Adekunle Gold: Lagos to the World

https://noctismag.com/music/adekunle-gold-lagos-to-the-world/

Somewhere between Lagos and Los Angeles lies Adekunle Gold’s hybrid sound from across continents. Bringing us into a new realm of music with his latest release ‘Catch Me If You Can’, rich vocals and soul warming rhythms transport us to the clubs that lie below Lagos, Adekunle’s home city, and to the warm sands of late-night beach parties where waves of Gold’s first beats began to ripple across oceans.

Adekunle’s story begins in Lagos, born and raised in the hub of urban Nigerian culture, the city hosted his first residency and series of sold-out headline shows before the artist made the move to Los Angeles to offer his sound to different shores. It was Adekunle’s father that first offered him a taste of the arts, “He was an educationist, a teacher, a painter, I mean everything that I am except being a musician”, before moving on to belt self-confessed off pitch hymns in church choir as a teen. It was here that Gold experienced his first taste of the stage, a moment that two decades on would manifest into a career housing four albums and hundreds of millions of streams. “To be honest I wasn’t very good, but I kept working. My sisters and I used to sing back-up at night with my aunty, she would teach us how to sing different harmonies, she’d teach us how to sing in alto, tenor, baritone, all of that stuff”.

Musically minded family members, including Gold’s grandma who would lull an adolescent Adekunle to sleep with sounds of folklore lyrics, weren’t the only catalyst in forming his career, the artist is overflowing with drive, something he credits to his father. “My dad did a lot and unknown to him he showed me ways to live life as a very honest person you know and it’s paying off for me. I can brag and beat my chest and say I did it all by myself, no handouts, just working hard and every day just believing in my dreams”. The fire that formed in his belly early on in life has never distinguished, it is in fact overflowing, igniting his energy, vocals, and every album with an underlying element catching your attention as quickly as flames and acts as a tribute to his late father, whose energy lives on in Adekunle and his music. “Losing my dad also, I didn’t see that coming, I didn’t think it was going to happen that soon, I wanted to see that he enjoyed all of his labour so that really shook me as well.”

As a fan of Adekunle Gold’s music, the only thing you can expect, is the unexpected. Every installment to his musical quota and release under his belt, which is overflowing with a pick and mix of songs, writing his first one at 15, gives us a slice of his life. Not afraid to share the highs and lows, wins and losses, his listeners are right alongside him, as he navigates through life, sharing some of his toughest moments, one of those being the loss of his younger sister. “She had a knack for singing like I did. Losing her was hard. She was really precious to me, just like the rest of my sisters obviously, we had a really great connection, and she was really happy to see me perform on stages, even though it was just churches back then. She would confide in me; we would talk like friends. When I lost her to a heart disease, it really changed my life. I wanted to win because of her. I wanted to win so bad because of her, I wanted her to see that – look Busayo we did it.”

As we watch Adekunle ascend to the throne of Afropop royalty, hitting just about every continent and stage as he goes, it’s hard to believe there was ever a point in which the world refused to take note of him. Gold is the kind of Artist who grabs your attention in the first few beats, but the beginning of his career tells a different story, one of standing in the audition rooms of MTN Project Fame and other talent shows, struggling for recognition. True to his nature, rejection only added fuel to the flames, manifesting into resilience. “Until I see the end of something I don’t stop. I thought you know what I think I really have a shot at this thing, I knew that I had a knack for writing, so it was this moment that really gingered me to say I really want to do this thing full time.”