INTERVIEW | SENIBO TALKS TO US ABOUT HIS LATEST ALBUM ‘MEMENTO MORI’

Rising Hip-Hop artist Senibo, hail­ing from Niger­ia drops his latest album ‘Memento Mori’. We catch up with him to learn about his music influ­ences and the pro­cess behind it.

Listen Here to Memento Mori’

Tell us about your early influ­ences when it came to you want­ing to make music?

Oh man, let me tell you about my early influ­ences when it comes to mak­ing music — it’s a wild ride! You see, I grew up in a house­hold that was prac­tic­ally burst­ing with music­al tal­ent. My par­ents, both sib­lings, and I all played the grand piano — but that’s not where the story ends. Our music­al tastes were all over the map, baby! One broth­er was all about Diddy and the oth­er could­n’t get enough of Boyz II Men. One sis­ter was blast­ing Pink while the oth­er had a Back­street Boys obses­sion. Talk about diversity, am I right? And that’s exactly what’s reflec­ted in my own body of work — I’m all about blend­ing genres and tak­ing risks.

But when it comes to hip hop, there are a few artists who really left an impact on me. It all star­ted with Diddy’s “Shake Your Tail­feath­er” on the Bad Boys soundtrack — that beat just got me going, you know? Then there was Nelly, and of course, Ush­er (thanks to my sis­ter­’s infatu­ation with him). But it was­n’t until I heard Lil Wayne at 16 that everything changed. That guy is a geni­us! I could tell that he was born to make music and I just knew that I wanted to be like him.

I had my first stu­dio ses­sion at just 11 years old and I’ve nev­er looked back since. I’ve put in over ten thou­sand hours of “ser­i­ous play,” as I like to call it, and it’s all paid off. My 2019 EP, “Ser­i­ous Play,” is proof of that. And now, all that hard work and self-dis­cov­ery has cul­min­ated in my latest mas­ter­piece, “Memento Mori.” Trust me when I say that this is some­thing spe­cial, some­thing above aver­age — it’s a work of art that I’m so proud of.

What is the Hip-Hop scene like in Niger­ia? Is it easy for artists to be heard?

Oh, let me tell you about the Hip Hop scene in Niger­ia! It’s a whole dif­fer­ent vibe here, baby. You see, Nigeri­ans are known for their love of dan­cing, so Afro Beats rules the air­waves. But that does­n’t mean the Hip Hop scene isn’t hot. Oh no, quite the oppos­ite actu­ally. In order for a rap­per to be heard in Niger­ia, they have to be noth­ing short of magic­al, you feel me? We’ve got legends like MI Abaga, who just dropped a banger with NAS, and Sauce Kid, who’s known as the Afric­an Rap Ambas­sad­or. These guys are the real deal, but let me tell you, their climb to the top was steep. Nigeri­ans are mostly inclined to Afro music, so break­ing into the Hip Hop scene here ain’t easy.

That’s why I ded­ic­ated years to mas­ter­ing the art of hooks, har­mon­iz­ing, and singing like a damn fea­ture artist. I’m talk­ing about Burn­a­boy level skill and range, baby! Check out my tracks ‘Vibing’ and ‘Wait­ing’, where I brought in some tal­en­ted sing­ers to com­ple­ment my flow. But on the oth­er tracks, I’m tak­ing it solo and it comes out fire.

Con­grats on your second album ‘Memento Mori’! What is the mean­ing of the album and what can we expect to hear?

The album is all about heal­ing sounds. As an artist, I believe that the inten­tion behind a track, regard­less of genre, is what ulti­mately determ­ines the out­come. Wheth­er we’re singing about love, sen­su­al­ity, or even some­thing as banal as smoking weed or chas­ing girls, the son­ic inten­tion is always to heal the listen­er and give them a tran­scend­ent, almost psy­che­del­ic exper­i­ence of the divine.

So when you listen to “Memento Mori,” you’ll hear songs that touch on themes of broth­er­hood, love, sexu­al­ity, and exist­en­tial­ism, all wrapped up in fre­quen­cies that are spe­cific­ally designed to help you reach a state of Nir­vana. These ulteri­or motives, hid­den behind the music, have the power to alter the very fab­ric of the sound and cre­ate an exper­i­ence that is truly trans­form­at­ive.

