Crazy night 😅. Woke up to two kinds of messages … congratulations from people who saw me holding @AraTheJay’s award on stage and thought I won 😂 … and consolation messages from people who were genuinely rooting for us.
Either way, I appreciate all of it. Thank you for caring about the art this deeply. Thank you for riding for the music, the stories, the growth, and the journey. Saa support wei ɛnyɛ normal, and I never take it for granted.
And to everybody disappointed on my behalf, keep your head up. Perspective matters. FMB had zero nominations. KANI got four. That alone is proof of growth. Proof that the work is connecting further and reaching deeper. We can only build from here.
Awards are beautiful, but they’re not bigger than purpose. The mission has always been to make honest music that lives with people long after release dates and award nights pass. That part, we’ve already won.
Now go play Fruit of the Womb, call your mother, and tell her you love her.
We keep going.
Ps: Congratulations to all the winners especially @arathejay 🫶🏾
Saw @KOJO_Cue tweet earlier this morning asking we listen to his album
Decided to listen to it this night before bed and damnn, Cue it will always be thank you for KANI everytime.
https://t.co/ykZFsMEGTo
Some songs don’t get written, they arrive.
They find you when you need them, before you even know what they are. Every intro I’ve made since 2013 has come that way.
Fruit of the Womb was another one of those gifts from the universe.
📸 @iamjunie07
Massive thanks to 👑@KOJO_Cue for putting me on outside there and i really appreciate the love 👑 @kwadwosheldon gave me too. can't take this one for granted Nyame nhyira mo nyinaa @EiiScanty@ksheldonstudios 💙🙏🙏🙏
efie ne fie, the Bantama Boy @KOJO_Cue got something for me to feel and transit , keep raising the bar champ 💪
“Y3she ntampe with the squad “🔥🔥🔥
https://t.co/IVbWHBrxvc
I can only pull from the places I’ve walked. I can only speak of the people I’ve loved and learned from. I can only write what I feel.
Sometimes those feelings are joyful and nostalgic. Sometimes they are painful and pushing. But always — they are human. Unapologetically human.
It is my honour to share my second album with you:
KANI: A Bantama Story
My only request is simple —
listen from top to bottom, with all your heart.
Stream now: https://t.co/E1Fw8NNRGf
PS: This story could have been told by Kwadwo Aji, Kofi Kyei or Azorlɛɛ but it was left to me. I owe it to them.
#KANI #ABantamaStory #Vol2
I can only pull from the places I’ve walked. I can only speak of the people I’ve loved and learned from. I can only write what I feel.
Sometimes those feelings are joyful and nostalgic. Sometimes they are painful and pushing. But always — they are human. Unapologetically human.
It is my honour to share my second album with you:
KANI: A Bantama Story
My only request is simple —
listen from top to bottom, with all your heart.
Stream now: https://t.co/E1Fw8NNRGf
PS: This story could have been told by Kwadwo Aji, Kofi Kyei or Azorlɛɛ but it was left to me. I owe it to them.
#KANI #ABantamaStory #Vol2
Anyone claiming to have the blueprint for success in today’s music business is selling snake oil. Doesn’t matter if it’s an “expert” with a blue check and a course or an A&R at a major trying to sign an artist. Everyone’s just trying things and figuring it out in real time.
Rebel nicknamed me Junior Bayano.
Scorpion nicknamed me T.I.P.
I nicknamed myself Prodigy.
My teachers turned my middle name to Kennedy.
And everyone called me Junior.
But my father named me … KANI.
Album Out on November 5th
Pre-Save NOW: https://t.co/IegGzicm1E
November 5th
These are the stories I never told.
Episode 3 - Don’t Stop, Talk About It!
When I started recording radio-ready songs (back then we called those “masters” — the not-so-radio-ready ones were “demos”), the first place I recorded was a small room at FNF hostels.
A Nigerian guy named Okechukwu — who called himself Drillmeister — had a setup where he recorded, mixed, and mastered for cheap. My brothers MacFancy, Kuul D, and K-Wu took me there the first time, and it quickly became home.
