BeatRoute Magazine ON Edition - November 2019

MUNACH IOSEGBU
MUSiC ARTIST INTERVIEW
W
hile you might not
expect someone
born in Wisconsin
to have an immigrant
story, Jidenna
Theodore Mobisson does. He was born in the small
city of Wisconsin Rapids, but returned to his parents’
home country of Nigeria soon after, spending the first
six years of his life there. When he returned to America
a few years later, instead of a joyous homecoming, the
six-year-old Jidenna experienced something different.
“Coming to America, number one, I was a foreigner;
two, I was an African; and three, apparently, I was
black, in that order,” he recalls to BeatRoute of his
early years, shortly before his headlining show at The
Phoenix Concert theatre in Toronto.
“That’s kind of how the kids tease you. That’s the
first thing you realize: ‘I’m different.’ And I think that
quieted me as a kid. It made me very observant. It
made me feel like I had to assimilate into American
culture and I did that. I tucked my foreignness away,
my Africanness away, [and] even when I was really
young – tucked my Blackness away.”
Any children of immigrants will identify with
J I
D E
N
N A
From 85 to Africa
and back again:
Jidenna Theodore
Mobisson's journey to
finding himself
By JIBRIL OSMAN
Jidenna’s upbringing and the focus on hard
work and schooling that came with it. “My
family really didn’t have a lot of money
growing up, and education was the way that
we were taught that we could get out of being
on the lower spectrum of income,” he
shares.
“Now, I wasn’t poor because I’ve seen real
poverty and I would never claim that, but I
grew up in working class neighborhoods.
My parents were both educated, but they
both came from small towns, small villages.
They literally taught me that education
is the way out, and that’s why I have such a
strong emphasis on education.”
Jidenna would eventually get into Harvard,
but decided to attend Stanford University
instead, graduating with a Bachelor
of Arts Degree in 2008. Before his big break,
Jidenna unexpectedly became a teacher. “I
never wanted to be a teacher in my life and
I hated it when I was in it. I was just good at
it and it involved music. Sorry to disappoint
you and anybody who’s reading this, but the
truth of the matter is I was a broke artist and
needed a job.”
But the job brought its own knowledge.
“In the program we taught history through
hip-hop and did test prep through hip-hop,”
he explains. “The reason I can honestly perform
now as an artist is because of the kids.
They were getting up in the morning and
listening to me talk about futile systems;
that’s the toughest audience you’ll ever perform
at.”
After leaving teaching and working on
music for a few years, Jidenna struck gold
with his 2015 single, “Classic Man,” eventually
signing with Janelle Monae’s Wonderland
Records. Jidenna—a believer in speaking
things into existence—wasn’t surprised
at his success. For him, it was finally his
moment.
“It was a relief because I’ve imagined
most of this,” he says. “I’m not one of those
artists that’s surprised. I think this is how
the universe works—you write down what
you want, you imagine it, you visualize it
and then it happens. So all of it was a relief
that everything came true.”
After the success of “Classic Man,” Jidenna
would release his debut album, The Chief,
in 2017, as well as an EP, Boomerang, in the
same year. But he would spend the next two
years evolving as both an artist and a person.
Part of his self-discovery meant returning
to Africa, which resulted is his new album,
85 To Africa — finally, that foreignness, Africanness,
and Blackness that he tucked away
as a child, was free to flourish and thrive.
“I wanted that growth and evolution, and
that’s what has happened to me with this album,”
Jidenna reflects. “This album is the
rest of my life; it’s what I’ve always been
about.” ,
12 BEATROUTE NOVEMBER 2019