- Ryan Lowry
- Nnamdi at home
Local multi-instrumentalist Nnamdi Ogbonnaya embraces his oddness. When I went to meet Ogbonnaya at his place to interview him for last year’s People Issue he greeted me wearing just a pair of boxers and brandishing a broken antique pistol that was spray-painted gold. Ogbonnaya didn’t shy away from talking about being weird in our interview:
“I feel like I’m weird, but I also feel like a lot of other people are weird and they’re trying to be normal. That’s why I wrote on my wall the other day, ‘You’re not normal, so why are you trying to be?'”
Ogbonnaya plays in an array of Chicago punk bands (the list of groups he plays in seems to grow by the month) but he really gets to let loose musically with his solo work. Just check out the Reader premiere of Ogbonnaya’s “2% Chest” video for the evidence. Ogbonnaya melds hip-hop, R&B, and art-pop on the song, and he strikes a balance between sweet and strange—he employs a bewitching horn melody that reminds me of vintage TV on the Radio during the chorus, which includes a lyric that some folks can “kiss my brown / Booty like a Jolly Rancher.” The psychedelic video is equally bizarre, and at one point it involves Ogbonnaya giving a a man wearing bunny-shaped sunglasses a haircut.
The song is off Ogbonnaya’s forthcoming album, Feckin Weirdo, which comes out Friday, July 11. Prepare for the album by watching our exclusive premiere of the “2% Chest” video below:
