#252: TOBi

A Waste Of Time with ItsTheReal

This week on A Waste of Time with ItsTheReal, we welcome Toronto singer TOBi, whose debut album Still drops this week, to the Upper West Side! TOBi talks growing up in Nigeria, who amongst his siblings makes the best jollof, his family's big move across the world to Canada, how he adapted to the cold, to the school system, to both Canadian culture and other immigrants' cultures, and even getting used to the Americanized use of the word "cool." We get into his love for sports and music and his city, growing up listening to The LOX and Outkast, how he was battle-rapping in high school, how he would integrate it into his school assignments, recording songs into a Sony Erickson phone, how he tried to keep it a secret from his parents, and how they ultimately found out. We talk about Drake's influence on Toronto, how his music spoke to TOBi throughout the years, the tenth anniversary of So Far Gone, and the time he snuck into OVOFest while working at an amusement park next door. TOBi shares who he makes his music for, whether you can ever feel like the person who wrote songs from long ago and a career away, before co-signs from Jaime Foxx, Tiffany Haddish, The Game, what's poppin' about Brampton, his time as a pre-med student, the role D-Pryde played in helping TOBi's career move in the right direction and much more!

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