Our Experiences Shape Our Art.
I believe that your life is your art. As you wake up each morning, your creative mind evolves. You create your work in phases.
In the summer of 2018, I attended a 2-week leadership training in South Africa. One day, we went on a field trip to visit the elderly home and sing for them. On our way back, we decided to play a game of 21 questions, and we asked one of the girls who the ugliest guy on the bus was. To my surprise, she pointed at me.
She found out later that I was crying. She started crying as well. That was weird, but I understood. She came to me a few hours later to show me a picture she had drawn. I swear this was the most beautiful hand drawing I had ever seen. It was a crying self-portrait.
She said she wanted me to have it because it was one of her best works. She also said she was sorry. I rejected it, but I was fascinated. I was fascinated by how she channeled that feeling and made that beautiful piece. And I was fascinated by how that very incident inspired creativity.
Cruel Santino is a Nigerian musician and one of the heavyweights of alternative music. He has released three albums since the start of his career, and the most adored is his second, Mandy and the Jungle.
The album aged like fine wine, giving you a better feel after each listen. It did not take long before it became a classic. The community received it with open arms, and some have refused to let it be what it is and not have any other like it. They forget that an album is a titled project of songs portraying the current emotions of the artiste or what the artiste wants to convey, much like every other artwork. Each work produced by an artist is unique in its way.
Years later, Santi (commonly known) was due for his third album. And everyone wanted something good, something familiar, something they were used to. The rollout began, and Nigerians started seeing anime characters, a world of it. Santi revealed the album title, Subaru Boys: FINAL HEAVEN.
People were confused, but they were still hopeful for a release. The album dropped, and the public was furious on the first listen. Santi had gone off course from his regular music. He was creating an anime, and the album was to be the score.
An artist creates based on the inspiration he gets from life. You are inspired as you exist. When you garner creativity from your life, moving on, you will continue this, and if your life changes, so will your art.
In a recent interview, Fireboy DML asked, “How do you expect a 27-year-old millionaire to make another album like LTG?”
Fireboy’s debut album, LTG, short for Laughter, Tears, and Goosebumps, is arguably the best debut album by a Nigerian musician. With no features, Fireboy carries 13 songs on his head, proving his value and promise to the Afrobeat scene. And that promise did he fulfill. Years later, he gets an Ed Sheeran feature and performs at the BET awards.
Fireboy, being the human he is, lives his life, is inspired by the things he has seen and experienced, and has poured that into his craft. The same Fireboy that made LTG, inspired by his previous life and that made him get to the stage he is, is the same Fireboy that has made the other albums and will make more. If he does not make his art how he makes his art, we will never get LTG. And I think that would have caused a 3rd world war.
Fireboy on LTG had songs like Need You, Jealous, Like I Do, and What if I Say. Listen to these songs, and you will hear a perspective of unrequited, pure, and innocent love.
Fireboy released his third studio album in 2022 with the lead single and album titled Playboy. The first song on the album is titled Change. The third track All of Us, affirms ‘Na all of us be ashawo’ translating to ‘We are all prostitutes’. This clearly shows a change in environment and perspective, hence a change in art. This is just one example, one obvious example. There are many other examples of growth that we have witnessed in the music industry and the art industry as a whole.
If you read old poems that you thought were groundbreaking at the time, you probably would not resonate with them. That depends on if you are not dying of cringe. Although you may still be impressed by the work, you would not want to publish that right now. That is because you have changed, but the work remains timeless.
Many people drool over the timelessness of their old works and want to recreate it. They then forget that- not only have they grown, but their audience has. We can always want to include elements of our past in our present, but we should remember that change is constant. We should not keep ourselves in the same place but advance with experience. I believe this is how to approach sustainable creativity.
In 2021, Santi, much unlike ODUMODU tweeted in lower caps, “my sound changes after every album so being in a space where people wanted me to make mandy again was so draining been having 2 deal with that too.”
In 2023, Santi released a snippet. Fans thought they were getting the old Santi back. And after ODUMODU’S Dog Eat Dog II feature, fans felt Santi was familiar again and were expectant. Quoting a tweet snippet of his new music captioned “‘mandy & the jungle’ Santi is back?”, Santi said, in small letters again, “never left i just won’t ever try to recreate what I’ve already made I’m not that type of artist until I feel I can progress the sound the bounce is firmly still Subaru just with Mandy/Suzie type melodies that’s progressiveness just let it happen naturally”. (Pardon the punctuation, I just wanted to quote him verbatim)
This mentality has given Santi one of the strongest fanbases in the industry. When you give yourself to change, or better, progression, the reality of your art will be glaring, and your true audience will connect.
What does this article mean for creators? If you are genuine, you probably started your creative journey because you either loved it, wanted to profit from it, or both. The point is that you first believed in it. And that is the most vital factor. However, understand that you are human, and change is what drives your existence. You will change. The sooner you grasp this, the better. Accept the reality of change.
The problem creators and audiences are facing here is what psychologists call The End of History Illusion, and it is the tendency for people to be keenly aware of how much they have changed in the past, but underestimate how much their personalities, desires, and goals are likely to change in the future.
So, as a creator, you need to create but know that one day, you may experience something, like age, which will alter your perspective. When the time comes, do not fight that. Embrace it and act on it. As an audience, you probably do not listen to the same songs or dress as you did five to ten years ago, so do not expect a creator to be consistent in style. Learn to allow others to embrace change. Then, embrace yours.
And lastly, while you are keeping this mindset of change, do not pressure yourself into a rebrand or progression. You have to let it happen naturally. Establish your art first. Make it recognizable. This should happen before you start thinking of pivoting. Sometimes, you are just feeling the pressure of someone else’s progress. Know that every creator is on a unique path with unique goals or objectives. So, know yours.
All the while, you need to carry on with life as you would. Live the life that you have. Whatever you have created and released to the public is the past. As much as you study and learn from it, you should keep moving forward. Do not obstruct creativity by dwelling too much on creations. An analysis is good, but that does not record amazing songs, write mind-boggling pieces, or craft beautiful albums. You do.
With famous artists, we may never know what inspires the creativity behind their rebranding. Unlike my story, which gave context, others may never explain why they changed their sound, style, etc. But every creative expression has an inspiration, and it is drawn from life as we know it.
