Words by Bailey Alexander
Biyi’s +33 EP and short film show just how strong his resolve and relationships are, overcoming all kinds of distance every step of the way.
Speaking to Biyi, he immediately strikes you as a man on the go. When we sit down to speak on Zoom, he’s just finished a day’s rugby training with Ealing Trailfinders, and is immediately in the zone to turn his attention away from sport and talk about music.
Having one talent is always cool, but managing to make a living out of two talents is even cooler. When I ask him if he thinks the duality of his career is niche, he eludes agreeing with me, and gives me food for thought instead, “I don’t think of it as niche, but I guess I don’t know any people playing rugby currently and making music. This is just how I need to express myself”.
He himself knows he’s not the first sportsman to turn their focus to music. He cites that rapper Kamakaze has a career in football alongside his music, whilst I pretty naively and weakly throw another name into the ring: Shaquille O’Neal.
For Biyi, his love of music is as old as his love of sport. Rap was the genre that caught his eye in his early years and set him on a path that saw him release his first song in 2018, which just so happened to also be the first song he’d ever written.
The crux of his material comes from a need to release everything on his mind, “There’s a lot of things that go unspoken in people’s lives whether it’s intentional or not. I’m a very observant person so I like writing stuff down and I think that in itself is a bit of a release when you’ve got stuff pent up in your mind. As soon as you write something down, it’s kinda free. It’s off your chest and not boring you anymore”.
The honesty of his lyrics makes for a refreshing sound, someone uninhibited by saving face or letting any insecurities get the best of him. That’s what makes the release of his new EP +33 a must-listen. He refuses to name any major influences on the project, and that’s a good thing: “I definitely have influences that I listen to, but I think what I’m doing is very me, so I would struggle to pick people that have influenced this EP”.
I can’t help but praise the EP’s two singles ‘JET FLIGHT’ and ‘REALLY THO’, emphasising just how much the latter shows off the storytelling prowess that seems to be second nature to him, “I like stories, whether it’s a love story, whether it’s a fight, whether it’s a happy story, whether it’s whatever. I like there to be some kind of progression. It doesn’t have to be a beginning and an end, but it has to be something that you can follow, and I think that’s how I like to write. I kind of unpack everything, and one line leads into the next, onto the next, and into the next. It kind of builds naturally”.
+33’s title is an on the nose reference to France’s telephone code, and it’s a title based on an interesting story and experience. Biyi started work on it when he was still playing rugby with Wasps RFC in the UK, but suddenly the club disappeared in a flurry of administration troubles, and Biyi found shelter and support with French team Racing 92. Practically overnight, he found himself living in Paris on his own, “leaving friends and family behind, and relationships that had to be, not cut, but stretched because of that distance”.
The distance was emotional, not just physical, and left Biyi reflecting on the certain things, people, and situations he’d left back at home. The reflections stirred up feelings, “whether it was resentment, whether it was anger, whether it was missing somebody, or whether it was just wanting the best for somebody despite not being there. A whole load of emotions were going through my head at the time, and I just had to start writing them as they came to me, and that’s how the project came about”.
It’s not just those in-the-moment feelings that Biyi tackles on the EP: there’s also a lot of hope. Biyi stars in and uses the EP’s accompanying People’s-Pirates-directed short film to convey his story and all of +33’s emotions with a greater clarity: “There’s a lot of movement in the film because the People’s Pirates’ background is movement so as soon as they heard [+33] they had a whole load of ideas of how to convey my physical movement from place to place and the emotions moving as well”.
I ask Biyi if there’s any musical short films he’s seen recently that have stuck with him the way I’m sure his will stick with all of us. He doesn’t hesitate in answering, “Ama Lou is an amazing R&B singer, and she did a short film called DDD for a 3-track EP some years back and, honestly, I watch that once a month. It takes you through the story and I always thought about how it’s great if you have the time and facilities to be able to do that: that’s how I’d want to do everything”.
And done it he has as +33 and its accompanying short film dropped last Friday, and are truly a testament to Biyi’s English-Channel-crossing story. Check out the EP, but make sure you also watch the short film to truly get the full scope of the story he’s telling about distance, hope, and relationships.
+33 is out now.