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Music And Moments With Obedo PF & Vicoka
Issue 14.0 May. 2026
Interview conducted by Chiagozie Mbuba Tochukwu
Design by Chiagozie Mbuba Tochukwu
A. Vicoka: The common thread is the hunger. Not hunger like you're greedy, hunger like you grew up watching your mother work herself to the bone and you told yourself her sacrifice cannot be wasted. That is an Eastern thing. Whether you are Igbo, whether you are Rivers, whether you grew up in the city or the village,there is this pressure that comes from home. From family. From knowing where you came from and what it cost for you to be here. Port Harcourt shaped everything about how I see the world. The streets there are real. The love there is real. And the pain there is real. I carry all three.
A. Obedo PF: For me, it was struggle and hope at the same time. Growing up in the East, you already understand early that nothing is handed to you. You either hustle or you stay stuck. That mindset shaped everything.
Q. What did music look and sound like in your household before it became yours?
A. Vicoka: Music in my house was church. That was it. My mum is a woman of faith, so the sounds I grew up around were worship songs, hymns, and gospel. That was the first music I ever truly felt not just heard, but felt in my chest. When I joined the choir at 13, it was not because someone asked me to. It was because that was the only place I felt like myself. Like I was allowed to be loud and emotional and honest all at the same time without anyone telling me to calm down. So before music became my career, it was my church. Literally.
A. Obedo PF: Music was always there church, street, parties. Different sounds, but all emotional. At first, I was just listening, vibing... but deep down, I knew it was more than entertainment for me.
Q. When did you first realize this wasn't just a hobby, that music was actually going to be the road?
A. Vicoka: There was a moment I cannot give you an exact date where I was in the studio and I played back something I had just recorded and I started crying. Not because it was sad. Because it was true. I had said something in that song that I had never been able to say out loud to anyone. And I thought: if this can make me feel like this, what is it going to do to someone who has lived the same thing? That was the moment. I stopped thinking about music as something I did and started thinking about it as something I was supposed to do. There is a difference. One is a choice. The other is a calling.
A. Obedo PF: When I saw that my words were connecting with people. Not just vibes real connection. I when I realized it was the only career path that gave me peace That’s when I knew this thing is bigger than me.
Q. Vicoka, your song "Port Harcourt" hit different because it wasn't just about a city; it was about your mother, your survival. Obedo, your EP is literally called Hope for Ghetto Youths. How much of your music is autobiography?
A. All of it. I do not know how to write any other way. "Port Harcourt" is literally my mother's story. Her walking from Borokiri to Trans-Amadi every day after my father passed not because she wanted to, but because we needed to eat and she was the only one left to make sure we did. I watched that as a child and it broke me and built me at the same time. When I wrote that song I was not trying to make a hit. I was trying to say thank you in the only language I had. The fact that it connected with so many people the fact that people in places I have never been heard that song and cried told me that pain and love are universal. You do not have to be from Port Harcourt to understand a mother's sacrifice.
Q. Talk to us about the moment you decided Lagos was where you needed to be. Was it a plan or were you chasing something you couldn't name yet?
A. Vicoka: Honestly? I was chasing something I could not fully name yet. Lagos was not a plan written on paper. It was more like a pull. You reach a point in your career where you have done what you can do within your current walls and you feel the ceiling. And Lagos does not have a ceiling or if it does, it is high enough that you cannot see it from the ground. I needed to be around people who were moving, who were building, who were hungry the same way I was hungry. Port Harcourt made me. Lagos is where I am going to show the world what Port Harcourt made.
A. Obedo PF: I was chasing something I couldn’t even explain. I just knew Lagos is where things happen. It wasn’t comfortable, but I had to come.
Q. Lagos humbles everyone at first. What did the city take from you before it started giving anything back?
A. Vicoka: Lagos took my comfort. I will be honest about that. When you are at home, even if things are hard, you have a context. People know you. Your street knows you. Your mum is somewhere nearby. Lagos does not care about any of that. Lagos meets you as a stranger and keeps treating you like one until you prove otherwise. It took my sense of certainty that feeling of knowing how things work. In Port Harcourt I understood the codes. In Lagos I had to learn everything again from scratch. But I think that is also what makes you grow. Discomfort is not punishment. Sometimes it is preparation.
A. Obedo PF: It took comfort. It took peace of mind sometimes. Lagos will test you mentally, financially, everything. But that same pressure built me.
Q. There's a particular kind of hunger that comes with being Eastern in Lagos, you're not from here, you have to prove yourself every time. Do you feel that pressure in your music, or do you use music to escape it?
A. Vicoka: Both. I feel the pressure and I pour it into the music, which is also how I escape it. When I am in the studio and I am recording, I am not thinking about who doubts me or who does not know my name yet. I am thinking about the truth I am trying to say. But that truth is shaped by the pressure. "Peace" exists because I needed peace. I was not writing from a place of having arrived I was writing from a place of still fighting. Still searching. That is what makes the music honest. I am not performing emotions. I am processing them in real time and letting people watch.
