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Rising Nigerian Afro-Soul artist Ossi Grace joins Nandi Madida via FaceTime on Apple Music to talk about her latest single “Love Like This”. She also discusses how it feels now that her debut EP is out, on being authentic to herself, and the collaborators she worked with on the EP.
This Week’s Hottest New Tracks
Nandi Madida shares the hottest new African tracks of the moment. This week’s selection includes new tracks from Chella, Young Jonn & Rema, Joshua Baraka & Bien, Ciza & Francis Mercier, and Babalwa M & JAZZWRLD & Thukuthela & Gl_Ceejay.
Tune in and listen to the episode this Friday, November 28th on Apple Music at apple.co/_AfricaNow and broadcast on YFM Accra every Sunday at 2pm, YFM Kumasi on Saturdays at 3pm and YFM Takoradi on Saturdays at 6pm
Ossi Grace tells Apple Music how she feels now that her debut EP is out
I just feel relieved because the journey to getting here, even creating music, as an artist you just… I will call myself, an over-thinker a lot of times. Just overthinking everything. Okay, I come from Nigeria. Am I really trying to make it sound that I’m comfortable with? Should I just go with what everybody is doing? And it was just so much going on. And then we start a project, sometimes things happen, laptops get lost and just all sorts of things. But I’m glad we’re finally here.
Ossi Grace tells Apple Music about being authentic to herself
I feel like it’s something that I had to learn maybe when I was younger. People are like, “Oh, wow, she’s tall for a girl. Oh wow, she’s this. Oh, wow. Oh, wow.” Nigerians and coming from a Nigerian family, they don’t really want their kid to be the different one. They don’t want their kid to be the one everybody is pointing out like, “Wait, what’s going on with your kid? Your kid is different. Oh, your kid.” But I just realized, I tried so much to change myself and who I am, and I just wasn’t happy anytime I tried. So I’m just like, “You know what? I might as well just be myself. I’m happier here.” And I just felt like and I still feel like you can’t find your community, your real community, being someone else. So I just had to be myself and I think that transfers to my music also. I’ve been myself. That’s just where I come from. And I definitely have found my community who loves me as I am. They don’t want me to change. They don’t want me to be anybody else. They’re like, “Ossi, just be yourself.” And I’m like, “You know what? Even if that’s a handful of people, I’m good.” I’d rather be there than be lonely with someone else.
Ossi Grace tells Apple Music about the various iterations of her debut project and how it all came together
I like to say this is my third project, because I started it over… This is the second or third time I started it over. But the storyline kind of remained the same. I’ve grown as a person. The last one I was creating prior to this helped me grow into this, it felt a bit toxic. And I think that’s just where I was at that point in my life. That was the kind of energy that I accepted to be given to me, or that’s what I felt like I accepted, half love, or almost there with me, not fully there with me. And I feel like once you hear the growth in my music, I think, Love Like This, it’s a track on my EP would show you, okay, this is a bit toxic. But from every other track, you can hear the growth. How I go from, “If you do something to me, I’m going to do it to you back times two”. To, “you know what, if you’re not going to love me the way I want to be loved or the way I deserve, I’ll just step away. I don’t need to go back and forth with you and get you the way you get me”. So there’s a lot of growth getting to In A Hopeless Place.
Ossi Grace tells Apple Music about being an emotional person and channeling it into her music
I think I’ve always been a very emotional person and in touch with my feelings type of person. I still write love letters. I’m that person. I like to practice love like the 90s, like the 80s. I’ve always been very expressive. And I think that kind of came from loss and realizing that, “Wow, life is actually really short.” So I had just became that person that. “You know what? I’m just going to give it my all. I’m going to write letters, I’m going to send roses, I’m going to…” My project reflects who I am as a person. I’m very in touch with my feelings. Yeah, I’m very in touch with my feelings. I like people expressing themselves to me. I just love love. I love love, because I feel like that’s what life is about. If love is missing, then I don’t think life is… It’s not that fun, is it?
