Genesis Owusu: The 10 songs that changed my life

Fresh from the release of genre-defying second album STRUGGLER, Genesis Owusu reveals everything about the music that made him – from the work of his older brother, to, um, the Minions…

“I remember drawing water from a river as a young pup. Ghanaian sun beating down on my tender little back. Animals circling around me like the birthing scene from The Lion King. ‘NAAAAAN’SINGONYAAAAMA BAGAITHI BABA!’”

“Unfortunately I was already a grown man by the time this song came out, but its infectious swirling synth loops coupled with the imagery of these tiny little overall-wearing demons really remind me of the vortex of absurdity and hellfire that was my teenage years. Counting money, swerving in humvees.”

“I have to emphasise that we’re not rocking with Nazis over here! Kanye is a different person right now, but the man we once knew was a big influence on me. I remember posting on Facebook that I was going to be playing one of my first gigs ever and this girl commented that I better not play any Kanye. She kind of annoyed me from time to time, not sure why. Now that I think back, maybe she was trying to flirt. I don’t know why she even thought I’d be playing Kanye at my own gig. So I ended up playing Can’t Tell Me Nothing out of pure spite. Now that these last few years have passed, maybe I should have listened…”

“This is not a joke. I have a wonderful partner and we have been together for almost seven years now. We met long before, though, but she doesn’t remember meeting me. Around 2016 there was a meme going around about how J Cole had just gone platinum with no features on one of his albums. I slid into my now-girlfriend’s DMs asking her why she thinks Soulja Boy doesn’t get the respect he deserves for going quadruple platinum with no features on Crank That. We are now looking for houses together.”

“This is actually not true, but I felt like I should put something there for the sake of the article. There wasn’t a song that inspired me to be a musician; I was coerced into being a musician by my older brother, God bless him. The song I put there is actually his latest song, so there is some relevance. He literally annoyed me into doing what would become my lifelong career, so shout out.”

[Well played, very funny – Humour Ed]

“My whole debut album, Smiling With No Teeth. It was the first time I truly felt like I had encapsulated myself as an artist in one serving. It means a lot to me personally, and has done incredible things for me career-wise. If I had to choose a singular song, though, I would have to talk about a song that came long beforehand, called Goondocks//CBR ZOO. It’s a song that I wrote in high school and would only exist right now on Soundcloud and YouTube. It probably doesn’t even hold up that well sonically. But it was the first time I figured out the place that music really had in my life. As a means of catharsis and therapy.”

“I feel like if my life was a sitcom, and I had a little theme that played every time I entered a room, it’d be this song. This song is hypnotic. Loose as hell. Sounds like a drug-fuelled haze. Not that those things necessarily describe me. I feel like I wish I’d written this song because it sounds like a song no-one could really sit down and write. Not even Sly. It just feels like a moment in time that was lucky to be captured.”

“I was pretty depressed for the first half of this year. Depressed, burnt out, questioning everything. King Krule has always been one of my favourite artists; most of his songs have this melancholy to them, and this track shares that, but it also has this glimmer of hope through it. ‘Baby this faith is all I have,’ is such a beautiful line, which really resonated with me. I don’t have the answer to anything; no concrete reason to keep going. But still there’s some innate hope that tomorrow won’t be as burnt as yesterday was. This faith is all I have.”

“Essentially Andre 3000’s take on Maggot Brain by Funkadelic. Probably my favourite song ever. What better way to lower me into the earth than with a nine-minute psychedelic musing on the goods and the bads. I should die the way I lived: confusingly, jarringly, esoterically and beautifully.”

Genesis Owusu’s new album STRUGGLER is out now via OURNESS / AWAL

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