As a child, Jennifer Ejoke fell in love with art by painstakingly tracing the popular Nigerian football comic Supa Strikas, but today, the last thing on the multidisciplinary artist's mind is colouring within the lines. "I've always known that I've been about standing out," she says, tugging at the stack of beaded chokers around her neck. "No matter how weird or awkward."
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Ejoke, professionally known as Wavy The Creator, had to lose her way to find direction. After four years of meticulous fine-tuning capped with a year-long hiatus, she is preparing to unveil her piece de resistance – an improved self. As AMAKA catches up with the photographer turned musician, we find she is a week away from sharing her first body of work, P.S. Thank You For Waiting. Dialling in from her home in Lagos, she speaks to us virtually in New York, betraying the exciting fact that despite this being her first official offering, she's been a staple in her city's alté scene for a few years.
"This is the first time since I dropped "H.I.G.H" that I haven't felt the pressure", she tells us. The singer's air of calm is rooted in a year spent finding alignment. Ever the visionary, Wavy was steps ahead when the rest of the world arrived at lockdown in March 2020. Two months prior, Wavy had decided to stop ignoring the internal sense of dissatisfaction brewing with her art and self, "I really had to face a lot of things I was running away from", she says. "At some point, I wasn't creating anymore. I was just producing stuff." After a hectic December circuit in Lagos and Accra, she hunkered down, got off social media and began prioritising self-work. By the time Wavy emerged from hiatus, she had written an animation; learned to play the guitar; practised writing melodies, rediscovered sewing; and for the first time in a while, had a clear sense of direction. "I realised that what I enjoy the most is creating, but it has to come from a very authentic place", she says. "It has to come from my truest self, and it has to come with love and with the intent to create for a purpose, to be inspired and to be inspiring."
In an era where hyperconnectivity and mental health have come face-to-face, social media detoxes are commonplace. Increasingly, society has begun to recognise that this acutely heightened intimacy with the lives of friends and strangers alike can be harmful. But for an artist such as Wavy, whose superpower is her originality, the groupthink that consumes social media is downright dangerous. "We are now influenced by so many people's ideas and thoughts because we have access to it", she says, nursing a look of genuine concern. "It's so important for us to remember that we're the final say, your mind is the final say, your intuition is the final say." Like many of her peers, Wavy struggled with the decision to choose her mental health over what seemed to be her career. She was aware that a unique brand of content curation was part of her appeal but also knew that her creative tank was running on reserve. "When I was taking the break, I was like, 'Yooo am I doing the right thing?' With social media, you know when you go, they forget you", she says, half-joking. Luckily, learning to live without the added layer of online performance strengthened her process and confidence. "When I came back, and the love was there, I was like, 'Okay, it's okay,'" she tells us.
Though Wavy may no longer feel beholden to her online persona, each day is still an opportunity to express herself. She says, "I am so all about art; it basically defines who I am". "I wake up wanting to create things. Let's say I have to run down to the grocery store, I want to dress up. I want to look a certain way because I feel a certain way." From an early age, Wavy discovered that she could communicate through dressing. As a young girl living in Lagos, she ditched her mother's clothing choices and picked up a sewing machine. When she arrived in Kansas City to stares at the age of ten, she rebelled with an emo phase, and as a college student at the University of Houston, thrift stores became her happy place. "When I'm not creating is when I don't feel right," she says.
In speaking with Wavy it becomes clear that she sees herself and her art as one and the same. As comfortable as Wavy may be sharing the same skin as her art, she admits to at times fearing that fans could possibly buy into her cool as opposed to the music she's selling. The notion that Wavy's persona could distract from her product first strikes us as counterintuitive – after all, branding is the order of the day. But in actuality, the artist did have cause for concern. "In 2018, I felt very much that people weren't interested in anything I was trying to sell them. It was just, 'Oh Wavy is cool'", she expresses. I ask if she ever plans to create distance between the art and the creator, but in Wavy's world, the solution is to double down. "I realise that I have to think in a very different light. If I put what I am into my art, they'll buy into it just as much as they buy into me," she explains.
Whatever biases one may harbour about the business savvy of a green-hair-pieced artist don't apply to Wavy. She is very much about her business. The singer, who confesses to making business plans for everything, is passionate about making sure young African musicians are prepared to navigate a "post-Essence" music industry. "There are a lot of international eyes looking at us right now, and they're trying to come into the industry, and it's very necessary that we know every single thing before we even sit in a room", she says. Wavy is correct. This recent scramble for a piece of the continent's cultural capital is not the first attempt from foreign labels to lay roots in the Nigerian music scene. In the '80s, numerous acts, such as King Sunny Ade and Majek Fashek, were signed to international record deals. But after a mixture of political upheaval and a disconnect with the local market sent labels packing, many of these artists had little to show for themselves financially. "Artists need proper education about the music business because many artists have no idea what's going on. I can't say that I fully do", she admits. "There should be ways for us to get that information."