Ossi Grace tells Apple Music about the track “Ocean”
“Ocean” was one of the first tracks that I made for my project. This was really the beginning journey of, “Oh, In A Hopeless Place, I’m here, this is what the project is, I’m locked in.” And I was in Ghana and I really didn’t know what to do, because I felt like I just wanted to do something that was different. I was like, “What do I want to do? I don’t want to just come in here and make Afrobeats and just make whatever. I love guitars, so let’s get a guitarist in and everything.” And I was like, “Hmm, this song isn’t complete. What’s the song about? I want to build into something.” And it’s so crazy, because I was actually drinking water. And I heard the way I swallowed the water. My brain is very imaginative, sometimes a bit too far. I heard the way I swallowed the water and I was like, “Hmm, actually, yeah, this reminds me of love.” But I don’t know how I got there, because it’s so weird. Because also, I was a bit struggling with my relationship type of thing and I was like, “You know what? We don’t have to reach the end in the beginning. Let’s build here.” So thinking about the water, just thinking, “You know what? Let’s build here.” The ocean started from somewhere, it didn’t just appear there. A river started from something, didn’t just appeared there. It’s going to start with a drizzle, then the rain comes and then it becomes an ocean, it becomes a puddle, it becomes a pool. So that’s why I was just like, “You know what? I want our love to grow this way. Let’s just take everything a day at a time, let it just pour, and before you know we’re just filled with love.” So that was where Ocean came from.
Ossi Grace tells Apple Music about the collaborators she worked with on her EP
I think the number one producer I have to mention here is Remy Baggins. He’s an amazing friend of mine and he was on most of the tracks on there, because we’ve known each other for a couple of years now, so creating music is so easy for us. And then there’s Mojam. Remy has worked with Tems and he’s worked with all sorts of people. Mojam has worked with Sam Smith, they work with a lot of rappers, a lot of people, PRGSHN, who was executive producer on the last Stormzy album. So I worked with a lot of great producers on this project. They are artists. They’re not just here to make beats, they’re here to make a whole body of work, a beautiful body of work. They understand music, they understand sound, they understand pianos, drums, and everything. So I was really, really lucky to have them. And then songwriting, I wrote all the songs myself. I felt like right now I’m in a very personal space. I didn’t really want to explain myself too much. I just wanted to go in there and write. So I just decided to focus on the writing solely myself. And maybe as time goes by and I meet someone that I’m on the same wavelength with in terms of writing, then I can bring on songwriters.
Ossi Grace tells Apple Music about the moment she realised she could be an artist
I would say I suspected for a while, but I think when… So there’s an amazing rapper, his name is M.I Abaga, and he featured me on his project three years ago, the track is called Crazy. It was actually a track from one of my projects that I didn’t release. And he was like, “I’m taking this song.” And I’m like, “Yeah, you can have it.” And then he just rapped over it. And then when the project came out, I just texted him, “Congratulations.” And I just put my phone on silent and I went to bed. By the time I woke up in the morning, my phone was hot, almost dead. And I just see, “Ossi, who’s Ossi Grace? What the fuck? Ossi, Ossi, Ossi, Ossi, Ossi.” And I’m like, “Wait, whatac Over this track? Over this track?” And I have men, especially in my DMs, literally saying I brought them to tears. I brought them to tears. Even my brother was like, he almost cried, but then he remembered, “Oh, it’s my sister,” and he was like, “Yeah, F that.” But yeah. I’ve made three albums already and it felt like I had set a crazy standard, right? With each album, I have to try to outdo the other albums and when I went into the studio, I was like, “Okay, I have this beautiful discography that I only want to make better.” I was like, “I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure that I keep this standard.” And that was the energy, the whole process of creating it and just working so hard, putting in so much effort. One day in the process of creating the album, I saw a book written No Excuses, and I was like, “This is exactly what I’ve been doing this whole time.” Creating the best thing that I can so that when I put it out, I have no excuses, I have no regrets, no feeling like I could have, I would have. I put out my best and I’m excited with how it’s being received. People are already calling it one of my best projects and that’s exactly why I put in all that work.
