Stop Calling Blaqbonez a Rapper.

On ‘No Excuses’, Blaqbonez doesn’t just expand his sound, he expands what an artist is allowed to be.

Blaqbonez is easy to watch. He moves with a charisma that makes everything look deliberate, even when it isn’t. He’s funny, confident, occasionally outrageous, and always magnetic. He’s extremely likeable because he isn’t trying to convince you of anything. He doesn’t feel performed; he just is. He’s restless, charged, alive, and, ‘No Excuses’, his fourth studio album, sounds exactly like that energy feels.

With Blaqbonez, the music doesn’t feel manufactured, it feels inevitable. His instincts, equally precise and chaotic, anchor his sound. It’s the type of thing that sounds simple until you realise how skilful it is to be an artist who can be both experimental and coherent. Every track on ‘No Excuses’ bleeds into the next, the keys bend and the tempos slide, until you’re not sure where one song ends and another begins.

It feels less like a standalone album and more like a continuation, the evolving sound of someone who follows his own rhythm wherever it leads. It’s like energy finding an orbit. The transitions are seamless. The songs move through each other. Rap folds into drill, R&B into Afrobeats. It’s not about proving he has range or even about Afrofusion. It’s about fluidity. He doesn’t separate the parts of himself that make his sound possible, and he moves through the sound the way you would a good night out [without overthinking where it will end].

Photo Credit - DD Vaughan

We speak in the afternoon, and at that point, he’d already been nonstop since the morning. I ask how he is and he says “active.” He’s half joking, but it fits. There’s a restlessness in his environment and in his tone, a sort of mid-motion palpable energy that, as a byproduct, also spurs you into motion; almost as if, if you didn’t start capturing it quickly, the moment would be missed completely.

His artistry feels like a byproduct of his existence. Since university, his creativity has been expressed in as many ways as possible. Rapping, directing, styling. Building a persona before anyone was watching. The music, the fashion, the wit, the confidence, they’re all extensions of the same instinct to express. Even if we never knew his name, he would still be doing this.

At the beginning of our conversation, he says he can tell from the start if a song will work. “I can tell from the beginning if something’s going to blend. When it doesn’t, I know it’s for something else… I just know when something’s for me.”

You can hear it. The album doesn’t trip over itself. It plays out like it’s in motion. Every song unfolds with intention, like it knows exactly where it’s going, even if the listener doesn’t. It’s confident, unpredictable, slightly unhinged. Loud when it needs to be, and soft when you’re not expecting it. There’s spark, bravado, desire, chaos and a comedown you’ll be thinking about long after you’ve stopped listening.

“I want it to carry you through. When you’re getting ready, when you’re at predrinks, when you’re in the club. I want it to soundtrack all of that.”

Aura for Aura with Pa Salieu is the sound of ignition. It’s bass, collision, audacity. Good Time (feat. Mellissa) is sexy and a little reckless in the best way. It’s tipsy, crossfaded, slightly loose around the edges. It’s flirtatious in the way a good night out feels when everything is slightly blurred and everyone looks a little better than usual. Stacks $$$ is a personal favourite. If Good Time is the buzz, Stacks $$$ is the comedown: slower, hazier, best listened to with smoke in the air and no rush to be anywhere. It’s sensual, rich, slow, deliberate. It lingers beautifully. “It’s one of my favourite closers,” he says, smiling. “When I made it, I was like, yeah, this is the one.”

He describes No Excuses as his “Super Saiyan” era, and this version of him [more expansive, more awake, almost unreal] certainly feels legendary. It’s Blaqbonez, distilled [like the essence has sharpened].

The ego is still intact, but it’s honed now, better aged; more self-assured than self-obsessed.

