Though Nigerian rapper Odumodublvck’s thunderous baritone sounds predestined for fame, he didn’t go looking for music at first. It found him. He had originally hoped to become a professional soccer player before a bad injury; after that, he pivoted to business and got a degree from University of Lagos. When a good friend of his dropped out of college to be an artist, he asked Odumodu to be his manager. One day at a studio, the friend encouraged him to lay something down himself. “He said, ‘You have the voice. You should try and do something,’” Odumodu recalls.
Something now includes a deal with Def Jam; collaborations with fellow upstarts Shallipopi and Black Sherif on inescapable Afrobeats anthems “Cast” and “Wotowoto Seasoning”; and a bold feature on Davido’s warm earworm “Funds.”
Odumodublvck, born Tochukwu Gbubemi Ojogwu, was raised by two civil servants between Lagos and Abuja, Nigeria’s capital. Though his mom and dad had hoped he’d follow in their footsteps professionally, his mother didn’t mind when he started to prioritize music around 2017. His father, on the other hand, was wary. So, did he inherit the distinct bellow in which he talks, raps, and sings from one of them? “My mom likes claiming that, but it can’t be her,” Odumodu tells me over Zoom from his girlfriend’s home in Lagos. “I think it’s just God now.”
Looking back, he understands where his dad was coming from. “I don’t blame him because out of 1,000 artists that come out in a year, only 10 make it,” Odumodu says. “It’s out of love, not out of hate or spite.” After falling ill with serious conditions including cancer, stroke, and dementia, his father didn’t live to see everything the 31-year-old artist has accomplished so far, including a catalog of five mixtapes, building a community of hungry Abuja rappers into the collective Anti World Gangstars, hosting a festival for thousands of fans in their city, and keeping those brothers close while he becomes a glimmering new face of Nigerian hip-hop. “Before he died, I remember my mom called him to the parlor to watch my video, and I could see it in his face that he was so proud,” says Odumoudu, who thinks his dad would be even prouder now. “Like, ‘Wow, this guy actually made this thing work.’”
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Odumodu has come far by thinking, planning, and expressing himself as intensely as he sounds. In conversation, he likens his strategic ascent to that of Viking warrior king Ragnar Lodbrok. In an interview earlier this year with Nigerian journalist Joey Akan, the rapper passionately deciphered the lyrics from his featured verse on Rema’s “War Machine” — something he does with vim on our call, as well. Take the Nigerian pidgin line “Remy, the tip is all you put, she dey give up,” for instance: He says it’s meant as a sexual metaphor for how easily Rema has captivated the industry with much more in store.
Odumodu uses an equally bold metaphor to explain what he’s planning with his upcoming album, Industry Machine. “The same way the number one person in the family is a woman – whatever you see a child doing, they most likely learned from his mom – it’s the same way the industry is going to learn a lot from me,” he says. “This project is going to humble people. This project is going to teach a lot of people. This project is going to be like the mother to a lot of rappers.”
While being this distinct, imaginative, and blunt has served Odumodu well, it has also landed him in hot water at times. He’s been accused of misogyny, thanks to his occasionally crass and combative online takes. In his most controversial posts on X from 2020 and 2021, he criticized “men doing everything that women should be doing,” advocated for spanking women, and defended corporal punishment against children.
Yet Odumodu can also be seen and heard defending women and their autonomy. In 2019, he protested alleged harassment and sexual abuse by police in Abuja. He advocates for consent on “Commend,” the first song on his mixtape Eziokwu. He condemned rape, likening it to “killing somebody,” in a post on X last year.
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Ultimately, he tells me, he’s not interested in defending himself against online critiques. “I’m not going to go out and be shouting, ‘No, I’m not a misogynist,’” he tells me. “You don’t need to explain.”
He is, though, willing to discuss the controversial lyrics of his hit “Cast.” In some of the most memorable lines, he raps, “If she no fuck oh, if she no suck/Who go pay for her wig and handbag?” “I didn’t say it to attack women,” Odumodu explains. “I said it as a neutral statement. When I’m with my girlfriend, my girlfriend can tell me, ‘Oya, if you don’t do this and if you don’t do this, Omo, I’m not going to do this and I’m not going to do that.’ It is not a one-way thing.”
In other words, he says, those bars are meant as an observation on reciprocity in relationships. “That same statement is applicable to me when I need to make her feel comfortable so that she can put a smile on my face in the future,” he adds. “That same statement’s applicable to me when I try to woo her to become the girl of my dreams so that she can carry my kids for me. But they don’t see it that way. All they see is negative, negative, negative. And you can’t tell them to stop because it’s driving the numbers up.”
Industry Machine, as Odumodu describes it, will be a more forthright celebration of women. “The reason why I’m making this album for girls is because when I went around America, they were the ones who buy my tickets,” he says. “The guys are listening on MP3. I respect them, I appreciate them, I love you. But when it was time to come and see me out in the flesh, the girls came. I’m saying thank you to them.”
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He teased a song called “Too Spoilt” and dropped “Pity This Boy” with Victony; in both, he embodies women empowered to get whatever they want. To make another unreleased track of his, “So Nicé,” he imagined his girlfriend and her buddies at the club, brushing off thirsty men to dance in peace (a sentiment similar to Bad Bunny’s hit “Yo Perreo Sola”). “There’s no male rapper that’s coming out to big-up girls on a rap beat and it’s sounding nice, and they’re gonna play it in the clubs,” he says. “Girls are going to come towards that.”
Hip-hop doesn’t move without women, Odumodu continues, especially in Nigeria, where singers often take precedence. “I told my guys, I said, ‘I want us to rule like Spice Girls,’” he says. “I didn’t say like the Beatles. I said Spice Girls. That’s my template. Taylor Swift, that’s my template. These girls, the way they’re moving, that’s how I want to move.”
