Marenikae is a Toronto-based Nigerian Afro-merge artist, fashion house owner and exceptional performer who has been in the music industry from a young age. Born to a Yoruba father who owned a record label and an Efik mother who was also active in the music industry, Marenikae’s sound is a fusion of all her earlier musical influences.
For this 49th Exclusive, Marenikae sits down with 49th Street to talk about her musical journey, her art journey outside of music, being an academic at heart, and where she hopes to be in later years.
Where did you get your name ‘Marenikae’?
Marenikae: It’s kind of my first name but with a twist. Whenever I’d tell my foreign classmates my name, they’d be like “oh Marenikae, that’s so exotic.” As opposed to my birth name Morenike. The name just sounded really nice and it kind of stuck.
What’s your musical journey been like?
Marenikae: Well I’ve been in music, or should I say the creative industy since I was little. My dad was heavily involved in the music industry. I was lucky enough to come in close proximity with some of the OGs of the Nigerian music industry and I just grew up filled with all those creative influences and when I fell in love with music, I was lucky enough to not be in a situation where I was discouraged from pursuing it. When I came over to the States and really decided that I wanted to do music for real, I was flying into
You mentioned that your dad was a music head, how does he influence your music?
Marenikae: Apart from the way I was exposed to music from a young age, my father’s influnece is a bit less than my mother’s. She’s critical about my music but I don’t take it in bad faith, we like critique in this house.
Who do you make music for? What kind of stories do you want your music to tell?
Marenikae: I really just want to make bad bitch music. Music that gets people going. There’s already a lot of romance and love songs so I wanted to make something different from that.
You describe your sound as Afro-merge. What genres are you merging to form this?
Marenikae: I describe it as a combination of AfroPop, Neo Soul, Afro RnB and Adult contemporary music. I mainly decided on naming it Afro Merge because it sounds different from a lot of what Afro Fusion artists and I was like ‘why not?’
I mean. Going off of that, who are your musical influences?
Marenikae: I would say a lot of 90s and early 2000s artists. I love Destiny’s Child. I love Jodesy. I love 90s RnB, I love that little moment they were having with Erykah Badu and Maxwell. I would say of course, pre-2012 Nigerian music, like Styl-Plus and Mo’Hits, that really helped me focus on what I want to focus on in my music.
You’re very expressive with your art and your influence is pretty strong in your music and music videos, is there something you struggle with expressing in your work?
Marenikae: No, not really. I mean the one struggle that I had was with performing live and singing live. I guess I can say that’s probably the most difficult aspect of it. But I like to be involved with the process. I like rehearsals because I get notes and it helps me better. I enjoy being in the process of music and I’ve noticed that a lot of people don’t do that. The whole stage stamina and stuff, it makes me very excited.
What’s your relationship with music?
Marenikae: Music is my constant companion. It’s in everything. I get advertisements and jingles stuck in my head. I’m someone who’s very sonically interested. I’m typically just interested in all sorts of sound and sonic expression. I went for an art exhibition the other and one of the installations had a sound experience and I’m pretty sure I spent a lot longer than other people because I love sound. I go to sleep with my TV on and it’s always too loud.
It sounds like it’s your shadow. You also do school in additon to music, how’s that like?
Marenikae: Yeah, Criminology was my first bachelor’s, I’m doing my second bachelor’s now. After my graduation, I moved to Atlanta to kind of focus on being an artist full time. I took some time to figure out what I wanted to do and what my interests where. When I was performing, I’d get off stage and people would walk up to us like “Hey where did you get these outfits?” and that was how my clothing line started. And then after doing so much stuff for my music videos, I got asked to write a couple of ads. I was asked to decorate the space of my performance coach and yeah. I think that from being an artist, I’m able to do these assistive projects. After being exposed to all of that stuff, it felt like my life was going in a more artistic direction even without the music. That made me decide to get my second degree, a double major actually, in Art History and Visual culture and Media and Digital Culture. I’m also double minoring in International Development Studies and Creatorial studies.
I think we should just go ahead and call you Superwoman.
Marenikae: Lol. Funny enough, someone asked me recently, “Isn’t it hard?” And I was like, I’m not in a place right now where it’s hard. Even in my first bachelor’s degree, it was harder. That was the time I was flying from Boston to Atlanta once or twice a month to get performance training. That was more difficult in my opinion. Now, there’s not as much pressure and I’m not a new student so I kind of know the ropes. I recently just decided what I want my Master’s to be in. I’m kind of an academic at heart. Just being exposed to art history and different kinds of performance art helps me as an artist who makes videos and who conceptualises things, being able to index the best ideas that the world has had for maybe like thousands of years.
You sound like you’re enjoying every second of it.
