Off-air, Nigeria’s growing MTV-Generation was being moulded by the spread of cable TV, mobile technology and digital sharing. Starting with 2Face’s “African Queen”, the first music video MTV Base aired in ‘05, progressive improvements in the quality and texture of Afro-Pop happened rapidly over the next decade. The arrival of the Viacom-owned music giant transformed the landscape of the music industry we know today. Prior to this, Channel O had thrived as the premier music-dedicated cable broadcast in Africa for many years, bringing all the sounds of the continent to one channel, for premium after-school viewing. I mean, a 18-year-old guy, in 2010, Lagos, what other kind of music was I going to make?”ĥ years before Santi started to cobble up his first Diaries of Loner mixtape with his then go-to-producer BankyOnDBeatz, MTV Base kicked off operations in Lagos.

“People will be surprised ‘okay yeah, he used to be a rapper-rapper before.’ But for me, It’s like, that’s just the side I showed you first. He doesn’t necessarily dismiss his days as a rapper as a formative phase in his artistry, but he also makes literal allusions to his early musical influences. He still envisions himself as a growing artist, spends a chunk of his time by himself and wholesomely trusts in the divine timing of all things.ĭuring our conversation, time, as a concept, is one of the first elemental indicators of Santi’s hyperrealistic artistic view. Purposeful clarity makes things easier these days, but he is also keen to add, not much has changed. “On Diaries of a Loner, I was on an unclear road using a very rough map to navigate”, Santi says as we start to discuss his roots in Hip-Hop, “Now I can see the whole map. The latter, a purge from a hell-scape of vices which he describes were holding him back from reaching the place the “journey” was taking him. The former brought an unceremonious end to Osayaba Ize-Iyamu’s Diaries Of A Loner mixtape series, along with his meta-persona as OzzyB – once seen by many of the earlier users of the Nigerian inter-webs as the saviour of Rap. These are the names of the two defining projects in the musical journey of Santi. T here were no shawls for the Birth of Santi, nor were there any roses at Suzie’s Funeral. How one of Africa’s most innovative contemporary musicians reinvented his way to becoming a force in the strongest cultural rebellion in recent years.

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