Ameen is a talented rapper, creative director, vocalist and producer from Nigeria making music within the alternative genre. Three months after his latest album, CRVSADE, he sat down with TheReplayMAG to discuss the meanings behind the songs, his journey as a musical artist, and what the future entails.
The new album, CRVSADE, has twelve songs, and most of the song titles have a religious inspiration. Ameen explained that the overall theme of CRVSADE is ‘if Jesus was a gangster’, and the songs are all supposed to represent ‘different universes’ of himself.
‘Mary’ has a more ‘jolly’, cheerful atmosphere and is inspired by Jesus’ mother Mary, and her joy and struggles after finding herself pregnant. ‘Stars’ has a more intergalactic, euphoric feel, and represents the complications facing both Mary and Joseph after the birth of their baby.
Michael Jackson was one of Ameen’s earliest musical influences. In explaining his musical background to TheReplayMAG, he explained how he finds it “crazy how someone you don’t know a thousand miles away can give you a dream.” The son of a public relations officer and a retired art teacher, Ameen grew up in a household that knew great music. In his childhood and early teen years, he listened to a lot of Oldies, Westlife, Backstreet Boys and Lagbaja.
At the age of 13, Ameen got the chance to work in a recording studio environment for the first time with his friend, Millywine where he recorded his first track. He visited the studio while back home from school, and ended up returning home late, to find his mother and aunty looking for him. It’s clear that he was drawn to music, and to this song in particular, from an early age. Just listening to him recount the experience makes it clear that this was unforgettable (or in his words, ‘unreal’) for him, and perhaps was one of many defining moments in his early musical journey.
Even today, the rhythm and beat of that first tune gives him goosebumps. Then and now, it reminded him of Dr Dre. His mother jokingly told him that if the song was bad, he would be punished, but upon hearing it, she praised him for his talent: something that helped him believe that he had something to say and a skill to show to the world.
Ameen engaged writing more aggressively in the holiday space in between his SS3 and resumption into Year 1 in university.
He recorded his first proper song, ‘Mr Man’, in his second year of university while studying in the “Creative Arts Department” while attending University of Lagos (UNILAG). It was written in Yoruba, one of the many native languages in West Africa and Nigeria more specifically, despite the fact that he’d only started learning to speak the language at the age of 14 or 15. He even remembers getting assistance and advice from his mother on the spelling and pronunciation of certain words. The song itself took inspiration from Dagrin and Olamide, and was nominated by the Scream Awards.
Ameen tells us that he didn’t feel quite ready, and decided to take a break to focus on his education, promising himself that he would return to music when his degree was done. In 2018, Ameen dropped his first official single: ‘Tripping’ and this marked the beginning of his official career as a musician and set the foundation for the creative genius we all know today. This gained the attention of Ovahflo, who managed to get him to record in a professional studio, the first he’d been in. He won Bolt’s rap competition, had underground record deals in the works and even opened for Mayorkun at one of his show
Despite the fact that performing live isn’t always his favourite part of being a musician, it seems to have propelled him into his current life trajectory. Performance, for Ameen, is about extending himself to his fans and providing them with a show. In his mind ‘they might as well just play your song in a car’ if a singer doesn’t give something new in a performance setting. Ameen admits to being a relatively shy person, but he’s also very willing to bring his best into a performance and give new dimensions and iterations to his music. It’s a chance to blow off steam, he tells us, and is a ‘point where you escape reality to an extent’.
His dream festival lineup is just an extension of that philosophy: it includes himself, Kendrick Lamar, Kanye West, Travis Scott, Fela, and Drake. All of these artists have immense stage presence, but can also create their own universes and draw an audience into those new worlds. Ameen sees Drake’s ‘OVO’, Kanye West’s ‘YE’ and Travis Scott’s ‘Cactus Jack’ as key inspirations for his own work as he develops his own form of performance and artistry. He also gives us an enthusiastic description of an iconic concert performance by Michael Jackson from Bucharest, which led to many fans fainting from sheer excitement.
That performance clearly means a lot to Ameen, and part of that could be Micheal Jackson himself, the name that keeps cropping up in our conversation. Even the name sparks memories of Ameen’s childhood and motivates him for his future, and this just drives home the idea that something as small as a name can have a lot of power over us.
In fact, one of the most important things for Ameen, today and when he started out, was his stage name. As he puts it, ‘you can hear Dangote and can never see another Dangote’, in reference to the richest black man in the world, Aliko Dangote, who is also Nigerian. For Ameen, names have a particular power, but he struggled to pick out something that felt like it fit him. He feels that a name gives you the only identity you can truly hold on to. So figuring out what to call himself in the music scene was a decision he didn’t take lightly.
The first name he chose was Mo’dest’ a name given to him in military boarding school(Nigerian Navy Secondary School). He then used ‘Oz aka Oz_blah’, inspired by the Wizard of Oz, but even that didn’t feel original enough. But the stage name that he uses today comes directly from his own surname “Ameen”.
He tells us how, though his first name is Olumide, he has always been called Ameen by those around him. As a child, he wasn’t as fond of that name as a result of personal struggles, but he has grown to love and embrace the originality of it. Of course, there’s a unique sense of pressure and pride to using your own family name: you want to create a legacy to be proud of. As Ameen has gotten older, though, it feels more and more like the right path, something to hand down to the generations of the Ameen family that come after him.
But names are connected to more than just the artist: they’re also a label for the listeners, and the fans that come as a musician grows over time. Ameen has been aware of this from the beginning. As part of that, he wanted a song to dedicate to his fans, that felt joyful, that could be played in a club or a rave setting. His fans became the Crvsaders, and that song was CRVSADE, released as a single in mid 2022. The wider album was then released later, just three months ago.
So what comes next?
New music takes longer than three months, Ameen tells us, and he’s been working as a creative director for another artist alongside his own musical career, so it’s unlikely that there’ll be a new album within the next few weeks or months. But he hints at possible music videos for songs on CRVSADE and a joint project with frequent collaborator rapper and producer MK
Find Ameen: https://linktr.ee/whoisameen
Stream CRVSADE: https://ffm.to/ameen-crvsade
Listen to the UNDSCVRD playlist
CREDITS
Writers: Izzy Peacock, Ortega Odafe
Editor: Ehinosen Egbadon
Creative Director: Iyanuoluwa Funmibi
Playlist Curator: KP Akande
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