. The shows work as 360-degree immersive rooms rather than stages. Outside music, they made Channel 4’s Higher Ground as the first person to take psychedelics on British national television, and they guest lecture at LCF, CSM and UAL.
That is a wide base, and a genre does not hold it together. A position does. The listener who arrives from a fashion feature, the one who arrives from an animal-rights protest and the one who arrives from a playlist all get the same argument.
For anyone placing the record against its neighbours, the nearest shelf is art pop rather than mainstream pop. Yves Tumor is the closest match for the sound, where guitars and industrial texture sit under a pop vocal. Arca is the reference for the production logic, a producer whose records treat digital damage as melody. FKA twigs is the London comparison, an artist whose visual work and music are built as one piece. None of those make NEO 10Y derivative. They mark the section of the shop.
Where to Hear NEO 10Y and ANTiDoTE
Stream the single on Spotify and Apple Music, and find the wider catalogue on Deezer and Bandcamp.
The videos live on their YouTube channel. For day-to-day updates, follow the artist on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and X. The full press archive and the tour history sit on the official site.
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