The Eye features music’s finest rising artist in a stripped-down studio environment to deliver renditions of their best songs with just one camera, one microphone, and one take. The latest to give it a shot is Ogi, a Chicago-born Nigerian-American singer who was pursuing a career in law just a few years ago before she blew up on social media.
For Ogi, it started by sharing covers on Instagram and it was her rendition of PJ Morton’s “Alright” that set everything in motion: Morton heard the cover and shared it, producer No ID saw that, and he signed Ogi to his Def Jam imprint ARTium in 2021. Earlier this year, she released her debut EP, the well-received Monologues.
Now, she brings three songs from that effort — “Envy,” “Bitter,” and “Follow Me” — to The Eye.
For all three tunes, Ogi is accompanied by just an electric guitarist and that’s really all the backing she needed. The minimal accompaniment really gives her room to vocally flex, which she’s more than capable of doing. While talented vocalists can fall into the trap of trying to do too much to show off their pipes, Ogi is subtle when she needs to be and powerful when the moment calls for it, making it easy to see what No ID saw in her.
As for what Ogi has on the horizon, in an August interview, she told Uproxx, “I’d like to release some more music, for sure. I just want to travel, I want to go to different places through tours and shows, just to see where I am. One thing that I regret from college is never studying abroad, and I feel like this is my moment to go wherever I want — or I guess wherever people want me. So I guess that means I just gotta work hard.”
Watch Ogi perform “Envy,” “Bitter,” and “Follow Me” for The Eye above.
