Growing up in Canada with a French-Canadian mother and a Nigerian father, Michelle Oluwatomi Akanbi or Töme, has had exposure and connection to different cultures; an element that has informed and fed her music throughout her career. She has always felt a bit of a disconnect from her Nigerian roots because she was raised outside of the country and so her music has become a way to consolidate that gap. Dreams, is a five-track project where the musician explores her heritage through the sonic palette of Afro-fusion and R&B with sprinkles of trap hip-hop. This is not the first time that she has experimented with the genre. Her two previous bodies of work are Töme’s Room and BT4W (Bigger Than Four Walls) but she takes it to the next level with this record. Speaking about why the genre unlocks her creatively, the 24-year-old tells me:
I believe that [the genre] allows for limitless possibilities. Afro-fusion, that is like literally what I am as a person. I grew up around a lot of different cultures so I definitely would say that I am quite infused. And Afro-fusion allows me to always explore my options. I love that because that’s what I’ve always done and like everything in my life, I just like to be different and try something new. I love the fact that Afro-fusion allows me to do that.
The record opens with “Let Go”, which passes a message of hope for the future, that’s followed by “Champagne” which is a celebratory feel-good record. The singer-songwriter notes that “Champagne” was the most difficult track to create because the pronunciation of certain Yoruba words does not come naturally to her, and so she had to do multiple takes to get it right. The process was frustrating but the result is a standout record. “Champagne is a song to make you feel good. It’s a song that says you shouldn’t compare yourself as champagne to Ogogoro (West African brewed alcoholic drink), you’re better than that. It’s just a song to flex about yourself”, says the JUNO award winner. “Nana” is a tongue-in-cheek Afro-pop tune that is light-hearted in melody and production, however, the song’s message is serious. It speaks about a woman establishing her boundaries especially in a romantic situation with a man. The contrast was done intentionally, speaking on it Töme shares:
I wanted people to almost not even notice what the song was really about because the lyrics and the melodies are so simple and easy to sing along to. However, when you really dig deep into it and you want to know more about the song, then you understand its meaning. I think it’s really lovely because it allows for listeners who just want to listen to it [for the melody] to enjoy it. However, for those who are very music savvy, [there’ll be a better] understanding of the lyrics and the song’s deeper purpose.
Töme says that the record was made with her younger audience in mind with her intention being to make a song that they could take a lesson away from, as the Toronto-based singer adds:
This is a song I wanted young people to take confidence from. ‘When he thinks with his banana’, need to let him know that you can’t hear him. You can’t care what a man thinks of you, you are what you think of you, and no one should be able to change that. [The] majority of the time when a man wants to change that and tell you how to act or how to think, it’s because he is thinking with his insecure banana. That’s a lesson that we all have to learn as we grow up, and it’s a song that reiterates the experiences they may go through.
For Dreams, Töme enlists the services of a number of producers including Legion, Femi Samuels, JMS, God flow, Emmanuel and David, Vinno, and Akeel — some of whom have Nigerian heritage and could therefore more organically understand what she was looking for sonically. Töme’s process for making music is unorthodox, unlike most artists she doesn’t write songs with a full project in mind, but rather the songs flow out of her first and the project is then moulded from that.
A lot of the times when I make music, I don’t really set out what my project is going to be. So when I was making for this project, the songs were already done and so it was just more so [about] which songs we were going to put together to make the EP. I’m very open when it comes to producers. I think that there are so many producers that have such different sounds. I don’t like to miss out on that by just working with one person. I find that a lot of producers can do a lot of great things, and so I love working with different ones because the sounds are endless.
Dreams ends with “Spiritual Healing” which was produced by Vinno and as the title suggests, it is a song where she relays a message of hope and healing. As she shares in her own words, “It’s a song of spiritual healing that guides you. It’s letting you know that your journey and the path you are on is a healing process throughout. I think [that] what I’ve always tried to incorporate into my artistry [are profound] messages. I have something to say that I [hope to] influence and impact people with and I just want to do that through great music.
