TOBE NWIGWE NEVER PLANNED TO GO VIRAL. THEN HE RAPPED ABOUT BREONA TAYLOR.
Tobe Nwigwe has spent five years as an independent rapper and singer on the Houston scene, building an audience — including fans like Erykah Badu and Michelle Obama — with weekly song drops that unfailingly arrive with a brand-new video. His plan has always been consistency, not virality. But sudden, unexpected fame arrived last month after he released a track that called attention to the police killing of Breonna Taylor in Kentucky. via NYTIMES
Tobe Nwigwe, an indie rapper who has reached a measure of viral fame for a track about the killing of Breonna Taylor, in Houston, Aug. 9, 2020. Hip-hop wasn't always on the agenda for Nwigwe, once an NFL prospect. "I thought I was going to be the next Ray Lewis," he said. (Michael Starghill Jr./The New York Times)
“I need you to,” Nwigwe sings as the track opens. Then in his typical sober rumble, he raps, “Arrest the killers of Breonna Taylor.” The entire song, called “I Need You To (Breonna Taylor),” is 44 seconds long, with spare production. It was reposted by Diddy, LeBron James, Madonna and Amy Schumer. “Try Jesus,” a ballad he released at the end of July, has become even more popular. It has more than a million YouTube views and helped him land his first two placements on Billboard’s genre sales charts.
On a recent morning Nwigwe, 33, was at work as usual, shooting a video for a song called “Eat” in his sea-foam green living room, wearing a sea-foam green outfit and a gold grill. He was surrounded by his usual production crew, including his wife, Fat, 32; and their best friend and producer, LaNell Grant, 31, known as Nell. As the camera moved around him, the rapper held his arms out so that Ivory, 1, his eldest of two daughters, could join him. Baby Fat, as she is affectionately called by her family, looked around, a sly smile on her face, and finally wiggled her way onto the set.
Nwigwe’s family has always played a large role in his art. Though Tobe Nwigwe is the name on the songs, Fat and Grant are inextricable from the final product. Operating outside the label system, with no publicity representation or managers, the three handle all of their personal and professional business themselves: designing their outfits, booking gigs and watching each other’s children.
“Because I do this with my family, I don’t even want people that I don’t know like that around my family,” Nwigwe said in an interview the evening before the shoot. “I don’t believe in somebody who didn’t help me build everything —” he added before Grant finished his sentence, “come in and take.” In sweats and their signature white shin-length socks, the three sat in swivel chairs, ribbing one another with inside jokes.
