We are in a room at the MTN Rooftop just moments before they finally announce the winner of the first season of MTN Y’ello Star. Freeborn walks by smiling, and I freeze. I was a huge fan of this woman who was only just getting her foot into the Nigerian music scene. She captured my heart from the moment I heard her voice – bold, soulful, and inspiring.
Interestingly, she already knew that she didn’t win. She was admittedly devastated by that fact, but she was already looking forward to all the things she planned to do. I could immediately tell that she was struggling with a bit of self-doubt when we spoke. I understood why after she told me she just overcame the feeling of inadequacy because she was a primary school dropout.
As a child, Freeborn had to overcome challenges most people will never experience. A product of a broken home and two financially struggling parents, she had to find her place in the world. That journey led her to discover her incredibly soulful and beautiful voice.
On April 1, 1987, Mr Freeborn John Ekperi and Mrs Patience Treasure Ekperi gave birth to their third child in Ajegunle, Lagos. They lived together for eight years until Mr and Mrs Ekperi got separated in 1995. They had struggled to stay together for many years, but their arranged marriage was failing, and they decided to end it. Their little girl, Freeborn suffered for it.
After the separation, her father sent her and her siblings to Warri to live with his mum. A year later, her grandmother decided she no longer wanted her and sent her back to Lagos. Her dad opted to take her to a friend who promised to put her through school. He never did. He used her as a maid in his house until she moved back with her dad. Freeborn never went back to school. She was only in primary 4 when she came back to Lagos.
She discovered that she could sing around this time, and she did it often to hide from her problems. By the time she was 11, she already knew music was what she wanted to do with the rest of her life.
‘I started singing at the age of 11, but I got into it officially at 15 or 16. I got into music because I was always heavy-hearted, always thinking about my problem. I started singing from church to church, starting with Foursquare. Singing made me feel better. It was my resting place. I just kept singing because that was what helped me to stay alive’, she says.
Trouble struck around the time she started to sing professionally as a hired crusader. Freeborn met someone in the church, and he initially showered her with love until she got pregnant. She had her first daughter, Hadassah at the young age of 16.
She describes getting pregnant saying, ‘I lost love from my parents. So I was searching for love in other places. I got into music when some things started happening to me, like getting pregnant. I gave birth to Hadassah when I was 16. I carried my tummy everywhere to sing. That was why I couldn’t even go back to school. Apart from that, I’m that child that they always send out of the house. I was always sleeping around and hanging around.’
Before getting pregnant, she tried to go back to school by attending lessons, but her mum couldn’t afford to pay even those fees. Freeborn is sadly only one of a large number of Nigerian children who drop out of primary school. UNICEF records that although primary education is free and compulsory, there are over 10.5 million children out of school. The Nigerian Federal Ministry of Education says there are 10,710,810 children out of school in the country right now and the NET Enrollment rate into school is 2.95% smaller for girls than boys.
Freeborn’s dreams of finishing her education may have ended because she got pregnant, but she never let it hold her back from doing music. She says, ‘I got into music from a place of sorrow. It’s been music majorly, that’s how I’ve lived. Music is it for me. Music is how I feel free. I do background vocals for people, adverts, I collect my pay from music. Everything I own presently, I bought it through music’. She has worked as a background singer for artistes like Ice Prince, Zoro, Tunde Ednut, Mrs Ige, and Mano Ezoh.
But Freeborn is now a mother of three (two girls and one boy), from three different fathers, who could care less about pitching in. Even though she gets to make money from the one thing she’s passionate about, it’s never enough, and she has to take on other odd jobs. She says she’s worked in a gym, as an assistant teacher in a primary school in Mushin, and more recently as a maid, saying, ‘even this year, I had to be someone’s house help because after the lockdown there was nothing to do and I didn’t want to sit at home’.
A few months after she worked as a maid, she got a chance to turn her life around. A friend advised her to send in an audition video to MTN’s new competition, Y’ello Star. She decided to take a shot at it, and the selection committee chose her as one of the 43 national finalists.
Freeborn was undoubtedly the best vocalist on the show. Award-winning artiste and Y’ello Star judge, Banky W described her as ‘a once-in-a-generation kind of voice’. But she didn’t have enough fans to help her win the competition or even make it to the top 5. She finished with only 1% of the votes. MTN decided to surprise her by giving her the same scholarship meant for the top 5. They had discovered a few days before that the first certificate all top-14 contestants got from the short course during the show in the hub was her first.
MTN partnered with Berklee College of Music and Henley Business School to give the contestants four weeks of rigorous training. At the end of the show, each of them received a certificate of participation. The participants were all inducted into the Henley Business School Alumni association. This was Freeborn’s first-ever certificate of formal training.
She will join the other finalists in New York for their Berklee College of Music summer programme. However, before she gets a chance to get more formal education, she will work to put out two singles. The aim is to release a video too even though she knows money will be a barrier.
As always, Freeborn is not letting that little problem bother her. She’s ready to roll up her sleeves and put in the work to achieve her goals. Despite all of the obstacles, depression and heartbreaks she’s faced, she has never stopped trying to make it. Her children and a burning desire to impact other people’s lives keep her going.
She is motivated by the stories of artistes like 2Baba, 9ice, Patoranking, Timaya, Jay Z, Rihanna, and other musicians who weren’t born rich and barely finished schooling. She believes that she will join their league and make a career out of her beautiful singing so she can elevate her family out of poverty.
I hope for her sake, that she hits it big and that the world comes to fall in love with her voice, just as I have and she becomes a huge star. Until then, she’s going to ‘sit down strategically, write up everything she wants to do, and then start doing them’.
