How Adey, Ycee produced one of Nigeria’s biggest records in 2017

“Hello,” I’m Adey.”

Those were the first words I heard as I stepped out from the car. He was standing arms akimbo, buff and smiling. There was a positive vibe around him. We shook hands and bro-hugged. He was still smiling. Positive vibes.

This was my first meeting with producer Adey Ogunlesi. I had worked hard to make this a reality. Direct messages on Twitter had been our primary means of communication. We had our phone numbers, but Twitter gave us an understanding.

“Can I help you?” he offered, as my team and I extracted our equipment from the company SUV. It was 8 pm in Chevron, off Lekki-Epe expressway, Lagos State. My host and interviewee Adey, had recently acquired this house. He had spent over a week moving in his stuff, and getting the studio functional.

“I’m not a street boy, I have a simple and fair way of doing business. I wouldn’t have been able to afford this place if I didn’t do things right.” He spoke articulate English in a clear Nigerian accent. But if you listen closely, you will perceive a faint mix of something foreign in his pronunciations and word use. He clearly had international exposure.

“I schooled in England for a while…” He said after I voiced my curiosity. You see? International exposure.

We moved into the studio. It was a small space. The padding was in black, with pen markings crudely designing the interior. “I used to allow people sign their names in my previous studio.’ Adey interjected as I studied one of wall inscriptions. “But someone drew a house on one spot, so I stopped it.”

There was a used feeling to the studio. The smell of cigarettes hung in the air. Like countless studios scattered across the music hub of Lagos, this one had that ‘creative’ feel to it. That overpowering emotion that tingles your senses once you step into any creative space. On the left, an imposing Apple Mac Pro Desktop Computer Workstation sat. In front of it stood an Akai keyboard which attracted Adey’s hands as he sat on his personal swivel. It was reflex. Adey and Akai had chemistry, honed over years and sleepless nights of creating music.

His new manager Fony, an old friend of mine, was asking all the right questions.

“Do you want to set up? How long would this last? What’s the shot like?”

Over the past months, if you pay close attention to the music industry, the name Adey has grown around the music conversations in Lagos. It is connected to some of the best music that have rocked fans and enthusiasts in 2016 and 2017. But there’s not much you can find about him online.

Adey Ogunlesi has made music for the past couple of years, recording with the likes of Dammy Krane, Falz, Tiwa Savage and Davido prior to their mainstream acceptance and as early as April 2011.

Since he began to get his mainstream credit, Adey has predominantly produced with references like Ycee and Maleek Berry’s Juice, Olamide’s ‘Wavy Level’, Dremo’s ‘Ojere’, Boj’s ‘Paper’, Davido and YCee and Reekado Banks’ ‘Link up’.

As a singer, Adey has also delivered tracks like Nana, Bad and Dirty Diego recorded with the likes of Mr Eazi, YCee and Odunsi as well as produced unreleased tracks featuring Olamide, Mr Eazi, Maleek Berry, YCee and Davido. In 2017, he is planning the release of his first body of work and establish himself more as a household name in the Nigerian music industry.

Adey is a recluse at heart. That isn’t hard to decipher. He misses many calls, operates by text messages, screens his guests, lives in a secluded neighbourhood, and owns a dog.

His record ‘Juice’ by Ycee and Maleek Berry, was released in March 2017. The single swiftly rose to become a fan favorite, with the chorus catchphrase ‘Too much juice, too much sauce…’ playing on existing pop culture lingo to penetrate the heart of listeners across Africa. It had become the soundtrack to many urban centers and given Ycee a new hit.

“Juice is like an R&B-Afrobeats song. The things that make up that song, they play on your subconscious; you feel that you have heard something in that record before, but you can’t pinpoint what it is.”

Adey began to talk about the record which at the time of this report, is the most played song on Nigerian radio, according to Playdata Charts. The camera was on. The manager was looking. And the questions were coming.

“What my goal was with ‘Juice’ is that I want to put each individual listener of that song right by in the middle of that sphere. And I want everything that is playing to play on their senses.” He said.

He fired up his screens and began to walk us through the entire process. You can watch that video above. But the gist of the process is that Adey met YCee through another singer BOJ. He didn’t know who he was at the time. But he heard YCee rapping and loved what came from the MC, so he pled with him to go over it one more time, so he could record.

That was the start of something beautiful, which has so far given Nigeria two hit songs.

Adey production is deep. He possesses a deep understanding of music, and never listens to Nigerian music. Instead, he draws inspiration from old records which had lit up his childhood and linger in his subconscious. The raw emotional connection to those records and a lifetime of playing the piano fuse together to birth his music.

“I only hear Nigerian music when I go out. Then I ask who that is, and someone tells me.”

On his computer, he deconstructs the production process, by first creating an ‘atmosphere’ for the record to thrive. That ‘atmosphere' is the foundation of the record. It comprises primarily of passive underlying piano licks, basslines, and drum crashes. When that is complete, he begins to build over it. Everything is art, and art is a process. Adey follows that process. And walking us through it was magical.

Did you know ‘Juice’ had a Ghanaian ‘Alkayida’ sound? Adey identifies it for us saying, “this is one of my favorite things on the record. I started hearing it from Ghanaian music before I heard it from Nigerian music.”

And then he began to show off. The beat was complete. It was bouncing all around the studio, we had gotten the hang of the process, but guess what we didn’t know? Synergy between sounds.

“The most important thing when you make good stuff like this is synergy.”

It wasn’t Ycee’s voice. It was ‘too much juice, too much sauce.’ It was synergy between sounds. Deep!

“I can actually play even additional stuff on top of this and just…” his voice tapers off, and his hands take over on the keyboard. We begin to combine sounds again to give us a hybrid of the original record.

“It’s all about taking a risk. Because I’m able to merge trending (sounds) with what I’m able to do, I’m in total control.”

Adey is currently working with Olamide to reinvent the superstar’s sound. The YBNL Boss already has a new single from the collaboration - ‘Wavy level’. It is a tiny fragment of what is in store. His personal project, an EP, is also in its last creative phase, and will be made public later in 2017.