The “Whole” Story: To Zochi, Love Means Never Having To Say You’re “Alone”
While the supposedly religious try to claim God’s favor for themselves and deny it to anyone they see as “other,” Canadian Afrobeats queen Zochi – and a real-life Princess in royalty, too – has something more open-hearted in mind. Her new single, “Alone (Whole Again),” sees her praying for the consummation of a same-sex attraction not just because she wants it, but because the Lord must too.
Taking inspiration from 1 Corinthians 13:13—you remember, the one that says love is even greater than faith or hope—Zochi applies her persuasive purr to a romantic sentiment that’s positively holy in its urgency. “Maybe you’ll show up this time in the night when I’m all alone,” she imagines, in what could be a reference to the object of her ardor or to God himself. “This your love you give me so/ E dey make me whole again.”
“Since embracing fearlessly my sexuality, my experiences with God’s love—for me, and for other people—testifies to me that the book is true,” she attests. “Not only is this song important to me, but I also believe love can and will save the world. It doesn’t matter who is loving who. We just must love.”
It’s hard to disagree when the argument sounds this gorgeous. The instrumental track Zochi and producer RoyMade (Roy Msiska) have assembled has the reassuring calm of the truly divine, and her vocal line—her first experiment with writing to the cadence of African instrumentals—has her singing against herself on opposing tracks, with some judiciously applied autotune for extra character.
It took some doing, however, for the song itself to be made whole. Zochi recorded an early version in 2021 that had a different backing track, only for its foundational beat to be purchased out from under her by a certain Interscope act (cough Byron Messa ft. Burna Boy cough), who now owned the exclusive copyright to it. So she sent her vocal stems to producer RoyMade and instructed him to devise an entirely new underpinning for them.
“That was how ‘Alone (Whole Again)’ came about,” she explains. “I did it alone, and now it’s whole again.”
Back to the Princess for a moment – her grandfather is the Late King Samuel Paul Uwakwe (S.P.U OGAN) of Okrika Rivers State Nigeria. He is also referred to as the Amanyanabo of Okrika. So, Toronto has literal royalty amongst us in the music community.
With the creative process behind “Alone (Whole Again),” she says,
“I just wanted a visual that feels good because the meaning of the song feels good. The song’s emotions or feeling is like the type some accept, and some don’t. Yes, that latter hurts when you’re not accepted, but the feeling – being yourself loving who you are are/becoming – itself before validation from people, for the one who is experiencing it, always is good. So, we stick to that and don’t care what people say about who we are. I have a wild imagination, I love art, I love drawings, I love architecture, and I wanted all those elements in my video. So, I linked with Anastase Maragos and Ariana Donovan, to shoot a video that allows us to play with our imagination and I think and hope my viewers will feel seen and accepted for who they are, after watching the video.”
Born in Nigeria but a resident of Regina, Saskatchewan, since 2013, Uzochi Lolia Ifeanyiukachu is the only Afrobeats artist currently working in Canada, and she has the recognition to show for it. In 2022, she was nominated in the Contemporary Artist of the Year category at the Sask Music Awards—just one of numerous appearances she’s made at top Canadian awards shows, festivals, and industry symposia. She’s also been seen on high-profile programs on CBC television, and heard on Black-focused radio shows in Canada and Kenya. Her 11 singles have been streamed more than 40,000 times on Apple Music, Spotify, Tidal, SoundCloud, and other major services.
Even before “Alone (Whole Again),” Zochi had been collaborating with RoyMade on a handful of other tracks that will finally see release as an EP on May 17, 2024. And of course, you’re going to want to reserve a place in your heart for it. Because love, after all, is what God wants.
Hi Zochi, how should we say hello to you? What title do we use to address you as you’re actually royalty?
Hellooo Canadian Beats ahahaha that’s true, but I do prefer Zochi, being a princess is cool but being a princess that does music and creates art is cooler, so we’ll go with Zochi to keep it simple and stay on track for how I truly want to be seen, Although radio has dubbed me Canadian Queen of Afrobeats which is so cool, I’m just an artist with a crown.
