Episode 4: Making Weird Normal, With Nnamdi.

When you’re growing up, and you’re a little…different from everyone else – maybe you look different, or you speak with an accent, or you like different music – the otherness can weigh heavy, and it’s on you to process that. Some folks feel at home in themselves when they finally find “their” people, whatever that means for them. Some reach for belonging by adopting whatever appears to be ya know, quote unquote,  “normal.” And some folks alchemize otherness, by wearing their uniqueness like a crown. 

Nnamdi Ogbonnaya most definitely falls into that last category. He’s a son of Nigerian immigrants, who grew up outside Chicago. And for years, he would describe his music to people as well, weird. What kind of music do you make? Oh, weird music. It was a knee jerk response. 

Nnamdi made his records alone, late at night, playing every instrument himself. He was into Frank Zappa, Math rock, Outkast, and somehow, he brought all those things together into a sound that was hard to describe, except as well, weird. But at some point, Nnamdi realized the music he makes isn’t weird, at least not to him.

That word had become almost like a proactive defense against all the people who couldn’t categorize his music, or couldn’t understand it. So with his latest record, Please Have a Seat, Nnamdi decided to drop the word weird. It’s just music now. 

Nnamdi: Yeah, and also I don't think it's weird cuz it's just what I would do. You know what I mean? It's literally just who I am. If other people wanna say it, it's weird that's on them.

My name is Meklit, this is Movement, music and migration remixed. Today, (we are) making weird normal, with Nnamdi. 

MUSIC: Out

Meklit: What was the first instrument you picked up?

Nnamdi: First instrument I played was piano. Yeah, my parents bought me a little Cassio keyboard

MUSIC: Casio Beat

Nnamdi: Yeah. I love the drum beats. I love, my favorite was the Fill Button where you could just press the Fill and do it. I would just like press the fill button over and over and over. Yeah, I was just a strange child.

Meklit: And did you get a drum kit?

Nnamdi: Yes. I mowed lawns one summer to raise money so I could buy a $200 drum set.

Meklit: I feel like drums are like much harder in a household than piano, you know what I mean? Because, did you ever get complaints about the drums?

Nnamdi: Actually not from neighbors at all. Cuz my neighbors on the left were like not rednecky, but very much like lower class Caucasian folks who were like super into wrestling. So we would always hear them screaming at the tv. 

So that was on the left side and my, the right side, I had my neighbor, Mr. Slauson, he was very old and he like couldn't hear that well. So I kind of had it made in that world. But people in the house, that's a different story. Like my dad would get home from work and hear me playing in the basement and he would just go, ahhh, so which I think might stop. So I would stop.

Meklit: Was there ever a moment where you had to kind of defend music?

Nnamdi: I think that people didn't know how important it was to me growing up. So it was kind of my own little special escape.

Yeah, I remember a time where I played, I had like a battle of the bands and I was like a freshman or something, and the prize, was you got to go open for the, this band, The Plain White Tees. So this was the first time my dad ever saw me play drums in like a public setting that wasn't like at the house or at church. 

And I remember after that show he was like, wow, you could really play the drums. Like he didn't know, he didn't know how good I was at drums. It was a good band. It was more like the other stuff I was playing was not something parents would like. So I think that's another reason.

Meklit: What does that mean?

Nnamdi: I don't know. You know, it was more just like, it was more aggressive.

Meklit: Ah, mm-hmm.

Nnamdi: I'm not saying like all parents, but just my parents. Yeah, it was more aggressive, like experimental and like mathy and not, you couldn't really like bob your head to it. So my dad wasn't like, as into that. He was like, why don't you play stuff that sounds like Jerry Garcia?

Meklit: It really, I mean, that's not a sentence I expect to come out of a Nigerian immigrant’s

Nnamdi: that wasn't a sentence I expected him to say, but he definitely said it at some point.

MUSIC: Transition

Nnamdi: I think my natural inclination used to be to try to wanna isolate people and kind of make people uncomfortable in a way that makes them like, reevaluate the things that they consume. Whether that's lyrically, or whether that's like instrumentally jarring. I feel like growing up that was like, I'm just like, I just wanna like, make people feel that. 

And I think like, getting older, I'm just like, music should be a thing that brings people together. So kind of combining those two things into something that is cohesive for me is very important. Like, I feel like you can have pop music that is more intricate than kind of the stuff we have been seeing on the radio. And it would be cool to like see, stuff with like, a little more experimentation like leak into that world.

