Francesco Yates is only 18 years old but he’s already received the highest possible recommendation a musical artist could. “He’s absolutely gonna be just a huge, huge, huge pop star,” Pharrell Williams has said of the Toronto native. “But not in the way people have been thinking of pop music in the past ten years.” It’s a lot to live up to, but Francesco does, both in his songwriting and his impressively evocative musicianship. 　　The young singer has been making music since he was much younger, but everything clicked at age 11 when Francesco saw the movie School of Rock. Suddenly, for him, music became something that was markedly possible, even a potential career path. The musician’s parents enrolled him in a nearby music camp during the summers in Toronto and Francesco began learning to play piano, then guitar. The first song he wrote was called “Jaguars,” and it all spiraled from there. “I’ve never stopped writing since,” he says. “Music was a passion for me that happened all at once. I just wanted to do it all the time. Something clicked in my head and that was it.” 　　Francesco signed with Chris Smith Management-21MUSIC by the time he was 14 and inked a deal with Atlantic Records at 16. The musician has been working on his debut album, exploring various possibilities for his sound. Working with producers like Robin Hannibal (Kendrick Lamar, B.o.B) and Pharrell in various studios around Los Angeles, the singer has hit upon a deft combination of pop, R&B and soul, bolstered by emotionally poignant lyrics and a strikingly passionate vocal delivery. “Francesco is a perfectionist, as you can hear on records and that takes time,” says Robin Hannibal. “There’s no correction, it’s all live and off the floor. It’s done the traditional, real singing way, where you have to get the perfect take.” 　　“It was a journey,” the musician says. “It takes a long time to figure out what feels right for your first album but once it clicks it goes very fast. We had such fun times in the studio, especially because I was with other people who were feeling the same energy that I was feeling. We started in a much different place than where we ended up and I’m really happy with what we created.”