First and foremost, could you tell our readers; who is Nonso Amadi?
Nonso Amadi is a singer, songwriter, producer who grew up in Lagos, Nigeria and currently based in Canada. I’m an artist that’s very passionate about bridging the world of R&B music and afrobeats. I like to sit in between those worlds. Also, I’m on a constant journey of exploring music in different parts of the world. I mean, I do dabble in Hip-Hop and other genres like reggae once in a while. That is who I am in terms of music but as a person, I am passionate about young kids, education, philanthropy, and also encountering new people across the world.
Just tell us a little about your upbringing; where are you from?
I grew up in Lagos, Nigeria. It was a pretty strict household. My dad ‘till this day still calls himself a ‘security man’ end quotes [laugh]. That stands from his background in security because he owns a security company. He just treats his entire home like someone that needs to be guarded and so, he protects the family and makes sure everyone is at a certain place at a certain time.
My mom is your typical Christian African mother. Everything is covered in the blood of Jesus including her kids. I kind of learned a lot about faith through her. We’re 7 kids in total and I am the first boy. Because of how strict the house was, we didn’t have much to do outside and therefore, we were always at home 24 hours, aside from school and church. That kind of sparked within us trying to find new ways to have fun while we were at home, bored and did not know what to do with ourselves.
My brothers and I started freestyling after watching Lil Wayne and 50 Cent on TV, while my sisters would play R&B music. We started to learn about music and do our own little thing trying to pass the time. So that was a little about our upbringing and what sparked an interest in music. It started from being bored and having a very strict set of parents that wanted you to just focus on school.
Who are some of the artists you grew up listening to and inspired your sound today?
I grew up listening to a lot of R&B music. My sisters were fans of Craig David, Alicia Keys, Aaliyah, Brandy, Usher and that was my earliest introduction. Even in Nigeria, if you go back to the early 2000s, it was also R&B music that was on the air wave of Nigerian music. It was Power Play, TwoFace, Style Plus and these were like really soulful singers. They would place a lot of effort into making passionate songs about a girl breaking their heart and they’re pleading out to them.
Around the 2010s, I started seeing a lot of Lil Wayne and Young Money crew and so, I kind of left my R&B bag to start focusing on what these guys were doing because it was pretty cool for the young Nigerians back then to see the shift in the music culture. A lot of it was sparked by 50 Cent and all of these guys doing their thing in the western part of the world. R&B and Hip-Hop was the earliest introduction to me.
You mentioned freestyling with your brothers. Would you say that this was your first attempt into creative expression through music?
Whenever I have to speak about early expressions of music, I feel like there were different stages for me. That for sure was super early where I didn’t know how to write a song (yet), it was just more of like trying to copy what I saw on TV. Yes, you’re right, in the earliest stages, it was me and my younger brothers, we would go to a corner of the house and rank each other in terms of the best freestyle or whatever. That was just us having fun.
From there, it would grow into me going to school one day and a friend of mine bought his laptop and had a recording plug called Audacity. He had a lot of these beats and just asked me; “Hey, do you want to freestyle?” And because I already had that experience with my brothers, I freestyled something that wasn’t entirely trash, and he was surprised like; “Wow! You actually got something”. That was the first stage of me expressing myself and recording it at the same time. Those two things coming together really made me feel like I am doing music right now.
When was the moment you told yourself; this is something I can see myself doing as a career?
From the moment I told you about me and my friends recording some music on his laptop, it became a hobby to me where I’d find a laptop to record myself while I was in school. I did this while I was in Nigeria, graduated and then went to the UK for my undergrad. I kept on making music as a hobby on the side and then came to Canada for my masters. I was still making music as a hobby in school, trying to wrap up my masters and while I was going to graduate, a song called ‘Tonight’ took off on soundcloud because I wasn’t paying money on DSP’s to put it on their platforms or whatever. Just soundcloud strictly.
The song on soundcloud had gotten a million plays and organically with no promotion. It started to hit me like; “Wow, this is real”. At the time, in the Nigerian airwave, the music tempo had sped up a lot and it was no longer the Cold Places and the Style Pluses back in the day. It was now upbeat, proper afrobeats, club-heavy songs and ‘Tonight’ almost represented slow jams. It was played in the clubs, girls were playing it on their YouTube vlog videos. It was kind of a shift, and it was interesting to see.
Once that had happened, I realised like; “Wow, this could be a proper profession to me”. I enjoy music and I think I could take this to the next level. It’s not just going to be a hobby for me if I take this seriously. Once I graduated, I did a headline show in Lagos the next month and that was it. That was the seal of the deal that now I am a full-fledged musician, I am no longer applying for jobs, I am just going to do this full-time and invest my whole effort and time into it.
