Lojai, the eldest of three children raised in Lagos, grew up surrounded by music. His mother performed gospel songs as much as she sang them by choice. And then there was television, where songs from Disney shows were sung along, as were artists like Michael Jackson, Timbaland, Bruno Mars and Wizkid.
So, Lojai became interested in music long before he realized that he had a passion for music. By the age of six, he was singing and dancing at home and performing in front of family and friends, imitating the moves of Michael Jackson.
His father, who was away a lot, was in the construction business and his mother, a pastor, was also a petty trader at the time in the Ikorodu area of Lagos and later in the old Marina island area.
She took her children to church, and when Lohai was 10, he started playing drums there.
“At services on Tuesdays and Thursdays there was always one little boy who would sit and just watch the drummer play from the beginning of the service to the end. That little boy was me.”
In Nigeria’s Pentecostal churches, as in the American evangelicals with which they are closely associated, music plays a larger role than in other denominations, and choristers and ministers seem to be looking for the slightest excuse to start singing and dancing.
Young Osifes liked what he saw and began to absorb the culture. Even today, his favorite part of church service is the time of praise and worship. He’s a fan of Ye, the artist aka Kanye West’s Sunday services, held at various locations including his studio and the woods in Los Angeles, with an exclusive list of well-featured guests. The services are devoid of sermons and are more like gospel concerts.
Lojai was 10 or 11 years old when he wrote his first song while waiting in the car for a friend he was driving home with after school to join him. Like many first attempts, in his opinion, they were not successful. A couple of years later, a friend asked him to join the group after hearing about his rapping abilities.
This duo soon became a trio called Decoy. Over the course of a few months, they wrote several songs and performed at school. Their first studio experience in 2009 was with a producer known as Samklef, one of the first producers of the Afrobeats era who has collaborated with artists such as Wizkid and Ice Prince.
Samklefa’s studio was in Ogbe, a working-class neighborhood on the Lagos mainland, and Dekoye collected 20,000 naira (about $130 back then) to pay for every beat he made for them. The group performed several singles in other schools in and around Lagos, competing for popularity with other teen boy bands.
When high school ended and the group disbanded, Lohai was 16 years old. Around the same time, he began to transition from rapper to singer thanks to a surprise session, not in a studio, but in a church. One day during a meeting, the choir director pointed to him, the drummer, and asked him to be the lead soloist at the church ceremony on Sunday.
“She must have heard me sing somewhere, probably when I probably thought I was alone, but she heard my voice and just said, ‘I’ve heard you sing before, like you can do it.” I think that’s what boosted my confidence in my ability to sing more than anything.”
The epiphany at home also helped; As he listened to his mother sing at home and in church, he wondered, “This woman can really sing, so what makes me think I can’t?”
His now recognizable falsetto began to take shape as he sang in the shower.
In 2016, Lojai was completing a bachelor’s degree in marketing at the University of Portsmouth in the UK. He experimented with Fruity Loops software but went to London to record.
“There wasn’t a real Afrobeats producer in Portsmouth, so I had to travel three hours on the bus to London, maybe three or four times a week,” he recalls.
Studio sessions cost a whopping £400–500 (roughly $550–$700 at the time) for four studio sessions each month and drained his pocket money. But he felt that he was not doing enough and that the London production was of poor quality. So he started producing his own music before returning to Nigeria in 2018.
By then he had completed a postgraduate degree in business management at Portsmouth. He was ready to sell his dreams and his skills to the world. And a deadly virus will help him take off.