Marenikae: I am, I am. Because if I had gone ahead to do my master’s, I would have had to do it in Criminology because my bachelor’s degree was in Justice studies so my master’s would have had to be in either Justice studies or Criminology. And most Criminologists, they end up working for the FBI or they end up working for the police force or security companies or security teams and all of those things or security and you know, racism and diversity departments in offices, things like that and I just did not want to spend my life doing crime and justice criminology research because, especially when you’re learning in America, so much we’re learning about the way people are criminalised has to do with racism.
And I was just tired. Because as an African person who lived in Africa, you don’t really grow up experiencing racism and being confronted with it. Like when I was growing up, who was there to be racist to me?
But when you grow up in America, you come to understand how the world is structured. I was tired of seeing a lot of black people being killed and having to study that in school and it was like my whole life was about black murder and black death and never being exposed to it before. It was such a culture shock. It took a huge toll on me. And while I learnt what I learnt because it gave me a very good foundation to talk about race and nationalisation, Nigerians are very typically bad at talking about racist issues.
And I think it was also very helpful and I decided to do a master’s or a special program in art crime. So having my first degree in crime and justice and then having my second bachelor’s in art history, and just like a very good foundation in that. I wanna have a double bachelor’s and then I’ll have a double masters and then I’ll be topping people. Because everyone has one bachelor’s but who has two?
Not a lot at all. You’re in Atlanta and you’re performing and you’re singing and you’re pretty much doing everything. How’s the music scene there as someone in a time when we’re talking about Afrobeats and Afropop and Afro everything and there are even talks that Grammy would add in an Afro-beat category, how does it feel being someone there at this point in time?
Marenikae: Well now I’m in Atlanta and I moved here specifically for that and if I’m going to be anywhere doing music, I chose Atlanta because I would say outside of Nigeria, I had never seen anywhere where there were so many successful young, black people in the same place. So after coming from Nigeria, I went to school in Massachusetts. One of the first things that attracted me to Atlanta as a place was how much of black excellence was displayed there. Black excellence might be an overplayed term now but back then I hadn’t seen anything like it.
It was also an amalgamation of African & Nigerian culture but also like a huge place for black American culture as well and that kind of mix was happening. When I first started R&B at the time, I was just doing typical R&B, and Atlanta was the place to be at that point in time.
Number two, there are also a lot of Nigerians there so I felt like I could kill two birds with one stone. However, after doing that, I realised in America that Afro-beats culture, depending on every state that you’re in, is different. And unless you have like a homogenising sound and everything, you have to be doing it one by one. I think that has got to be the most difficult part for me. I would say that being in Atlanta really helped me create my sound, or rather the variations of my sound; I was able to get amazing artist training and then I got artist development from the label, Atlantic Records. I feel like every single place I’ve been has been integral in forming a section of who I am.
Moving to Toronto, I was like, where do I go next for school, like north, west, south for school, and what I want to do and where I want to make music in. And Toronto was the perfect place because it’s one of the places in North America where it is literally a place full of first-generation, second-generation immigrants. There’s just this great amalgamation of black diaspora cultures in Toronto.
So do you think that after all your majors and master’s degree you’re going to come back home?
Marenikae: What does come back home mean? I’m home all the time, lol. I was one Lagos in March and I’m going back in November and I’m going to be there till January. I was there since March and then till May. I practically live here which is great
I mean, you said you were here in March, and that was like, three blinks ago. That wasn’t that far at all.
Marenikae: Yes it wasn’t. I was there from March till May. In fact, anytime I’m coming to Nigeria, I always extend my stay for like 3 or 4 weeks longer than I plan to. Because stuff like this keeps happening. Stuff happens and then you want to capitalise on things so I’m there all the time. But like, it’s one of those things where when I’m there long enough and I begin to crave Starbucks, I’m like okay it’s time to go back, I have to go back
Yeah that’s a pretty good reason. So what’s the influence that these trips back to Nigeria have on your music and on your personality?
Marenikae: I just love to see what’s going on, I love to listen to the radio in Nigeria; what’s hot, what are the girls doing out here? It’s always like– I love Lagos because Africans are so creative and you’re just always exposed to new and different things every time that you come back home. Aside from the music scene, the art scene is growing really big and I’m really interested in having some kind of collaboration with music and art and fashion. I enjoy going back every time. The activities are endless in Lagos. My one criticism about Lagos and Nigerian culture is just lack of professionalism but other than that. People don’t be professional. There was an incident at a show I was doing where my dancers and I had shown up since 4am in the morning to rehearse, only for the DJ to just do her own thing because she wasn’t aware it was going to be a live performance. Literally situations like that where we would -and when I say we, I mean me and my dancers- perform in places and we would be completely sabotaged. We won’t be able to do things like we rehearsed.
I remember we were having passing calls for dancers and having to go through so many dancers because once you want to do the routine 7 or 8 times, they’re complaining and I’m like, this is a paid rehearsal, we have two more hours, what is going on?
