From time immemorial, faith-inspired songs have always found their way into mainstream consciousness. Midnight Crew’s Igwe, Infinity’s Olori Oko, and Angel’s Opomulero ruled the airwaves in the 2000s, while gospel music veterans, Tope Alabi and Yinka Ayefele also have a string of mainstream hits in their respective catalogues. The house-inspired ‘Nazarene’ by Anendlessocean followed this trend when it became one of the best Nigerian sleeper hits of 2022. Anendlessocean followed the success of ‘Nazarene’ with a slew of successful singles, including ‘Ji’ and fan favourite ‘Alone’, earmarking him as one of the most exciting new talents on the Nigerian music scene. This run culminated in the release of his debut album ‘Decagon’, an amazing body of work that is one of 2023’s best offerings yet.
In this interview, Taiwo of The 49th Street talks to Anendlessocean about his artistry, faith, songwriting, and debut album ‘Decagon’, as well as his plans for the future. Read the full interview below.
Taiwo: Who is Anendlessocean? Who is the artiste behind the music?
Anendlessocean: I would first describe myself as a singer-songwriter, and I’m someone who expresses a lot. I mean my major form of expression is music and then carrying life experiences into the studio and bringing out something that can impact people in general. So, I would just say I’m a singer-songwriter and producer who just wants to impact people with my music.
Taiwo: Do you consider yourself a gospel artiste?
Anendlessocean: No, I don’t
Taiwo: How so?
Anendlessocean: I would say that I’m a singer-songwriter who expresses my life experiences. Of course, I’m a Christian and I have a relationship with God my maker, and I am touching on that subject with my music. I’m also going to touch on many other subjects that life throws at me. What that means, is that I’m going to make music that surrounds my whole existence as a person. My beliefs, my experience with love, family, heartbreak, friendships and everything.
Taiwo: When did you start making music?
Anendlessocean: I used to live in Abuja at a point in my life, and I spent a significant number of years there. However, I had to move back to Lagos when I lost my mum, and it was around that time that I picked up the guitar. I was about 14, and I just picked up the guitar and started writing, the rest, as they say, is history.
Taiwo: How long have you been making music?
Anendlessocean: Professionally, I would say about 3 to 5 years but I started writing when I was 14 and that’s like, a couple of years down the line.
Taiwo: Your songwriting style is quite unique, in the sense that you write love songs with your subject of interest being God. Why is that your form of expression?
Anendlessocean: That’s my form of expression because like I said, I lost my mom and for some time, life in general was just demoralising and uninteresting. It took a big toll on me, and God was the only source of my hope at the time. God and my family, and these were the things that held me together as a person.
Taiwo: Your first tape was called ‘Apeirogon’, and your debut album is titled ‘Decagon’. What is your relationship with polygons?
Anendlessocean: I decided to describe all of my projects using polygons. That’s just it, there’s nothing deeper. Most of my projects will be named after polygons.
Taiwo: How do you pick a polygon to describe each tape?
Anendlessocean: The thing with music is that in a significant sense, it is very definitive and is many things, but it’s also communication. So if I’m communicating, there are different ways to communicate. There was nothing so deep or intentional about naming my albums after polygons, it was just more to have a series and things to describe. An apeirogon is a polygon with endless sides, and I am Anendlessocean so I decided to start with that.
Decagon has ten songs (with a bonus track) that explain a different side of who I am. I have a project called Hexagon. A fun fact is that I think 6 is the number of love and Hexagon is the tape that has my experiences with love and family and friends. So yeah, I’m going to name everything after polygons.
Taiwo: ‘Nazarene’ is your most successful song commercially. What was the creative process behind that song?
Anendlessocean: I would say with ‘Nazarene’, it came with almost everything. In the sense that I’m a songwriter and I write regularly. ‘Nazarene’ came in of those writing sessions and that was pretty much it. I can’t point to the exact emotion that led to the song’s creation. I just know that it was one of the writing sessions and I was just heavily inspired to sing about it, after which I wrote and produced the song.
Taiwo: Was ‘Nazarene’ a deliberate attempt to tap into the Amapiano wave?
Anendlessocean: So the thing about Amapiano, it is a very very distinct sound and it also has a fusion of what people would call Amapiano right now. And I am not going to brag that I am someone who’s intensely knowledgeable about genres but I do know that Amapiano is a very distinctive sound. And with the new version of Amapiano that is being created now, there are influences of House music. The music is primarily House but then, it infuses elements of Amapiano.
It sounds like Amapiano because this is what we would associate Amapiano with now, in the present times, but it wasn’t deliberate at all. It was primarily House music. South Africans make a lot of music that’s very house-infused, and I’ll give you an example of that now. There’s this lady, Brenda Fassie, and there’s a popular song of hers, Vuli Ndlela, which is primarily House music. ‘Nazarene’ had elements of that type of music and then it also had Amapiano elements. But I would just tell you that it wasn’t deliberate like I searched for Amapiano; it was primarily House and then I infused elements of Amapiano.
Taiwo: Have you written songs for other people?