I met a lot of characters in that room — including a hard rapper called Dennis Buck, who would later take over the internet as Archipalago, and a young man calling himself Rap Jeneral Jay, who ended up switching lanes to video directing and shooting my first three music videos.
That room also introduced me to Nigerian rap. Specifically, @MI_Abaga . Jeneral had done a remix to his track Safe, and it inspired me to do my own remix called J Dash Baby. I even left one day with a bootleg copy of M.I’s album Talk About It.
That album was a classic, but it was Money that had me deep in my feels. I spent almost a year trying to remake songs off that project. Forever became Desire. Blaze became HeadNod. I was obsessed with Jude.
Fast forward to 2023. I’m sitting at a @LyricalWarsGh event, asking myself why I was the one from that FNF room who got to sit next to M.I as a judge for a rap battle — after already working on a song with him and spending most of the day in his hotel room talking about rap, life, and spirituality.
The only answer I could come up with? I didn’t stop. A lot of people were more talented. Some worked harder. Some had more resources. But I just didn’t stop.
If 19-year-old me from Oke’s room could see me now, I wonder if he’d be proud… or just ask why I didn’t record J Dash Baby 2 with M. 🤣
The moral of the story is: you never know where you’ll get to if you just keep going.
These are the stories I never told.
Episode 3 - Don’t Stop, Talk About It!
When I started recording radio-ready songs (back then we called those “masters” — the not-so-radio-ready ones were “demos”), the first place I recorded was a small room at FNF hostels.
A Nigerian guy named Okechukwu — who called himself Drillmeister — had a setup where he recorded, mixed, and mastered for cheap. My brothers MacFancy, Kuul D, and K-Wu took me there the first time, and it quickly became home.
I met a lot of characters in that room — including a hard rapper called Dennis Buck, who would later take over the internet as Archipalago, and a young man calling himself Rap Jeneral Jay, who ended up switching lanes to video directing and shooting my first three music videos.
That room also introduced me to Nigerian rap. Specifically, @MI_Abaga . Jeneral had done a remix to his track Safe, and it inspired me to do my own remix called J Dash Baby. I even left one day with a bootleg copy of M.I’s album Talk About It.
That album was a classic, but it was Money that had me deep in my feels. I spent almost a year trying to remake songs off that project. Forever became Desire. Blaze became HeadNod. I was obsessed with Jude.
Fast forward to 2023. I’m sitting at a @LyricalWarsGh event, asking myself why I was the one from that FNF room who got to sit next to M.I as a judge for a rap battle — after already working on a song with him and spending most of the day in his hotel room talking about rap, life, and spirituality.
The only answer I could come up with? I didn’t stop. A lot of people were more talented. Some worked harder. Some had more resources. But I just didn’t stop.
If 19-year-old me from Oke’s room could see me now, I wonder if he’d be proud… or just ask why I didn’t record J Dash Baby 2 with M. 🤣
The moral of the story is: you never know where you’ll get to if you just keep going.
These are the stories I never told.
Episode 1 - Big Brother @peewezel
The year was 2009. Big Jeff was leaving Kumasi and taking his studio with him. I had a couple of songs I needed mixed before heading to Accra in search of a manager.
I’d met this guy online, Ian Jazzi, who promised to link me to someone named Tee that could manage me. The deal, though, was that I had to drop my name Jazzy Flo since it clashed with his.
Peewee agreed to mix my songs, but only if I showed up at his house by 7am. For the next week or two, I was there at 6:30 every morning — and still, no songs got mixed. Instead, Peewee would take me to his studio, where I’d run errands for him and artists like Cabum, Papi Jay, Kopow, and Willie Maame… names I only knew from the radio.
He later told me he was impressed by my consistency. Eventually, he mixed the songs for free, saying my attitude showed someone who knew what he wanted and was willing to work for it.
The truth is, I wasn’t even thinking about the work. Just being around the music gave me purpose.
Years later, I’d fall out with Jazzi and leave Tee’s label — but Peewee never stopped being my brother.
Looking back, I realize it wasn’t just about getting songs mixed. It was about showing up, even when nothing was promised. Sometimes the work you do without reward becomes the foundation for everything that follows.