So my biggest issue with living in Nigeria is always the professionalism and lack of it and how that affects your work. Just looking for a place to rehearse, just a decent studio. When I was back in Atlanta, I had like maybe five or six different choices around me. In Lagos that was not the case, you just had like a rehearsal studio with wooden floors and in built AC and the first person j actually saw do that was my choreographer in Nigeria who had built her own little studio with wooden floors and mirrors and everything and lockers that’s really far from me. Being an artist, you realise that a lot of people in the field are not serious and they don’t take the rehearsal thing seriously at all. It’s only been recently where Nigerians have started to demand excellence from their artists and as a result, artists have started taking stage performances serious.
Who are your favourite artists now? Like which songs are you obsessed with?
Marenikare: Oh my gosh, I love Oxlade. I’ll say that’s my favourite artist. Love Kulosa so much. I played it so much. I’ve loved Oxlade for years though; he’s always someone I’ve wanted to write with because I feel like he just has this unique true Afro-R&B sound that’s amazing. Even the way he does his vocal performances, you can tell that there’s a lot of R&B influences there. I love Wlrd, wrld is one of my favourite artists. I love Tems; amazing voice, amazing vocal delivery. And then I love Asa, she’s one of my favourite artists, I love SZA. And oh my gosh, I love Don Toliver. Don Toliver was my artist of 2021 and 2022, he’s currently my favourite artist of all time right now
So I’ve listened to a lot Don Toliver. I love Show Dem Camp, I listen to them, love their project, The Palmwine Express. I love a lot of alte people. I love Sante. He has this song called sidelines that I was obsessed with for months. Like that’s all I listen to all day. I have this thing where I become obsessed with a song and that’s all I’m listening to all day, like just that song, over and over again for weeks, until my brain gets tired of it
I love Nissi, she’s like a new female artist and I love her. Yeah I just love a bunch of alte artists. Santi love him, Odunsi too; Like those are my faves.
Should we watch out for a Collaboration between you and anyone?
Marenikae: Actually, yes. The Christmas single that is dropping is featuring Wande Coal, who’s like my major influence
Okay, okay
Marenikae: Yes. And it’s arriving before Christmas season and it’s called Mula.
I shall keep an eye out for it.
Marenikae: Yes. Working with Wande Coal, it was like a dream. Working with my icon, he was so receptive and even after he recorded the first verse, because he recorded his verse immediately and even when I went and asked him like “Hey do you think you could go back and add “It’s Wande Coal” to the beginning?” because that’s history, that is iconic right there. And he went back and did it and. And now I have a song that says “It’s Wandecoal” in the beginning, like all of the songs that I grew up listening to. It’s crazy
Yeah. And of course, I’m looking to do more collaboration with more alte artists, definitely as time goes on. We’re going to be doing a remix of Deliverance and I need to decide on the best artist. And by that I mean decide on the best artist that our budget can accommodate.
Because they don’t be cheap, at all.
Yeah. So yeah, I would definitely say Wande Coal and we are working on some alte collaboration.
So what should we expect from you in the next 5 years? What’s next for you?
Marenikae: Oh. Well I would’ve dropped my EP, Acquired taste. I want to tour so badly so hopefully, I would’ve toured and yeah I just want to be able to continue making great art, great music. Like I said I’m not somebody that wanted to be a billionaire or millionaire or whatever. I’ve just wanted to live the life that I wanted off of my art. I wanted to be able to create great art and facilitate art appreciation and just live comfortably. I have no desire to be excessively wealthy, or desire to be the richest thing or richest that
So yeah I just want to be able to have a great life and have my art support my lifestyle.
Last question. Is there anything you want to tell us, the fans? You know, what we should watch out for.
Marenikae: Yes. The single, As I Dey, October 6th. And I really loved working on that song because I wanted to challenge myself and do something different and it’s an afro house song which I’d never done before. I’m a mid tempo girl, I like a good groove but I wanted to do something different and give the girls something different and show my range and my growth.
And what I really love about the As I Be video is that we get some Efik representation in the custome, because there’s not a lot of Efik representation out there. My mother is Calabar, brought me up in a Calabar household, I identify as a multiethnic Nigerian, but there really is a lot of Efik representation, we’re minorities and while we’re able to do that, we do that well. And we kind of modernised some traditional Efik style costumes and I’m really excited for people to see that, it’s just really cute. And even the direction of the video is very Afro-futuristic and interesting for me. I had silver eyebrows, I was a robot, I was in a light suit and it was a whole thing.
So like I said, I’m really excited about it because it’s fun, tempo, something cute for the girls, you know, lol. And yeah, I hope the public enjoys it. And if you don’t enjoy it, tell me why
Because critique. We love critique in this household
Marenikae: Exactly. I love critique.
Well, this was very fun to do. I look forward to hearing what you’re doing.
Marenikae: Thank you so much. This was a blast for me also.