Way before music became a career, Ossi Grace was that girl with a sketchbook in hand, always painting and always drawn to songs. Growing up as a woman who didn’t fit into the conventional expectations of what women should be, she sought her own place and sanctuary in life. Music never left her, instead, it lingered quietly until she found the courage to step fully into it.
From working as a songwriter to juggling several jobs, Ossi Grace’s journey has been one of patience, healing, and self-discovery. When the world first heard her on M.I Abaga’s ‘The Guy’ album with “Crazy,” she wasn’t even ready to launch her career but that moment set her on a path she could no longer ignore. Now, with her debut single “Reason”, the bold “FA”, and more stories waiting to unfold, Ossi Grace isn’t here to fit into the mold of what a Nigerian artiste “should” sound like. She’s here to prove that music is most powerful when it is lived.
TTC: Hi, Ossi Grace. How would you introduce yourself to someone who’s just discovering you?
Ossi Grace: I would say, I'm honest. My music is honest. My music is sensual. My music is real. My music is hopeful. It's not negative at all. A lot of things that I actually sing about come from a pretty negative place, but I would never sing or release music that I've recorded until I've properly healed from the situation. So it's definitely positive vibes only. I just always think about how my music is going to impact someone who's listening to it. So you need to be careful because people listen to these things, and if I'm saying negative things, they're gonna take this into their day. Yeah, I'm very careful about what I put in my music.
TTC: Music is an important constant in your life. How did it go from a passion to becoming such a big deal for you?
Ossi Grace: I feel like maybe at a point in my life I didn't really know what I wanted to be. I know I love music, I’ve always loved music. My first album was Rihanna, ‘Music Of The Sun’. I always knew I loved music, but like I was always scared to sing. When I decided, “you know what, let me give this a try”, it took me a while to get used to my voice because my voice isn't—especially for a woman— it's not a typical voice, it's deeper. But once I got used to hearing myself, I enjoyed it. It was like, you know what, lemme stick to this and see what's gonna happen if I do. And I feel like I've always been singing. One thing I do remember is people saying, “shut up”. It's always been like, “Oh God, who is that?” So, I feel like I've always been singing, it's always been a part of me. I feel like that's why I felt like I enjoyed singing. Maybe that's part of why I felt, “let me try this”.
TTC: You announced your single “FA” early this year, and now it’s finally here. What should listeners pay special attention to in the song and why is it worth their time?
Ossi Grace: I feel like everybody says their music is different, but what I will say is that it’s different in the sense that this is not what you would expect from a Nigerian. I feel like when you hear there's a female Nigerian artiste, you wouldn't expect to see me. I feel like I don't even sound like what I look like. A lot of people have come up to me and been like, “Are you a rapper?”, “Do you rap?”, “You look like a rapper.” You see me and then you listen to my music and like, “I wanna cry right now”. It is very honest. Even though it has some Afro elements, it is not the Afrobeats that you're used to. This project was me taking a risk with myself because I feel like everybody, especially in Nigeria is trying to play it safe. After all, “oh, Nigerians don't listen to this kind of music”. And I was just like, you know what? Let me try. Let's see what happens.
TTC: You featured on M.I.’s ‘The Guy’ album in 2022 on the track “Crazy.” How did that opportunity come about and how did you give it your all?
Ossi Grace: So I've worked with this producer, Chopsticks. I made a couple of tracks with him and producers often play their music that they made with other artistes there. And somehow M.I. heard it and he's “Oh, who's that?” And then, obviously, he told him Ossi Grace and then he said, “Oh, bring her over” and that's just how it happened. And then honestly, every track that I worked on, he didn't make it. So I thought I didn't make the album. So I literally forgot about it and then I went back to his office. I was playing music, and he was listening to my project and he said, “gimme that song”. “Crazy” was actually my track! But the lucky thing is…because normally I would've been like, “I don't even care who it is, there's just certain music that I can't give another artiste”. 'Cause it's my story. It's just from such a deep place. But with “Crazy,” I had written all that I could write. I've said what I wanted to say. It was that one track that I always felt “this isn't complete”. So he literally rapped in the spaces, it just made sense.
TTC: Despite that high-profile feature, you didn’t release your debut single until 2024. Why the wait?
Ossi Grace: Because I was not supposed to work with M.I.! That wasn't supposed to happen. Even people in Nigeria didn't even know who I was and I was very comfortable with that. I'd wiped everything off my Instagram and I was just chilling because I was trying to figure myself out at that time. I was still trying to figure out what kind of music I even wanted to make. And then he comes along and he's like “my album is dropping soon”. I'm like, “but I ain't ready”. But then, you can't ever be ready.
Now was the time for me to start releasing music of my own. That's why it took such a long period of time. I try not to put myself under pressure. But there were people constantly saying, “Ossi, you just had a song with M.I., why aren't you–”, “where's your next single?” “One year passed, two years?”, “Ossi, are you being serious right now”. I was like, "Okay", because at the end of the day, one thing I always said was if I release trash music, you people are gonna say I’m releasing trash music. So just let me have my time and then I'm gonna come back with something. And that's why I'm saying they should prepare their minds for good music that isn't what they're used to. Because in Nigeria, men don't cry but the majority of the people that reached out to me were men. They mentioned being very emotional about the song, about how it touched them and they understood where I was coming from with the music. Even my brother almost started crying, but he remembered he's my brother, so he's not gonna cry for me.
TTC: “Reason” is your debut single. Kindly talk about the initial spark of the idea from the making, and then to the rollout and post-release.
