Don’t Let Anyone Tell You Sh*t
Originally written December 7, 2016.
NOTE: This is going to be a cliche ‘you can be anything you want to be’ post, but there are some anecdotes that make it interesting.
When I was 8, I decided I wanted to be a musician after watching a Michael Jackson documentary and U2 at the Grammys. I was a child. People thought it was cute.

Fast forward to junior secondary school, and it was time to pick a class to go to for senior school. In Nigeria and at that age, most kids respond with the standard lawyer, doctor or businesswoman when they’re asked what they want to do. So naturally classes are divided into the arts, sciences or commerce.
I chose to go to art class. Most people assumed I wanted to be a lawyer because my dad always said I’d be, but one day someone asked what I want to be when I grow up. I will never forget the day.
I said I wanted to be a musician, and if that didn’t work out I would be an entertainment journalist probably at MTV or something which would hopefully still give me a chance at being a musician. I had it all planned out.
…the older I got the more people shut down my dreams.
This person called me an idiot and made a scene that drew the attention of most of the class and then some. They attacked me with all sorts of insults, told me to be realistic with my goals, and somehow convinced me they were only trying to help me. I broke, and I decided I’d be an architect since drawing floor plans was something I was good at.
Summer with Chris Brown’s debut album brought me back to life. Music was the only thing I could see myself doing and I wasn’t going to break for anybody. Criticism was only going to make me more persistent.
Until you build some resistance, that type of negativity gets to you even though you don’t want it to
I started singing more, making beats, and writing my own songs. However, the older I got the more people shut down my dreams and the more ‘unrealistic’ people told me I was being. Until you build some resistance, that type of negativity gets to you even though you don’t want it to.
It did, so by the time I got to university, yes — I was still making music, but I was doing a whole bunch of other things to ensure that if music failed, I had something valuable to fall back on. I began to build the ideal millenial resume; I taught myself how to code, created a tech news website, interned at MTV and VH1, even volunteered as an environmental science research assistant.
I thought I was pretty successful because things I thought impossible like working at MTV were crossed off my list. I developed a keen interest in tech, so I figured, if music doesn’t work I’ll go create something and join the startup culture in some way.

It all seemed legit until I graduated and got a job almost immediately after. That’s the dream, no? To graduate and get a job?
No.
I was focusing more on what my life would be like if music didn’t work
It started to dawn on me that I was focusing more on what my life would be like if music didn’t work out than I was trying to actually make music work. I was setting myself up to fail basically because if I didn’t give music my everything; if I didn’t at least try — like really try, how would I know if it would or wouldn’t?
I had everything I thought I wanted if music didn’t work, but I was the saddest I’d ever been in my life. I hated going to my job every morning and I hated the cycle of doing the same thing everyday. It was eating at me, and I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t let myself settle. Yes, I had great pay and it was all good, but I soon realised that if I didn’t chase my dreams relentlessly now, when would I ever?
So I began using the pay from that and investing all I could into making my music work. I got studio time, took frequent trips to Manhattan to perform at open mics, and made it a point to put out music every week on my SoundCloud. If only ‘one in a million people make it in music’ like most told me, I was going to increase my odds by playing every way I possibly could.
Somehow, in the midst of all this, Riton and I connected on Twitter and finally met a few hours before my 21st birthday at a club he was playing. After two years, we finally got into the studio together and the first thing we worked on was ‘Rinse and Repeat’. The rest — as they say, is history.
There’s a lot more to this story, but the summary is I got fired from my job, only made the studio session because I was (thankfully) unemployed at the time, had to move back to Nigeria because music over there didn’t seem to be working and the Naira was beginning to do poorly against the dollar making it even harder to keep living in New York with a the mall job I then had.
Yesterday, I found out ‘Rinse and Repeat’ got nominated for a Grammy. There are no words.
