Santi Santi
"A few days ago, I was just thinking out loud to myself: 'I love learning bro,"' Santi says. We're eating suya — a spicy kebab style Nigerian street food — in a moderately-lit living room in Victoria Island, Lagos. A wide TV is flanked by a PlayStation 4 at the center of the room. Both are awake but static, except for a paused screen of Far Cry 5. Santi is in Nigeria for a few weeks to shoot more videos for his upcoming album, Mandy & The Jungle, but he's been clearing his head in the meantime.
Over the last five years, the 26-year-old has emerged as the de-facto visionary of Nigeria's '90s baby generation. "Gangster Fear," a record he released in 2016 with producer-artist Odunsi (The Engine), kicked off the stylistic audiovisual wave of nostalgia-heavy, lo-fi music coming out of Nigeria today. But the singer remains elusive to the media, spending a lot of time indoors, disconnected. His success "can sometimes feel like a different world."
"I am still not fully aware of how much has changed," Santi says, mentioning it feels strange when people recognize him in the streets. Less than 24 hours earlier, he performed an energetic set at the Homecoming festival in Lagos, hosted by DIY entrepreneur, Grace Ladoja and Skepta's Boyz Better Know family. When I tell him I didn't catch his set, he pulls up the short clip of a roaring "Rapid Fire" rage on his phone. He already witnessed a similarly "surreal" reaction to the silky neo-Afropop cult-favorite at another music festival last December, but "this one feels madder," he says, watching my reaction to the video loop.
Santi is a vision of Afropop's future
"I know that if I take a little from here, and take a little from there," he tells me, "I can sprinkle some magic on it and whatever comes out will be me." Later, he explains his flow — a blend of pidgin-English and patois, filled with pop culture references, jokingly referring to it as "speaking Santinese."
Before he was Santi, Osayaba Andrew Ize-Iyamu was a renegade teenage drama coordinator. His finest act was pushing the limits of his missionary high school's tolerance with edgy serials he authored based on his classmates. In those days, Osayaba also composed songs layered with subliminal messages and metaphors for his plays. After high school in the early 2010s, he came to city-wide attention as a freestyle-rap prodigy named Ozzy B. In 2011, then 18 years old, he released a 21-track mixtape called Diaries of a Loner. The project was a glimpse into his deep hip-hop roots, indebted to Lil Wayne and Drake.
He spent the next three years trawling through Santigold's discography (and Vampire Weekend's self-titled debut). That introspection paid off. In 2013, he ditched the meta-persona Ozzy B and released Diaries of a Loner: Birth of Santi under the new moniker Santi, something that felt more "authentic." In this Frankenstein-esque moment, the Santi we now know was born.
"A few days ago, I was just thinking out loud to myself: 'I love learning bro,"' Santi says. We're eating suya — a spicy kebab style Nigerian street food — in a moderately-lit living room in Victoria Island, Lagos. A wide TV is flanked by a PlayStation 4 at the center of the room. Both are awake but static, except for a paused screen of Far Cry 5. Santi is in Nigeria for a few weeks to shoot more videos for his upcoming album, Mandy & The Jungle, but he's been clearing his head in the meantime.
Over the last five years, the 26-year-old has emerged as the de-facto visionary of Nigeria's '90s baby generation. "Gangster Fear," a record he released in 2016 with producer-artist Odunsi (The Engine), kicked off the stylistic audiovisual wave of nostalgia-heavy, lo-fi music coming out of Nigeria today. But the singer remains elusive to the media, spending a lot of time indoors, disconnected. His success "can sometimes feel like a different world."
"I am still not fully aware of how much has changed," Santi says, mentioning it feels strange when people recognize him in the streets. Less than 24 hours earlier, he performed an energetic set at the Homecoming festival in Lagos, hosted by DIY entrepreneur, Grace Ladoja and Skepta's Boyz Better Know family. When I tell him I didn't catch his set, he pulls up the short clip of a roaring "Rapid Fire" rage on his phone. He already witnessed a similarly "surreal" reaction to the silky neo-Afropop cult-favorite at another music festival last December, but "this one feels madder," he says, watching my reaction to the video loop.
Santi is a vision of Afropop's future
"I know that if I take a little from here, and take a little from there," he tells me, "I can sprinkle some magic on it and whatever comes out will be me." Later, he explains his flow — a blend of pidgin-English and patois, filled with pop culture references, jokingly referring to it as "speaking Santinese."
Before he was Santi, Osayaba Andrew Ize-Iyamu was a renegade teenage drama coordinator. His finest act was pushing the limits of his missionary high school's tolerance with edgy serials he authored based on his classmates. In those days, Osayaba also composed songs layered with subliminal messages and metaphors for his plays. After high school in the early 2010s, he came to city-wide attention as a freestyle-rap prodigy named Ozzy B. In 2011, then 18 years old, he released a 21-track mixtape called Diaries of a Loner. The project was a glimpse into his deep hip-hop roots, indebted to Lil Wayne and Drake.
He spent the next three years trawling through Santigold's discography (and Vampire Weekend's self-titled debut). That introspection paid off. In 2013, he ditched the meta-persona Ozzy B and released Diaries of a Loner: Birth of Santi under the new moniker Santi, something that felt more "authentic." In this Frankenstein-esque moment, the Santi we now know was born.
