Obongjayar
Courtesy of the artist
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Courtesy of the artist
Obongjayar
Courtesy of the artist
- “Holy Mountain”
- “Not in Surrender”
- “Just My Luck”
There’s one thing you can do better than anyone else can, and that’s being you. That’s a lesson it took my guest today a while to learn.
Obongjayar is a singer who grew up in Nigeria listening to American music, and he moved the U.K. as a teenager, straddling multiple cultures.
He sort of struggled to find his own voice for a long time, trying on different identities to figure out exactly where he fit. When he did find his voice, his music blossomed into something that sounds like nothing else.
In this session, Obongjayar joins us to recount that journey, which has led to his new album, Paradise Now. It’s one of our favorites of 2025, so far.
This episode of World Cafe was produced and edited by Kimberly Junod. The web story was created by Miguel Perez. Our engineer is Chris Williams. Our programming and booking coordinator is Chelsea Johnson and our line producer is Will Loftus.