Everlasting Taker is the album’s loading screen. It’s reflective and charged, gamey in its production with almost PacMan-like bounces underneath the melody. It’s thoughtful without dragging, a statement of intent that reminds you this has always been about legacy. Despacito (feat. FOLA) feels like sitting in front of a fan on a hot summers day, it’s lo-fi warmth and jazzy ease [the kind of track you could do your makeup to]. It’s soft skipping, slow head bopping, casually magnetic. He glides across the beat like butter, sitting inside the production rather than on top of it, and moving with a charm and control that feels effortless. ACL has a coldness that’s almost unsettling. It’s not loud, more amused, and the distinct playfulness in that restraint makes the dismantling feel even more clinical. Star Life II (feat. Zinoleesky) closes the album by pulling the night into focus. It’s airy and transcendent, sweet but with a slight warped flicker in the production, like the track bends time for a second. It’s not sad; it’s honest. The party is still raging, the lights are still bright, but for a split second the music doesn’t taste as sweet, and then the rhythm pulls you back in. It’s beautiful and relentless, star life [the show always goes on.]

He talks about production like a control freak in the best possible way. Not in a tortured artist sense, but like someone who really understands how to create. “I don’t stop talking,” he laughs. “I make sure the whole process has me in it. When the artist isn’t singing, the production is still talking. So it has to sound like me.”

That level of control is part of why his music sounds the way it does. It’s cohesive, but also alive. He insists on experience [being outside, meeting people, seeing everything] and the influence of his travels isn’t subtle. Apart from his verbal references, the album features global collaborators: AJ Tracey, Pa Salieu, LeoStayTrill, Young Jonn, KindlyNxsh, FOLA, Olamide and more. When asked about the heavy UK influence, he says, “there’s no way you’re in a place that long and it doesn’t affect you. The UK’s like the second home of Afrobeats.”

’Consistency’ feat AJ Tracey Visualiser

He says it casually, but it does speak to how global his ear has become. There’s something borderless about his sound. You can’t pin it down to Lagos, London or LA, only to his own slightly manic wavelength. The result is an album that manages to feel and be global without losing its core, like the heat of Lagos life being slightly cooled by London’s air.

We segue to fashion. “I’m a supermodel,” he deadpans, before bursting out laughing. It’s not far from the truth. Earlier this year, he became the first Nigerian artist to walk for Vivienne Westwood. “When I feel like I look good, I’m confident, I’m ready to take on the world. I put effort into that.” It’s another way of exerting his presence. However you meet him (music, fashion, performance) you end up having to take him in [no excuses].

It’s also part of the wider Blaqbonez universe [alter egos, diss tracks, punchlines, viral videos, runway credits] a universe that has long expanded beyond the limits of ‘rapper’. What makes it compelling is how human it always feels. Beneath the posturing, there’s vulnerability. His songs flirt with detachment [no love, no illusions] but the tension with desire is always present. One verse it’s nonchalance; the next, he sounds like someone trying not to get pulled into his own longing.

“I wanna dey in my lane, but I cannot dey in my lane. The lanes are intertwined. Sh*t, I’m every lane” - STACKS $$$, Blaqbonez

It’s what makes his writing magnetic and his music feel real. “That’s just how I write. I’m outside all the time, so I’m always meeting different people and feeling different things.”

Last month, Blaqbonez reconnected with his father and siblings for the first time in years. We speak about whether that shifted anything. “It did in a way,” he admits. “Everything just started aligning.”

Maybe it’s part of why No Excuses feels so complete. It’s doesn’t seem to be about reinvention, but about integration. The artist, the battle rapper, the supermodel, the director, (and Emeka Akumefule at the centre of it all), they’re all coexisting in this one body of work.

‘ACL’ Visualiser

On what he wants people to feel when they listen, he says, “I want it to be the soundtrack to your fun moments, your hustling moments; that energy that makes you press the gas a little harder.”

It’s a simple answer, maybe the truest one. This is an album that can’t just be background music. It’s a world he’s built for himself [and us]. The production, the visuals, the styling, even the transitions are imbibed with his creative fingerprints. Like its author, the project is restless, charged, alive: a sonic reminder to “be quiet when you should, but when it’s time to be loud, be loud AF”.

Blaqbonez, No Excuses Out Now.