Jeriq’s Onitsha Gospel

Jeriq’s music acts as a reminder that there’s an established path to success, and by choosing to make the music he does, the artist may just be the most prolific preacher to the Igbos in this decade.

At the heart of 25-year-old Jeremiah ‘Jeriq’ Chukwuebuka Ani’s music is his childhood in the city of Onitsha, Anambra State. Jeriq’s early music is laced with sketches of a community perpetually struggling to not be suffocated by its own penury. In a conversation with TheCable, he narrates how his childhood self had to resort to the most creative menial jobs, barely a step above roadside begging, to survive; jobs such as pulling vehicles out of the mud for a paltry fee and informal carwashes. ‘And I do not regret these things. They made me tough and prepared [sic] for the person I was to become.’ 

This is what makes the Jeriq brand appealing to the average Nigerian and Igbo youth; the channelling of street survival into something transcendent. Hustle culture, as imparted to the young Jeriq on the streets of Onitsha—that drive to work as hard as you can, pushing yourself for the sake of your goals—was more than a desperate scramble for basic survival. It became a conduit for ambition, gifting him with purpose. This is the place Jeriq sings from. As he says in ‘Back to Basics’: ‘The poverty in my village motivated me to rap.’ 

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