Rapper iLLBliss an elite member of Nigeria’s list of top rappers talks about his experience in London and Arsenal Football Club with an online journalist resently.
The self-dubbed Ibo Boy has dished out 5 albums and prepares to start promoting his 6th. From Dat Ibo Boy (2009) to Oga Boss (2012), Powerful (2015), illygaty:7057 (2016), illy Bomaye (2017), Illy to the upcoming album illy Chapo.
He spoke about his time and hussle in London, ”My heart was always in the music, at a point I had four jobs, I was a Tunnel guard at the Arsenal stadium, Highbury, that is how I became a gunner, like I am a proper authentic gunner, we are the ones that go and clean the dressing room, go and cut the grass at Highbury, we did the transition into the Emirates we have community works.
“I met so many people from that gathering, but I always made the music, I stayed focused on the music, I knew I was going to go back to Nigeria and sort out my career again, so I had producers in Nigeria, because production in the UK was expensive especially for the kind of music I was making, BoomBap, which was underground, so I always needed specialist producers.
“I had a producer Jonah D Monarch and like three of them, they used to send me beats and I would take it to the studio, a sound engineer called Ian Carter, at some place in Woodgreen, I would take a train from West London to his studio which was in a basement.
“He just basically knew how to engineer my music and I would come in and pay for like a 3-4 hours session and would bang out like nine songs and Ian would be like ”Tobe, you guys are on fire, it takes me and my band like two weeks to make a song”, so that is what England made me become, I recorded load of songs because I was by myself and we became really cool friends and that is how I continued to make music while in England.”