Call Me Ace: From Ivy League Grad To Rising Independent Rap Star
Discover how Call Me Ace went from Columbia and UC Berkeley to topping hip-hop charts—all while balancing a tech career. His story blends hustle, music, and mission in a powerful way.
Jul 22, 202513.4K Shares209.7K Views
Biography
Anthony “Ace” Patterson (born August 15, 1989) grew up in Bridgeport, Connecticut, the son of Jamaican immigrants. He attended Greens Farms Academy and later studied anthropology at Columbia University, where he also helped start a hip-hop society called CUSH. After graduating, he earned an MBA from UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business in 2016 and worked as a consultant at Deloitte before venturing full-time into music.
In December 2016, while still working in consulting, he released his first EP, Misinterpretations, under his independent label Light Armor Music. He followed with the mixtape 2interpretations in 2017 and launched his debut studio album Airplane Mode in March 2019, which reached No. 3 on iTunes US Hip-Hop chart and No. 50 on Billboard R&B/Hip-Hop Album Sales chart.
Call Me Acecontinued to release well-received projects like the EPs Working From Home (February 2020) and Working From Home: Extended (June 2020), which hit over one million Spotify streams and raised more than $10,000 for racial justice causes. His second studio album, Out Of Office, arrived in February 2021 and earned praise and placement on several “artists to watch” lists, including Symphonic Distribution’s “20 Black Artists Who Are On The Rise in 2021” and BET’s AmpliFind talent search.
Meanwhile, Ace has built a parallel career in tech, working in marketing at Facebook and later YouTube as a manager for music label partnerships, and authored a book titled Get Verified on Instagram with Under 5,000 Followers to help creators build their digital brands.
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