MUSIC: New song

Nnamdi: I think in any given song, especially on Please Have a Seat, I was very deliberate about having every song have something that was hummable to me. But just cuz I do that on this record does not mean that the next record will be catchy or even listenable. Like it could just be a bunch of like grading, uh, dissonant chainsaws, like being thrown into a blender.

Meklit: Tell us a little bit about, um, the new record. Please have a seat. How did the seeds for that get planted?

Nnamdi: Well, please have a seat started during like 2020. When I write music, I just write song after song after song. I have my like, little keyboard here with me. I usually just try to make three ideas a day that I like

Meklit: Wow, that’s a lot.

Nnamdi: Yeah, it's, I'm, I guess . I gu it's not, it's usually just very small, like short loops. It's not like a full songs. It's like, I'll make three things where I'm like, okay, that could potentially be a song at some point. And then I go back and listen once I have a batch and I start to notice different similarities in certain songs. So I'll just like group things that make sense.

Meklit: What's your recording process like?

Nnamdi: Oh God. It's scary. I record very late at night usually. It's very much just like a gremlin in his little cave. Just like gotta record this song. I don't know. I get my boost of energy in like, the witching hours, like three to six. And yeah, I think, I like knowing that most people around me are sleeping. It feels like more, a more calm environment. But it's very much a me experimenting in my evil laboratory by myself.

So yeah, 2020, like middle of the year, I was noticing that I had a lot of songs that felt like a just document, like a diary, just documenting times in my life where I had small epiphanies. And that's kind of what turned into Please Have a Seat.

Meklit: What was one of those epiphany moments?

Nnamdi: So I was lucky enough to get to hang out with some people that have been doing it for a while or just have like a big following and people that are like relatively famous. And also like how people interact with them when they go out in public. So I just, I kinda learned what I want from like a career where your whole, the whole thing is like being public, like an entertainer. And I love that aspect about it, but I also love being able to go places by myself and have people not talk to me. 

Meklit: Was that the song I Don't Wanna Be Famous

Nnamdi: yeah, there's that, that's like a big part, just like hanging out with someone actually famous and like, we were at the middle of nowhere. On a tour that this person like decided to hop in the van because they were friends with the band we're touring with. And then we ended up at a grocery store at like 3:00 AM and I got so used to just hanging out with this person that I forgot that they were like famous.

And then we went into this grocery store, everything was normal. And then I started noticing like the workers just being like, and I was like, oh yeah, you're like really famous. And it was crazy, like outta nowhere, just a bunch of people swarmed him and were like asking him all these questions and he was like, Hey, I'm just trying to get some food with my friends.

Meklit: At 3:00 AM.

Nnamdi: At 3:00 AM! I think like people texted people that were like in the town and just like, yo, this, he's here! He's here, he’s here! And so people like came, which is insane. And I was just like, don't like that. But I do like want the other aspects, you know, like in one line I'll be saying I don't want a thing, and then the next line I'll be a thing like but actually, kinda do. 

And that's just, that's just how I feel. It's not as easy as like a yes or like, I realize I don't get to decide those things really. Like there's only so much I can do to decide the outcome cuz I know that I'm gonna keep pursuing music at the highest degree possible. 

So, whatever the universe throws my way. Like, it's not like I just have to figure out ways to deal with it in ways that make me comfortable. But I love pop music. I love making catchy songs and I wanted that one to be really catchy to get that point across, that kind of duality of it.

 I do like having my music reach as many people as it could possibly reach, you know? Cuz I do. I personally know the power of music and like the things that it can pull out of people and I feel like my music can do the same for other people.

Meklit: My experience is that when a song comes from that place of insight, it reaches something else in people like it goes an extra step somehow. 

Nnamdi: I like that.

Meklit: Because it reaches something like when it touches something in you from that place, it has like extra little wings to travel a little further.

Nnamdi: Yeah. It's kind of almost like seeing into the future or like foreshadowing your own life. Like you'll write songs based on how you feel, but then realize that there's levels deeper to it that you don't understand until like the song's been a song for a while and then you're like, oh my goodness. Like there's more to this. Which is exci. It's, that's an exciting thing about art. Like you can listen to the same thing, you can look at the same picture and always find new things and like new inspiration from the same thing.

The album is Please Have a Seat by Nnamdi. And we’ll go out on the track “Touchdown.”

Movement is produced by Ian Coss and myself, Meklit Hadero. Our co-creator and podcast godmother is Julie Caine. Our broadcast partner is The World. We are supported by the Mellon Foundation, the National Geographic Society and distributed by PRX.