Heavensouls Has Yet to Meet a Genre He Can’t Awesomely Dismantle
Inside the mind of Chidi Obialo, an omnivorous 20-year-old prodigy forging music’s future
Going Up is a profile series featuring artists we love who are on the verge of breaking through.
Chidi Obialo is an algorithmic playlist’s worst nightmare. As a musician and listener, he’s eclectic to a headspinning degree. Like The Matrix’s Neo reborn as an avid member of the obsessive Rate Your Music community, he wields expertise in everything from glitched-out electronic experimentalism to spiritual jazz to emo. From Zappa to Arca. MF Doom to doom metal. Afrobeat to breakbeat. “One thing I loved about getting into music was going in deep rabbit holes when it comes to genres and artists,” says Obialo, who records under the name Heavensouls. “So I just thought it would be cool if my discography was a rabbit hole too.”
He’s well on his way: The Heavensouls Bandcamp page currently boasts more than 30 releases. And you never know exactly what you’re in for when you queue up one of his deconstructed odysseys. There’s purplish cloud rap that plays like a Lil B fever dream. Screwed-down happy hardcore. Ambient folk that showcases his bottomless singing voice. A 27-minute free-jazz visionquest. All of it is refreshingly strange—listening through his catalog is like eating handfuls of mystery jelly beans and being pleasantly surprised by the fucked-up flavor combinations.
This year, he’s leveled up even further. Working alongside like-minded producer Stickerbush as the duo Sidepeices, Obialo put 21st-century rap and R&B through a freaky, blippy funhouse filter on Darklight, which came out in January. Just a couple of months later, he released Heavensouls’ crowning achievement to date: Westside Trapped, an audacious record that seamlessly fuses the sounds of Fela Kuti-style Afrobeat, psych-rock, and sample-crazed hyperpop with Obialo’s own observations and struggles as an immigrant who moved from Nigeria to Texas when he was 7 years old. It’s an album that proudly harkens back to the past, but could only exist right now.
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