Since Stubborn, the debut album of 23-year-old singer-songwriter Victony hit the music streaming stores—Apple Music, Spotify—in June, it’s been a contender in almost every debate about the best album of 2024. The music journalist, Ayomide Tayo put it at #4 on his list of best albums so far this year. It currently sits at #25 on Turn Table’s Top 100 Album chart.
Although Victony released the album in June, it’s a project that he started working on as far back as 2022. Shedding light on how long it took to craft the album, Victony said, ‘Everything,’ the oldest track, dates back to 2022. My team and I picked songs from different periods. A song like ‘Ba$tard, Don’t Be Silly’ is very recent. We choose between songs I recorded from 2022 to 2024. Stubborn is a collection of songs from different periods.”
Despite picking from a collection of songs, the album sounds cohesive, like a concept album, collectively created from scratch.
With Stubborn, Victony tries to show people everything that he’s capable of as he introduces them to the person behind the music. Speaking about the album’s direction he said, “Every year is a new one for me to show how creative I can be.”
The 14-track album offers a stunning and irreverent case study of his life, how he grew up on Ojo, survived a life-altering accident and morphed from a Soundcloud rapper into a top mainstream singer. “It’s always a reflection moment when I think about my life. I don’t give up for any reason; this is a quality or personality trait that has helped me until this very moment,” he said.
He said that he thought of the themes of the album even before he selected the songs that made the final cut. “
The tough-time story on the album’s opening, ‘Oshaprapra,’ produces lullaby-evoking melodies. “Sometimes, I’m busy trying to make my story very interesting for the listeners and forget about the actual feeling that I should get from situations,” he said.
Thinking about his favourite moments on his album, Victony recollects: “That’d be when myself and P2J made ‘Sunday School’ in London. That was one of my first sessions with the producer. We deliberated the idea of the song and banged it out in a short time. ‘Anita’ happened during one of our London sessions too. I had the same experience with Houdini when we made ‘Pier 46’ in Los Angeles.”
A look into the universe that Victony has built into music—from his gothic mixtape The Outlaw King to the Afropop-esque EP Saturn and Tredax, his alter-ego in it, to the medieval chain-mail he sports on the cover of Stubborn, he’s ardent on providing a visual identity for every narrative in his music release.
“Speaking about an idea, trying it out, and it becomes better than you imagine is a very good and rewarding feeling. It strengthens my confidence that anything can be done. Intentionality is all it takes,” he said.
The same attitude he gives to his music goes around his stagecraft too. Currently, he is working on a show that will be as heavily visual as his albums. “I’ve been planning the show with the same energy that I had to think about the process of putting the album together. Sonically, I’m now in a much more elevated space and that’s what I like to showcase through this year’s concert,” he said.
I asked him what the public can expect from this show. “People should prepare to get blown away. And of course, there’ll be surprises,” he said.