Ossi Grace: Yeah. “Reason” was one of the first songs that had started recording after being signed to the label. And, I was in a very different space in my life. For me, I'm a storyteller and like I said, I'm not gonna release music until I've healed from something or processed it. I was in my processing stage and all I had was “Reason”. I knew what I wanted to talk about by myself, but like the song wasn't complete because something was going on in my life and I needed to be able to process what happened before I could finish “Reason”. So I did. And basically, the song is about coming from an environment where it's a pretty hopeless place. You find something good and you have to do whatever it takes to keep it because if you lose this, you're probably not gonna find it again. This is Lagos. The fact that you're not used to something also means you don't have the character to keep it. So it was also a phase in my life where, okay, you may be doing things to me right now that's hurting my feelings, but I'm also not any better. Because I'm also trying to figure out my way around this. That’s what this EP was about, and for me it was like, “You know what? I haven't had a reason before. But you are going to be the reason why I do better.”
TTC: How do you tap into your inspirations, and who have been your biggest mentors or guiding voices in the music world?
Ossi Grace: I feel like a lot of people have come in and out of my life because even before I released music as an artiste, I was also a songwriter and a personal assistant to an MD. At the time I did a lot of jobs. When I first got back from uni, I went back to Nigeria. There weren't many songwriters. So if you say you're looking for a songwriter, you're gonna say Ossi Grace, but it was very difficult. I was literally going into labels and they're like, "songwriter? That's what you do for a living?" But they hear the music and they hear the voice and they're like, “there's something to this”. Everybody was constantly telling me, “When are you dropping music?” I've always had this push. There was literally a time when—his name is Eze—he was constantly asking, “Ossi when are you dropping music?”. To the point where he would just give me his studio to use anytime I like. At that point I wanted to work with him. and he was like, “Ossi, what job do you want me to give you right now?” I said, “Yeah, but I need the money though” so he let me. But at one point he was like, “Ossi, I'm not gonna pay you anymore. Go and release music. You've been helping everybody. You've been doing everything else, but doing what you're so put on this earth to do.” I think it was actually that last push from Eze. That was so scary. I always had money around 'cause I did multiple things, but that was a very scary position to be in. I'd already taken some form of a break from music. So obviously he's looking at me like, “First of all, you're not songwriting”. Next thing, “almost one year later, you're still working with me? You don't have a record to your name?” And it was literally December 31st or something. And he's like, “I'm not paying you anymore”. I was like, “You want me to enter this new year with bad news?” That was one of the best things that could have happened to me. The last time I saw him he was just smiling because people were just always constantly, “Ossi, when are you dropping music?” Even Tems, “when is this song coming out? When is the song coming out?” Like it was just that constant, everybody was just like, “why are you not dropping music?” So I've always had that support and that push. I feel like I was the person who didn't believe in myself. And I feel like I still have that struggle sometimes because you guys are listening to music, it's making you cry. And even listening to my project right now, everybody's so excited. I'm like, “me? You like me?”. But yeah, I'm excited that everybody's excited.
TTC: Now that you have a few songs out, are you thinking about a full project? And if so, which artistes would you dream of featuring?
Ossi Grace: The feature questions have always been a very difficult question for me, but one thing I will say is I've always been a super fan of SZA. I've always loved Kehlani. Because I was there at the beginning of her career. Every Kehlani song that dropped, I was in the forefront. You see me there waiting. I was on SoundCloud waiting for Kehlani to come on. Even when she came to the UK, it was such a hard couple of weeks. One of the heartbreaking things was that I had to decide on choosing between paying for a studio or paying for Kehlani tickets. I picked the studio. It was so painful, and as my friends were sharing videos with me, my body was boiling. But yeah, man, Kehlani definitely. I love Kehlani. I love SZA. Those are two people who come to my mind. I love Drake, but there are a lot of amazing artistes out there. There are also a couple of South African artistes that I want to work with. One person that comes off the top of my head is South Africa, Sun-El Musician. I feel like in South Africa they don't make music to be popular, they don't make music to be liked. They just feel the thing in their chest and in their belly and they release it. That's such a beautiful thing.
TTC: Outside of music, what are the things you love to do that keep you grounded?
Ossi Grace: I want to get back to painting. It's a shock to so many people that I don't paint as much anymore. Because back in the day, every competition I was there, I would always be first. I thought I was gonna be a painter at some point. From Renaissance pieces to different things, I was just always painting. But then I guess maybe in the midst of chasing music, I just… yeah…but painting and being by the water. I love the water. I just love to be by the water. And I just love being with people that I love. We could literally be in the same place, just quiet. But just knowing, okay, I love these people. They're happy, they're healthy.
TTC: What’s the bigger vision for Ossi Grace in the coming years?
Ossi Grace: I don't even know if it's music-related. I just really want to be happy and I want to be healthy, and I want my loved ones to be happy and healthy. Also, whatever it is that I do, especially through the music, I want to bring some healing to the world. That’s why I take it upon myself to heal from something or to process something, at the very least before I release the music. I want people to be less depressed. I want people to wake up and know that nothing is limiting them in life. If they were going to pick anybody at all that was going to be signed or even try to make something of their life, trust me, I was not one of them. Like even the way I look alone from when I was younger, the way I behave, the way I walk, the way I talk, it's not like it's a bad thing, but it's not something that you're supposed to be as a Nigerian woman. I'm already being looked down on but I want people to feel better than I did when I was growing up. That’s what I want my life to be about. In terms of house, car, or Grammy, it's just by the way, and I feel like that's why people think I'm not nonchalant. It's just… it will come, but that's not what I'm looking at when I see the vision for my life. “What are you adding to the lives of the people that are listening to your music and listening to you when you leave?” I don't want a situation where 10 years from now, I'm having an interview and apologising to the world. I just want to say I'm glad that people who felt like life wasn't worth living anymore decided that was the wrong decision to make, because they listened to Ossi Grace.