I see Obongjayar perform at 180 House as part of the Soho Rising live music event, which showcases rising talent, a week before we meet. He expertly rattles through Sweetness, his latest EP, a collaboration with Nigerian musical producer Sarz. Obongjayar breaks into falsettos and husky tones as he depicts the tenderness and tensions of the early stages of courtship throughout four tracks, glowing under red strobe lights and supported by 80s-influenced synth bass and banging cymbals from a live band. It's an enchanting, sensory, and nostalgic experience that transports you to the floors of a discotheque, back into the embrace of your first crush, and back to your childhood.
When I find that the EP was inspired by an interaction with Obongjayar's fiancée, it simply adds to the tenderness of his songs. "The day I was meeting Sarz, I was texting my girlfriend, and she must have responded something like 'okay, chat to you later my lovely,'" he says me over breakfast in Peckham. 'Sweetness,' I said in response. And I just had that "aha!" moment." Finding mainstream love songs to be "simplistic, poppy, and pleasant," he vowed to use that evening's session with Sarz to create a true portrayal of infatuation, trust, and the things that go unsaid. The end result is an impressively deep undertaking that embraces the fissures and fractures of love to generate one of the most romantic films ever made.
Obongjayar's music, like Sweetness', is frequently inspired by a trigger, a notion, or a mood. His music-making process is anything but formulaic, yet the message frequently comes before the sound. "I'm quite perceptive about the world in which I live." Walking down the street, I might come across something that sparks an idea that I want to investigate more." The music frequently follows the thought, almost like a synaesthesia experience: "My process is trying to mimic the sound of that thing I hear in my head."
This is the strategy behind a string of dominating records, and despite being listed among the "developing" musicians at 180 House, Obongjayar is hardly a new name. In 2016, he posted an early Soundcloud demo that piqued the interest of XL Records founder Richard Russell, and he went on to release his debut EP, Home, through the label, as well as appear on Russell's Everything Is Recorded alongside Sampha, Giggs, and Kamasi Washington. Three further EPs – Bassey, Which Way Is Forward?, and Sweetness – round out his career, along with appearances on Pa Salieu's "Style & Fashion" and Lil Simz's "Point and Kill," which he backed during her three-day sell-out performance at Brixton Academy in December 2021. He ultimately won after a nearly six-year victory lap.
