For an up-and-coming act, navigating the murky waters of the Nigerian music industry is already an uphill task, added to being a female in a society still fixated on exclusionary gender roles, the work is twice as much.
Yet, musicians often describe their art as a deep stirring, a calling, leading to a path wrought with hard work. For Vanexxa, it was no different. But Princess V. Oyadan, music name Vanexxa, didn’t immediately know that music was going to be a career path, something she’d do with her blood and sweat. “I’ve been singing since I was a child,” she says. “Since I was five years old but I never really thought I was going to do music.”
After her parents went through a messy divorce where she and her mother lost everything and moved to a new neighbourhood to start a new life, Vanexxa quickly discovered music was the one thing the world couldn’t take away from her.
“I discovered that music didn’t leave me, wasn’t going to leave me. Found I could still channel all my hurt and frustrations and fully express myself through it. So you see, I didn’t choose music, music choose me.”
One of the biggest driving forces behind her dogged determination is wanting her name heard all over so people who’d imagined she was finished would know she was up to something good.
Vanexxa already predicted her future on her first song, “Legendary”, released in 2016. “I won’t care about the middle fingers in the air/It’s obvious there is many haters everywhere/ But like 2face and Wizkid/ My story go big i’ll be legend/All of my mistakes go make sense” she sang.
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She describes herself as a freestyle artist who writes music for misunderstood Gen Z-ers, fraught with pressure, and yet to figure out their life. “I make music for misfits. Young people who feel like they’re not being heard. People who feel as though they’re being pushed onto a path they would rather not take.”
Currently based in the South-south of Nigeria, Vanexxa’s music is steadily circulating the Nigerian music mainstream. The 21-year-old currently has two of her songs receiving airplay on Trace: “Spoon” and “Another Man Road.”
In “Spoon,” she tackled social issues, drawing from her personal experience. “Another Man Road” was a collaboration with indigenous rapper Erigga whom she has a lasting mentor and protege relationship with. She describes him as a big motivation and her personal critic.
For “Another Man Road”, while other people who previously loved her music didn’t really like the sound, Erigga was uncharacteristically enthusiastic.”Everybody that normally used to f–k with my sound went, “Oh we don’t like this song, we’re not feeling it.’ But Erigga who usually criticised everything I sent to him said, ‘this song is amazing!‘”
He immediately asked to collaborate with her on the track.
Yet, with all the support she gets from friends, Vanexxa describes the sexism she faces as a woman in Nigeria’s music industry. “As a female, before people (men) get to know me or listen to what I’m capable of, they’re already looking at my body features. It’s really annoying. People think it’s easy but it’s not. At some point, it’s confusing because I’m no longer sure who really wants to help”
Already among a number of female artists to make it out of Warri to the big leagues in some fashion, she has little company or no one to hold her hand. However, Vanexxa is unshakably on the path to her goal. “I’ve resolved that while I can’t stop people from looking at me and thinking of only what I can offer in bed, it would be on me if I don’t prove them wrong”
Listen to “Another man road” here
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