One of my per­son­al favor­ite tracks on the album is “Burn­a­boy.” I actu­ally met Burn­a­boy when he was just start­ing out, and we spent an even­ing smoking joints and watch­ing movies. I remem­ber watch­ing him in deep con­tem­pla­tion, and know­ing then that he was destined for great things. Although the track is rel­at­ively short, it’s one of my most beloved. I even con­ver­ted it into a vir­al clip reel format, cut­ting it down to one minute so that it could be eas­ily shared and enjoyed by every­one

Lyr­ics (first 8 bars)

“I lead from behind, go ahead and shine
Just wanna be, Burn­a­boy jeal­ousy wan make me burn the boy
Who burn the boy mama Afrique
That broth­er reach­ing the peak,
I be watch­ing from the side line guess I’m a freak
A Stan my man
The dicho­tomy and gate keep­ers no longer exist
So what hold­ing my feet
Now I’m ten toes to the ground like he always says
Put the men­tos in my mouth now spit­ting fresh”

We are so sorry to hear about the passing of your pro­du­cer. As a res­ult of this sad news, you had to pro­duce this album your­self. Tell us about the pro­cess behind the pro­duc­tion?

Exper­i­ence the joy of doing what you love! There’s noth­ing quite like the sat­is­fac­tion of pour­ing your heart and soul into your work, espe­cially when it comes to cre­at­ing music. Craft­ing a mas­ter­piece involves a mul­ti­tude of steps — from metic­u­lously hand­craft­ing each indi­vidu­al instru­ment, to care­fully blend­ing them togeth­er into a har­mo­ni­ous sym­phony. And let’s not for­get about the art of craft­ing the per­fect verse or hook, wheth­er it’s through writ­ing or free-styl­ing.

Every song is a unique adven­ture, with its own set of twists and turns. You nev­er know what approach will work best until you dive in. Some­times you’ll find your­self writ­ing, while oth­er times you’ll free­style. And as you move through each stage of the pro­cess, the tide of inspir­a­tion will ebb and flow with the spir­itu­al ambi­ence of the track.

Once the vocals are cap­tured, the real magic begins. Every four bars presents a new oppor­tun­ity to add intric­ate details and subtle touches to the mix, tweak­ing volumes, backups, reverbs, and echoes to cre­ate a truly immers­ive exper­i­ence. And when it comes time to mas­ter the final product, you can rest easy know­ing that your extens­ive exper­i­ence and the pre­sets in your DAW will make the task rel­at­ively easy. How­ever, the real key to suc­cess lies in your atten­tion to detail and ded­ic­a­tion to mak­ing each micro por­tion of the track shine. Through dili­gence and hard work, you’ll bring all the ele­ments togeth­er to cre­ate a mas­ter­piece that’s great­er than the sum of its parts.

Tell us about a time where Hip-Hop saved your life?
When my moth­er passed, I felt my soul tethered to hers. But Music, oh Music, she saved me from a shared demise. Through Music, I channeled my grief into a force of cre­ativ­ity, away from the dark­ness of self-destruc­tion.
And in my heal­ing, I dis­covered new­found strength and con­fid­ence, dar­ing to ascend to the stage and cast a hyp­not­ic spell over my audi­ence. This cour­age has pro­pelled me towards great­er self-aware­ness, each step taken with incre­ment­al belief and power. In mas­ter­ing Music, I have wit­nessed a power so divine and godly, it leaves me mys­ti­fied and in awe. People are drawn to me with an irres­ist­ible pull, and I am humbled by the power I wield. It’s no won­der why Kanye pro­claimed, “no one man should have all that power.”

How Can we see your work?

I’m pub­lished by Ditto:

Sup­port SENIBO on Social Media 

Ins­tagram | You­Tube

Listen to more of SENIBO

Spo­ti­fy | Apple Music

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Rishma Dhaliwal

Edit­or / PR Con­sult­ant at No Bounds

Rishma Dhali­w­al has extens­ive exper­i­ence study­ing and work­ing in the music and media industry. Hav­ing writ­ten a thes­is on how Hip Hop acts as a social move­ment, she has spent years research­ing and con­nect­ing with artists who use the art form as a tool for bring­ing a voice to the voice­less. Cur­rently work­ing in TV, Rishma brings her PR and media know­ledge to I am Hip Hop and oth­er pro­jects by No Bounds.

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