Are You Listening?

On his 2024 EP, genre-bending Nigerian singer-songwriter taves coalesces Afropop, R&B and soulful twists on folk into a platform for frank conversation—a philosophy developed with help from an eclectic set of influences. “We took a lot of road trips when I was younger as a family because my dad lived in a different state,” taves tells Apple Music. “And he would play a lot of [classic] Nigerian music, [especially] Aṣa. It felt like she was hoping that somebody would understand where she was coming from, and I related to that a lot just because I am a middle child. So a lot of times in my life, it kind of felt like people didn’t really understand the way I would express myself.” Artists like Khalid, Remy Baggins, Nonso Amadi, Post Malone and The Weeknd helped the singer from Ibadan find his own lane. “I felt like the type of music that I would make would be different from the mainstream,” taves says, “and these people made me feel like, ‘OK, that’s not such a bad thing.’” Across eight tracks, taves positions Are You Listening? as an invitation into his world. “It’s kind of like I’m having a conversation with somebody, or I’m telling you something,” the artist born Toluwanimi Aluko explains. “Also, there’s a lot of stuff that I have to prove. So I need everybody to be paying attention. I need to know that you’re locked in and on the same wave that I’m on.” Here, he talks through the EP, track by track. “Bad Romance” “I don’t want to say it’s about a toxic relationship because that’s corny, but it’s more like it’s not good for either of you—but also who cares? It’s just me saying, ‘OK, we are both aware of the fact that this might not work out, or it probably shouldn’t work out, but at the end of the day, just do what you want.’ Have zero regrets, basically.” “Folake” “This was my first try at this type of sound. I’ll admit, I listened to The Weeknd a lot [during] the period when I made this song. I was hanging out with a friend and we were just having a really, really long and really deep conversation about life. [Later] I just started writing. It reinforced my belief that everything happens for a reason. There’s no real deep, deep meaning behind the song that anybody would understand. The concept of the song and the conversation that inspired it are so far apart—it wasn’t a conversation with someone I was interested in—it was just genuinely about our lives and things that have been going on.” “Enchante” “I think this might be one of my favourite songs on this project. It feels like the way folk music kind of feels—it’s a feel-good record. From the jump to the chorus, everything is just touching your heart in a different way. I make a lot of music, in general, but there’s moments when the song that I make is fully, fully different from what you can normally hear outside. I don’t know anywhere else that you could hear this. Even the chorus, there’s no words in the chorus. We were trying to find words, but we couldn’t really. Then [producer] Semzi was like, ‘You know what? Leave it. Just leave it how it is.’ The song is about meeting someone at a party, and if I feel an instant connection, then I’m taking it all the way.” “A Million Things” “I made this with P.Priime. The idea behind the song is basically talking about someone that you admire. It doesn’t have to be someone that you’re interested in romantically. It could be anybody. But you admire them, and how there’s not really anyone around that has the same qualities as them.” “CWT” (feat. Bnxn) “I made this song in London in November [2023]. I was doing a lot of sessions, and I would get frustrated because it felt too planned and too scheduled for my liking. It was like two weeks straight of sessions—12 hours each day in the studio. A lot of the time, when I’m in a session and things are not going the way I expect them to go, I would get frustrated, and that’s when the actual good music would come out. It was the same thing with this session. The producer Phantom played this beat and it just felt like I could talk my shit on the beat. It’s basically just a song about how I’m telling everybody that there’s nobody like me. Don’t worry, you can’t find my type anywhere. I knew that this would be a song that Bnxn would love. I think it came out pretty crazy because it’s one of the few songs that I’ve made where I’m actually talking my shit.” “Economy” “A lot of the time, when I hear records like ‘Economy’, it’s more about how the beats and the melodies make you feel and less about what they’re saying in the song. I feel like I could do the same thing and still keep some form of coherence as I’m going through. I was in the studio with my A&R manager, Mali, and we were just having fun. It was not a serious session; we just wanted to see how it would come out. I really, really love this record. You don’t get this side of me a lot. More times, it’s more stuff that puts you in your feelings or makes you think—this one, if you read the lyrics and you actually listen to what I’m saying, it aligns and it makes sense, but it was more fun for me to make than anything.” “In the City” “This is another song I made in Ghana at a writing camp, and it’s produced by TSB. I really love TSB because he’s such a calm guy, and he’s super open to working on just anything that you’re feeling at the time. Every time we work together, we always make the beats from scratch, so it really just helps me dig deep when it comes to the melodies or what I want to talk about. The way we recorded the song was scattered because we did the chorus first, then we hopped into the second verse. I think we did the first verse last, but it came together pretty well. The song basically is just about—imagine there’s someone that you haven’t spoken to in a while, and then you hear something about them that pushes you to reach out. Then, it’s a thing where ‘OK, cool, so I heard this. I hope you’re doing good. If you’re down, let’s link and talk and have a conversation and have some fun as well.’” “Apology” “‘Apology’ is about regrets and wishing you handled a certain situation better than you did. This one is the most personal song for me on the project, I’ll be real. It’s about a real-life situation. I think this is one of the only songs where I’ve been able to put what happened in a certain situation down exactly as it happened, and the way it made me feel. So, I made this in Ghana with the producer Saszy [Afroshii]. At first, I did not want to do [a studio session], because I was just coming off of the camp. I was tired as hell. I get back to the hotel, my manager’s there, he’s saying, ‘Saszy’s pulling up.’ I’m like, ‘Man, what? I’m trying to sleep.’ And then he was just saying, ‘Don’t worry. Trust me.’ And I was like, ‘All right, cool.’ When I got back to Nigeria, I played the song for Bnxn, and he loved it, but it needed something. And he’s the one that came up with the concept of having a choir on the song. I think it came out really crazy.”