“Me and Michael’s careers exist post hip-hop — that genre, that culture, informs both of us greatly,” Ocean said in a phone interview. “But his appetite has grown; his vocabulary, musically, has grown so much over the time that I’ve known him.”
Ocean said when he’s had writer’s block (“knock on wood, once”), he talked to Uzowuru and Rubin: “Michael is a friend I talk to about where I’m at artistically very often.” And when he was first formulating “Nights,” the multipart centerpiece of “Blonde,” he rang Uzowuru for advice. “I had all these ways of describing what the album was missing,” he said. “Ultimately, I had to write it, I had to do it. But it did start in conversation with him.”
Aside from a handful of collaborations, Uzowuru and Ocean don’t often make music together. Their relationship, they agreed, goes far deeper than studio time. “I couldn’t love him or care about him more,” Uzowuru said. “I’m very grateful for him as a person outside of the work, so it doesn’t matter if we work. I don’t need to work with him, because it’s so much bigger. He’s separate from everyone else. He’s family.”
It’s not uncommon for Uzowuru to speak so reverently about his collaborators. He called SZA “one of one,” and gushed, “People don’t possess the ability to emote like she does.” (SZA confirmed the feeling is mutual: “I know that he’s an omen, a sign I’m doing something different, special and necessary,” she said in an interview. “We have genuine trust beyond a taste level.”) Chatting about Rosalía, the Spanish superstar who solicited Uzowuru to produce for her third album, “Motomami,” he spoke about the privilege “to be seen” by an artist of her caliber.
Born to Nigerian parents, Uzowuru grew up in Orange County with his sister and mother, who fled an abusive marriage when Uzowuru was three months old and put herself through nursing school. He remains intensely close to the woman who “always saw and affirmed me” and “accounted for my idiosyncrasies,” he said.
As a preteen and into high school, Uzowuru devoured the discographies of Stevie Wonder, Fleetwood Mac, Outkast and A Tribe Called Quest, skateboarded by himself after school and pored over Allen Iverson highlights and street ball mixtapes. But being a Nigerian American in a school of mostly white kids and impatient teachers who mistook his silence for stupidity made him feel socially adrift, and he said he never received higher than a C in his academic career.
Read More: Why Do Pop’s Biggest Stars Adore Michael Uzowuru?
