Odeal Is Billboard’s African Rookie Of The Year

SOURCE: billboard.com

The 25-year-old British Nigerian singer has transcended musical and geographic borders with his emotive, experimental blend of Afro-fusion, alté and R&B.

Growing up in the United Kingdom, Odeal would watch the MOBO (Music of Black Origin) Awards and think, “One day, I’m going to be on that stage.” In February, his childhood prediction came true: The now-25-year-old British Nigerian singer performed the viral TikTok dance for his sizzling 2024 hit “Soh-Soh” there — one of three times Odeal happily took the stage to perform and accept his first-ever awards, for best newcomer and best R&B/soul act. “For it to finally happen… dreams actually do come true,” he says.

Four months later, he attended the BET Awards as a nominee for best new international act. “To be recognized at home with the MOBOs was great. And then to be recognized at an international level was even bigger,” he says. “That was confirmation I was on the right track.”

Odeal sits at the intersection of Nigerian Afro-fusion and alté acts who are blending African styles with other genres and U.K. R&B artists who are making noise abroad. And his shape-shifting sound has steered him into studios with an accordingly wide range of artists within the last year, including Kaytranada, Jermaine Dupri, Kehlani and DJ Maphorisa. The lattermost remixed Odeal’s “Blame U” from his 2024 EP, Lustropolis, with fellow South African producer-artist Xduppy.

During the past year, Justin Bieber couldn’t stop playing the original track on his Instagram Stories and posts. “I’m super grateful he was tapping in,” Odeal says. “I was aware he was working on his album, and I’m glad that that song was with him during that time.”

Outside of DJ’ing Paris Fashion Week parties, Odeal has graced festival stages around the world, including Afro Nation Portugal, the world’s biggest Afrobeats festival, and Wireless Festival, where Drake headlined each night. He says he wants to “touch more people around the world” with his soul-­stirring songs that transcend musical and geographical borders.

Born Hillary Dennis Udanoh in Germany (where his mother lived) and raised in Spain (where his father lived and his parents met), the United Kingdom and Nigeria, Odeal had a cosmopolitan upbringing, which helps explain his international appeal. While attending secondary school in the United Kingdom, Odeal recorded his first song at an after-school youth club before it shut down weeks later — leaving him without access to its recording equipment.

At 14, after Odeal moved from the United Kingdom to Awka, the capital of Nigeria’s Anambra state, his cousin began regularly taking him to a local studio so he could watch different artists work. “I was more into R&B. And they were like, ‘R&B doesn’t work over here,’ ” he told Billboard in January, when he was honored as the inaugural African Rookie of the Month. He studied Nigerian artists’ beat choices and melodies during those sessions and then moved to Lagos the following summer hoping for another shot at making it, but to no avail.

When he returned to South East London at age 15, Odeal noticed the rise of Afroswing — a local amalgam of Afrobeats, dancehall and hip-hop — and formed the group TMG with fellow British Nigerian artists Curtis J and Zilla. They disbanded after a little over a year in 2016 and Odeal went solo, independently releasing his debut EP, New Time, in 2017.

Since then, he’s continued building his emotive, experimental sonic world. Spending time at Lagos beach houses and with a South African Nigerian woman named Zuri Awela (whose identity and relationship to him Odeal has kept vague) inspired last summer’s Sunday at Zuri’s EP. Standout track “Soh-Soh” earned co-signs from SZA and Ciara and marked Odeal’s first entry on the Billboard U.S.

Afrobeats Songs chart, peaking at No. 12. While Sundays at Zuri’s heated up dancefloors across the globe, Odeal’s intentional approach to making music meant he was ready to slow things down for his subsequent project: “In the summers, I make records that are more reminiscent of my African side,” he explains. “And in the winters, when things mellow out, all the other sides come out to play, like R&B.”

His release strategy also plays an essential role in his brand/creative collective, ­OVMBR, which stands for Our Variances Make Us Bold and Relentless. After being hospitalized in November 2017 due to a life-threatening illness, Odeal contemplated the kind of legacy he wanted to leave behind. Since then, he’s released more music in November than any other month in the year, including 2024’s Lustropolis, his first project under LVRN that yielded the Summer Walker collaboration “You’re Stuck.”

With his latest EP, July’s The Summer That Saved Me, Odeal celebrates his freedom to explore the world. Most of the seven-track project was recorded in a 10-day period at a Los Angeles home studio, where Afrobeats superproducers GuiltyBeatz and P2J and R&B virtuosos Jack Dine and Cam Griffin congregated to craft Odeal’s vibrant, vulnerable sound. Surprisingly, the lead single, “London Summers,” was recorded in L.A. because “I had to chase the sun. It wasn’t sunny in the U.K. at the time, and we needed a project before summer,” he explains. However, “London Summers” captures the best time of the year back home, when everyone is “having a drink, vibing, music playing,” he recalls. “The sun definitely brings out a different side to people.”

Odeal conceived another of its tracks, “Miami,” on the beaches of Spain, where he had headed for some R&R before meeting with producer Harry Westlake. The song features Leon Thomas, whom Odeal had connected with on social media before Odeal’s A&R executive, Abraham Kamara, suggested the “Mutt” singer would sound great on the track. The acoustic ballad was “the first breakthrough” of the project, Odeal says. “Nothing felt like it was real until I had that song.”

This fall, Odeal will hit the road for some festival performances — but he stays relatively mum when asked about new music dropping in November, hinting at a potential deluxe edition. Outside of those festivals, Odeal and his friends will keep throwing OVMBR parties for his fans that feature an eclectic lineup of DJs (he prefers not to perform at the parties so that audiences can just “vibe out”). “I see the analytics on Spotify, but I don’t see actual people. I wanted my fan base to get to know each other,” he explains, adding that they’ve hosted 15 parties in cities including Lagos, London, Berlin, Paris and Stockholm since 2021. He hopes to expand OVMBR into a festival while empowering the creative community it has cultivated.

“I want to build it into a thing that can also give back to young creators in Africa who need a platform,” Odeal says. “We’ll be able to fund and invest in the next generation’s dreams.”