Anendlessocean: Yeah. I’ve written for Waje, I’ve written for Omawumi, I’ve written for a number of people. Obviously, I’m looking to expand my catalogue as time goes on, but there’s also the fact that I’m an artiste myself. Definitely, I’ll write for other people, a song I wrote for Waje even won an award at the last Headies. (The song in question is ‘Last Time’ by Waje off her 2021 EP, ‘Heart Season’. It won the award for Best Vocal Performance (Female) at The 15th Headies in 2022.)
Taiwo: As a songwriter, what are two songs that you heard and you were like, “Wow, I wished I wrote that song”
Anendlessocean: *Laughs*. ‘All of Me’ by John Legend and ‘So Will I’ by Hillsong Worship.
Taiwo: Decagon is your debut album. Take me through the process of making this album.
Anendlessocean: Okay. So I’ve worked on this album and it has songs as old as 2 years, been working on the project, writing, producing, been reproducing. There were drafts and drafts that just never made it because they weren’t good enough, and I picked the ones that I deemed the best. I wrote a large number of songs and just came down to ten, which I chose to put out. All of the songs on the album are new in a sense, like they are recent, except ‘Nazarene’ and ‘Imagine’.
I feel like it was a very interesting project. I feel like I’ve grown a lot to see how the music industry will be moving and shifting and you can’t just stay in one place. As such, it takes a lot of willpower and energy to bring out what you’re feeling from the inside and make it into something that’s consumable. Music is music either way, whether you make an Amapiano or soul or R&B, there’s the emotion behind every song. However, making different songs into an album is a whole other process. There is a lot to consider like, ‘Oh is it good enough?’, ‘Can I pass the message I want to pass with this kind of sound?’, ‘Would people listen to this?’
As an artiste, you’re making music that you’re inspired by or that inspires you. You can make a lot of stuff and then there’s the part where you have to make music that sometimes it’s for yourself and other times, it’s for people in general. On this body of work, I have a piano ballad, there’s Amapiano, Afrobeats with harps in it and some more African stuff, you know. The whole process of getting what you’ve experienced, what you’ve felt, what you’re inspired by into a song and by extension an album, that whole process happened really fast and really slow for me, for this particular project. I’m so glad it came out the way it has come out.
Taiwo: Was the entire album self-produced?
Anendlessocean: No, but I produced most of the tracks. There’s a track called “What We Have”, it’s the fifth track on the album and it was produced by ‘Outgun’ and that was the only track that I didn’t have production credits on. All the other songs were self-produced.
Taiwo: So how long did it take? You said over two years, yes?
Anendlessocean: Yes, in the entirety of everything. Two songs took me two years to produce but every other song on this particular album was produced between a year to this day.
Taiwo: What do you aim to achieve with Decagon?
Anendlessocean: With Decagon, it’s the same thing with the rest of my catalogue. Primarily, with every song I make, it’s that it’s impactful. You know that saying that says, “People are never going to forget how you made them feel” and you only make people feel something and it can be impactful in a good way or a bad way. In terms of my music, I want it to be so impactful that the song means something to a person that I may never even meet in my entire life. It just impacts the person positively and it just gives them some sort of calm. This is my main aim for ‘Decagon’.
My ambition, in terms of how far it will go, is not necessarily something I’d make paramount but it’s something that’s in consideration. How well it does do in terms of numbers? Yes, I want it to do well and I want it to take me to the next level of my music career, but it’s not the most important thing. The most important thing is just the impact for me, to touch someone somewhere, touch this generation and then move to the next and the music outlives me.
Taiwo: What do you think of the growth of Nigerian music and Afrobeats, especially with the expansion to the global stage?
Anendlessocean: I think that first off, it’s amazing and I think that the fact that Nigerians and Africans are migrating to different parts of the world is making it easier to export the music to new regions. Honestly, that in itself is a good thing and hopefully we get to a place where the music takes us further and it’s not just Afrobeats. However, I’m glad that we’re getting into a place where people are making Afrobeats and the music is not just something to make everybody feel happy and ‘gbedu’, but there’s also a message in some of the things that people are putting out. So I feel like this is a good place and it’s still growing.
Taiwo: What is next for you after ‘Decagon’?
Anendlessocean: More music, more tours and more shows, definitely. more creation and collaborations with people that I’ve been working with– I’m working with people more now. So I’ll most likely put out a single and put out a couple of projects.
Taiwo: Do you ever see yourself playing in the mainstream space?
Anendlessocean: Okay. So let me just say that, as regards playing in the mainstream scene, whatever music I make would kind of decide whatever would happen if it’s mainstream. You and I know that when we talk about mainstream Nigerian music, it’s so large and so thin in the sense that if you have a top artist for example, ‘What is their brand identity?’ You have mainstream acts, who make political or socially conscious music, for some it’s love, some it’s centred around women, some it’s centred around money and braggadocious whatever.
So I would say that if the mainstream someday becomes music that inspires people, talks about love, talks about social consciousness then yeah, maybe one day, I would. Because these are things that I experience; I’m a Nigerian and I don’t know anybody else that likes the state of the country. So if I make a socially conscious song and it becomes mainstream, then the answer is yes.
Taiwo: You said you’re doing more collaborations. Do you plan to produce music for other artistes as well?
Anendlessocean: I look forward to doing that too.