Tell me about the song, “Alone (Whole Again)”?
Honestly, I’ve found Alone to have an evolving meaning to it, I feel everything still when I press play to this day, and I’m being revealed things that I didn’t see at the time of writing. So, when I wrote this song I wanted to capture the most truthful part of my being, where I can put faith and love (God’s love and romantic love) together in the purest way. It’s a song with her roots in love, love being the greatest thing of all time and one of the three things that lasts forever. Being queer and having to struggle with the reconciliation of what I feel vs what I’m told is acceptable to God. Alone is a song that is used to break that division, it’s a song that is intended to draw the human to the creator without hiding anything; come as you are type thing, and I love that I have been blessed with the gift of music to help me capture what that looks like and with song, singing through every emotion, writing for every emotion, validating the experiences of the children of God with this song. We are here, he sees us, this is our song.
How do you think technology has impacted the way we listen to and create music today?
It’s the future, you can have access to the most incredible songs without waiting in line, without having to know who they are for real, just by coming across a social media post, you can be exposed to some amazing tunes and artistry. Because of technology, I’m able to work with producers across the world, for example, my producers Dexty and RoyMade, connected over Instagram and started video calling each other and now we have 3-4 songs together and one of them was Dexty’s first afrobeats beat ever. We have formed a brotherhood thanks to technology. I even use Spire App on my iPhone to lay down rough demos while I’m on the road without my computer, it’s truly a part of my creative process too. Being able to prepare a song fully before hitting the studio and just getting the job done. Or lyrics, I remember buying the lyric books or playing and pausing a song just to write down the words lmao now you can see lyrics just by swiping up on Spotify or hitting the text icon on Apple Music, you don’t have to make up the words for yourself lmao or on genius somewhere if it’s available. Music is spreading faster now, and I love it, I’m tapping into it. It’s a part of my process, it’s helped enhance my writing and performance skills in the studio effortlessly with so many on-the-go recording apps available for us. I’ve been a music lover my whole life way back when I was in Nigeria waiting till 12 am to get on the radio to listen to the North American hits.
What’s your go-to song when you need an instant mood boost?
Ouuuu right now My own Mood boost song is a song off AFT my EP out May 17, 2024, called Girl of my dreams, it’s so freaking vibey I don’t wanna give it away, the content of the song, you can guess from the title but I promise you there’s so much more but it’s definitely a song I’ve been listening to a lot of the EP just cause it gave what it was supposed to give in every angle you can imagine lol and you will hear why 😀 very very soon May 17. We are so close. I hope y’all like it too the way I do.
What are your plans for the spring and summer?
I am soooo excited to release the story of my life **heart puppy eyes** it’s a contemporary EP of 8 tracks titled Afrikaanman Fairytale; you can go presave that already, it will be out on May 17, 2024. I am looking forward to all the content we are planning to drop for this, over the summer, I think it’s such an amazing body of work that I’m proud of, so I am hoping to focus on AFT (Afrikaanman Fairytale) all through the year; music videos lyric videos all that by Gods grace. Also, I’m so stoked for the Black Music Festival in Kitchener Ontario. I was personally invited to the Black Music Festival, which is Ontario’s Black Music conference, where I will be in panels, conducting meet and greets, and opening for Jully Black on Saturday, June 15, 2024, and Solitair Sunday June 16, 2024. I’ve been blessed to find myself in this position, sitting and performing on the same stage as all the legends at once; like Michael Williams, Rudy Blair, Ron Nelson, and Roy Hamilton the III. It is a very heavenly feeling I feel when I think of this event. Shout out to the organizers. I am also attending my first gay pride in Toronto in June, and I’ll be doing a PR tour this summer, to promote AFT. Looking forward to it all, let’s roccckkk.