A. Obedo PF: Zero pressure though but if there’s one, i use it as fuel. I don’t run from it. That pressure is what gives my sound that edge.
Q. The irony is that some of your most Lagos-sounding music is still deeply rooted in where you're from. How do you hold both things at once without losing one of them?
A. Vicoka: I think the mistake people make is treating those two things as opposites. Lagos and Port Harcourt are not in competition inside me. Lagos is the stage. Port Harcourt is the script. The hustle, the production quality, the ambition that is Lagos energy. But the stories, the emotions, the specific way I describe my mother's walk or the specific grief of losing a father young that is Port Harcourt. That is Rivers State. That is the East. You cannot fake that specificity. And I think that specificity is exactly what makes the music cut through, because in a Lagos market full of music that sounds like everything, something that sounds like a real place and a real person stands out.
A. Obedo PF: Because I never forget where I came from. Lagos is part of my inspiration , but it didn’t change my identity. I carry the East everywhere I go.
Q. Obedo, you've got songs like "Road" and "Focus" that speak to the grind. Vicoka, "Peace" and "Spirit" feel like you're searching for something beyond survival. Are you two actually telling the same story in different keys?
A. Vicoka: I think so. The destination might be different but the road is the same. Spirit was me in darkness, trying to find God. "Peace" is me still in the fight, but fighting with more awareness now knowing what I am fighting for. Survival is where you start. But at some point survival is not enough anymore. You want to live. You want to feel still. You want to wake up in the morning and not immediately feel the weight of everything pressing down on you. That is what "Peace" is about. It is not a victory song. It is a battle cry for something quieter. I think any artist who has been through real things eventually gets to that point where you stop just asking God to help you survive and start asking Him to help you be okay.
A. Obedo PF: Yeah, it’s all one story growth. From survival to purpose. I’m documenting every phase.
Q. You've both worked with Wizard Chan. What does collaboration mean to you? is it community, or is it strategy?
A. Vicoka: Community first. Always. Wizard Chan is not just a feature on a song he is someone I genuinely respect as an artist and a person. When I called him for "Spirit" it was not because I calculated that his audience would add to my streams. It was because his energy matched what that song needed. He understood the weight of it. And I think people hear that they hear when a collaboration is genuine versus when it is transactional. The best collaborations feel like conversations. Like two people finishing each other's sentences. That is what "Spirit" felt like with him. You can hear it in the record.
A. Obedo PF: It’s both. Community first though. You need people that understand your energy. Strategy comes after.
Q. What does success look like from where you're standing right now; not five years from now, right now?
A. Vicoka: Right now? Success is waking up and knowing I made something honest yesterday. It is my mother hearing my music on the radio and feeling proud. It is a kid in Port Harcourt who has never left his street hearing "Port Harcourt" and thinkingsomeone said exactly what I feel. That is success right now. The streams are growing, the listeners are coming, and I am grateful for all of it. But the thing that tells me I am doing it right is not the numbers. It is the messages. It is the person who says this song helped me get through losing my dad. When that happensthat is the whole point. That is everything.
A. Obedo PF: Growth. Real fans. People connecting to my music. That’s success to me right now.
Q. What do you want someone from Enugu, Owerri, Onitsha; another Eastern kid who hasn't left yet, to take from your music?
A. Vicoka: I want them to know that their story is worth telling. Exactly as it is. Not cleaned up. Not Lagos-ified. Not made smaller so that people outside will be more comfortable with it. The specificity of where you are from the way your street smells, the way your mother calls your name, the way poverty looks in your specific neighbourhood that is not a weakness in your art. That is the power. "Port Harcourt" did not go viral because I made it universal. It went viral because I made it specific. And in that specific truth, millions of people found themselves. You are not too local. You are not too Eastern. You are enough. Start from where you are. Tell the truth about it. The world will find you.
A. Obedo PF: Hope. That it’s possible. That where you’re from doesn’t limit you.
Q. Last one. If Lagos is the destination, what's the Eastern in you that you refuse to leave behind?
A. Vicoka: My mother's walk.
I will never leave that behind. That image her on foot, early in the morning, Borokiri to Trans-Amadi, no complaint, no self-pity, just movement that is the Eastern in me. That is the value system. You do not wait for conditions to be perfect. You do not wait for someone to open a door for you. You walk. You show up. You do the thing because the people who love you deserve the result of you doing the thing. Lagos can have my ambition. Lagos can have my work ethic. But that specific understanding of sacrifice of what it means to keep going not for yourself but for the people who walked so you could run that is Port Harcourt. That is the East. And I am carrying it everywhere I go.
A. Obedo PF: The Igbo blood in me My hunger. My resilience. And the way I see lifer aw, real, and unfiltered. That can never leave me.
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