You recently released your debut album ‘When it blooms’; walk us through the process?
For the longest time, I’ve been really scared of a full-length album. I have a phobia about albums just because I’ve been learning and discovering what this world of music has had to offer for me. Being someone that came from such a heavy academic background, I knew an album was something that you were marked by as an artist and I didn’t want to take it lightly. What I did is like I started making EPs and made 3 of them before this project. During that time, I was learning how to make an album. I was learning how to sequence a project, how to tell stories more and not just to sing about love all the time.
So the process of making this album was filled with the intention of telling my story, mixed with the nature of when people first heard about ‘Tonight’ or the songs before that. I want to learn how to merge both worlds in a way that makes sense. It involved a lot of collaborations because I knew it was not something I could just do by myself. As much as I have produced 90% of the songs that came before the album, I knew I couldn’t do the same for this project unless I wanted to cheat on myself. So there’s a lot of collaborations involved, producers that we had conversations with, artists and mixed-engineers.
At the end of the day, once we heard the entire project from the front to the back, I genuinely felt like we had gotten to where we wanted to be. I personally wanted to be in a space where I had an album I can be proud of and this is like an album I could listen to at a younger age with my brothers and want to freestyle with. I just wanted to represent the young Nonso that started with his sisters listening to things on TV and the Nonso that had learned so much since then. There’s two versions of Nonso on this project that I process in my head. That’s what I was trying to go for.
Something I’ve noticed was your collaboration with Canadian duo Majid Jordan; how did this come to be?
That was through my current manager. He’s had a very close relationship with not just Majid, but a lot of the guys at OVO. He had been talking to one of these people at Majid and mentioning me once in a while. Majid was like; “Who is this guy you keep on talking about? I like his songs! Where is he?” A studio session was set up, we linked up and we ended up just talking throughout the studio session. We had a couple of hours and we just talked through most of it. At some point, we were like; “Wow, we need to record because we’re paying for this”. We made a few sounds and that song ‘Different’ is the one we ended up going for. But we have a lot more songs that we sang together. It was super organic and honestly, it is a lifelong friendship with him from there.
So are you telling us that there’s more coming?
There is more coming for sure.
Are there any dream collaborations you would absolutely want to make happen?
There’s quite a few but I don’t have a ton. I’ve been very consistent with this list of people from a young age till now. So definitely Burna, Wizkid, Drake and then, a new addition has been Tems. I actually love Tems. Those are collaborations I would love to have maybe for the next project. I would say that with all of the people I’ve mentioned, I do know them so it’s something that could definitely happen. Fingers crossed to see what happens next. Aside from Drake, I don’t know Drake but, if you do, plug me [laugh].
I think we all wish we knew Drake. Listen, you released an amazing album, you had an amazing run for the quarter of the year; any future plans you would like to share with us?
Right now, the priority is to put me in front of everyone who is our media market, even the minor ones. We want to promote this album, we want to bring this album to life and stage. I think that would really seal the deal because I keep saying that young Nonso, that 7 year old kid doing his thing, freestyling with his brothers is now properly doing that with his own album on stage in front of hundreds of people. It is bringing to life the seed that was planted at that early stage and it is really blooming. For the people who have heard the album and who have a favourite song, I would love to sing it with them word for word.
Connecting with people on a deeper level, I feel like this is the aim of the album. I want people to feel like they really know this kid and they really connect with his story, and it resonates with the story. I would love to perform it so we’re working on touring in different markets like London, UK in general, Europe, in Africa we have something planned, in Canada, US, so that’s the next step for us right now. It’s going to be great.
As a final question; What is a word of advice you would give to someone coming up with dreams of becoming a superstar just like you?
Word of advice is just to keep yourself grounded. That is something I’ve learned pretty late. I am someone that likes to please people and make sure that everyone doesn't think that I'm tough or too stubborn to work with. There were a lot of things I was doing just to make people think like; “Oh ok, he just did it for me”. But if you believe in something like for example, I am a christian and don’t believe in drinking, I don’t believe in a lot of things, I don’t smoke, I don’t go to clubs and it is really tough as an artist to be doing all of these things.
I have learned that this is me and that’s who I’m going to be. I’m going to do my music to the fullest and make sure it’s quality but, at the same time, my person is not going to be moved by whatever is going on around me. People are going to remember me for that. That would be my advice, if you believe in something, if you believe in whatever it is and if you feel like that’s your person and that’s who you want to be for the next 40 years, just stick with it regardless. If it works for you or if it doesn’t work for you, at least you’re going to be happy that you stayed true to yourself and didn’t shift with the wave. That would be my message.