As collective remorse fades with each celebrity Twitter meltdown about getting ripped off, it has become an accepted norm globally that the music business is exploitative. However, for a Nigerian music industry that is still in the infancy of building a solid infrastructure on its own terms, this current window presents an opportunity to correct the status quo and offer the world a new way to deal with art and artists. As we spitball potential solutions with Wavy for everything from publishing to streaming, we begin to talk about Afrofuturism – a philosophy that has been central to Wavy's artistic journey. At a time when both the continent's music and tech sectors are experiencing a major boom, it makes sense that Wavy is drawn to this reimagining of the future through the intersection of African cultures and technology. For the self-described "alien," an afrofuturistic mindset asks us to consider overlooked details and opportunities that the current regime has failed to consider. "We don't even have enough animations about us," she laments. Moments later, swapping frustration for excitement, she teases a forthcoming afrofuturistic book series – another gem unearthed during her hiatus.
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While Wavy accurately describes herself as a genre-bender, electronic beats and syrupy melodies are a consistent pattern in her music. Her debut EP, which will be released alongside an NFT of its artwork, further submerges fans in her quest to explore sounds from the future. This time, however, Wavy wants people to do more than vibe out – she wants them to listen. "I am opening up in ways I have never done before", she expresses. "I speak about love, lust, infatuation, heartbreak and feeling like I've been omitted." The distinctly introspective and sensual body of work sees Wavy collaborate with other respected Nigerian alternative acts like Tay Iwar and WurlD. "It's a song that's really sick because I didn't really think we could go well on that song, but after he did what he did, I was like, 'Aighhht'", she says of receiving WurlD's verse for "Harmonies", the project's lead single.
Tay Iwar's appearance on the project's opening track is a full-circle moment. A few years ago, alongside DRB, Odunsi and Lady Donli, Tay Iwar and Wavy were some of the alté scene's unofficial flag bearers. When the movement first began garnering attention, its relevance was assumed to be short-lived, and its artists were frequently criticised for being out of touch with the Nigerian audience. Close to five years later, alté acts have managed to build cult-like global fanbases, with Tay Iwar himself emerging as a fan favourite from the album of the summer, Made In Lagos. To Wavy, the narrative that Nigerians aren't interested in people like her simply isn't true. "I started to gain fans that were regular Nigerian kids just eager to explore", Wavy says, describing her first set of loyalists in 2017. "It felt like they had been longing to do things and go out of the norm for a very long time."
Warranted or not, at the crux of the alté debate lay a conversation about privilege. With documentaries like "Lagos to London" (which Wavy appears in) confining the movement to the posh neighbourhoods of Lagos's Island, it didn't take long for a narrative that set the alté scene in contrast with the "real Lagos" to take hold. Detractors suggested that bolstered by foreign leanings, alté stars were more palatable to Western media than their grittier counterparts and, in turn, received outsized media coverage. To them, the result was a distorted but widely shared picture of the Nigerian music scene during a period when exposure could bring about a substantial payday. Wavy was caught in the eye of the storm when Vogue covered her release of "Shaku", a track inspired by a dance craze born from the Lagos streets of Agege. Between a clickbait headline and pithy social media copy, Wavy had seemingly been credited as Shaku Shaku's originator, much to the displeasure of Nigerian Twitter. "When I first read the headline, I didn't think about it because I was like, 'Oh Vogue posted me!'" says Wavy. "And then about 10 minutes later I saw a comment that said 'Wait, are they implying that she…?' and I was like, 'Oh shit!'" she says, enacting how the moment quickly descended from excitement into panic. "I didn't want to take that credit. I know I didn't start Shaku," Wavy earnestly emphasises. "That was actually a very tough time for me, and I usually would never come out to address that or try to fight it on social media."
Before we part ways, we ask Wavy what she's been listening to while recording, hoping to leave with an obscure addition for my Sunday playlist. Instead, she surprises me with a classic throwback. "One thing that never fades from my life is Craig David's Born to Do It", she says. It's the album Wavy remembers playing the most during her childhood and the only one she had when her mum gifted her a CD player. As Wavy readies herself for a new season, she's reminded that time travels in cycles. "You have to go back in the past to create the future", she philosophises as we nod in agreement. If there's anyone who can see into the future, it's Wavy The Creator.