Thanks to Fuse ODG, smiling is the new screwface. At the Under the Bridge venue beneath Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge stadium on the last Sunday of October, a smart urban crowd – the kind of demographic that might previously have been drawn to a Dizzee Rascal or Wiley gig – bounced to the irrepressible rhythms of Fuse ODG’s afrobeats, buoyed up by the terminal cheeriness of the music, and the message.
Listening to Fuse ODG’s hits – last year’s Antenna, which reached No 7, the dance craze-spawning Azonto, the top five single Million Pound Girl (Badder Than Bad), this year’s Dangerous Love (featuring Sean Paul) and the current single T.I.N.A., which stands for This is New Africa – is like being assailed by joy. Nobody is impervious to the appeal of Fuse and his T.I.N.A. campaign, which essentially boils down to an appreciation of Africa as more than just the focus of world pity and locus for famine and strife.
David Cameron was moved, literally, by Azonto. Gavin Essler spent nearly 10 minutes of primetime BBC News being charmed by the London-born, Ghanaian-raised 27-year-old, whose real name is Nana Richard Abiona. (ODG stands for Off The Ground, a musical collective he was once part of.) Even Paxman on Newsnight couldn’t argue as Fuse spoke vaguely about the media’s one-sided portrayal of his homeland.
There’s a track on his debut album, inevitably titled T.I.N.A., called I’ll Be Back – a typical Fuse mix of Africa past and present, like Fela in a blender with Guetta – that invokes Mandela, even Jesus. He’s reassuring the people of Ghana that despite his peregrinations abroad, he’ll return. Because he is the Chosen One. Could he perhaps be accused of being a tad messianic?
“I said: ‘Even Jesus did the same, so I’ll die for you and take your pain.’ Jesus travelled to change lives,” he explains in the London office of his PR team, citing the lyrics to the song. So is he the Jesus of afrobeats? He roars with laughter. “I guess you could actually say that! When I’m passionate about something, I’d do anything for you,” he says.
You get the impression that, whatever the situation, Fuse, an avowed Christian, would fix it. His parents wrenching him away from his four brothers and sisters in Ghana, aged 11, for a “better life” in London? He dealt with it. Finding himself and his family – mum, dad, younger sister – homeless and living in a hostel while attempting to study business management at City University in London? No bother. Using his for-rent London Mobile Studios to work, as he did in 2010, with hardened criminals, including paedophiles, rapists and murderers, as part of an offenders’ rehabilitation scheme? Not a problem.
Did he feel depressed during his family’s period of turmoil? “I don’t know if I’d use the word ‘depressed’,” he says, although he says the music he wrote at the time “was so dark – I had titles like Mr Struggle.” He laughs. “But m.ost of the time I chose to be happy. When I was homeless I was happy, because I knew this wasn’t it: ‘This too shall pass.’”
The songs on his album – Keep On Shining, Beautiful Sunray, Bucket Full of Sunshine – are almost indecently bubbly. It’s as though he’s willing us to join him in his jubilant state. “Being successful to me is happiness,” he decides. “If I wasn’t happy doing this, what would be the point?”
His happiness is a given. Azonto is, he says with some pride, “the most-watched Ghanaian video in history”, with anywhere between 12m and 18m YouTube views. That track alone has made him famous all over the world. “They love me there, man,” he says of Ghana, where, overlooking the poverty and misery, he sees a generation of aspirational artists, musicians and designers just waiting to “change the perception and create a new awareness of Africa”.
Does he get greeted like a dignitary as soon as he lands at the airport?
“I get VIP treatment,” he says. “A convoy, police with hazard lights, ‘let’s roll’ – that kind of thing. I get that in a lot of countries. Egypt, Holland, France, Nigeria, Uganda, Rwanda, Cyprus, Germany, Italy … I’ve run out of pages on my passport. In Liberia, the whole street was shut down – it was crazy.” Get the picture? Fuse is big. “People try to get into your room. They grab everything they can grab.”
Who do, women? “Of course girls want to come to the hotel.”
Don’t his religious beliefs preclude those sorts of shenanigans? “I’m a man who is also a Christian.”
Is he embarrassed by his star power? “I feel appreciated. I get quite emotional because of where I come from. I always go back to that. But I knew I had to go through what I did so that I could share my story. So that I could have a platform where I could speak out, be influential and change lives. Whether it’s working with ex-offenders or now making afrobeats and pushing the new Africa that inspired me – most of the things I do in my life are to help other people,” he says, matter-of-factly.
“Hey,” he says as he heads off to pour another bucket full of sunshine . “Make sure you write nice things about me.”
T.I.N.A. is out now on 3Beat.
