To his credit, Flavour has been the torchbearer for highlife music genre for a while now. Even when he collaborates with hiphop and pop artistes, he always finds a way to stay true to his roots.
For younger artistes, especially those in Nigeria’s thriving southeastern region, highlife remains popular as ever. It’s a way of life there. Interestingly, some of them are crossing over and reaching audiences in the entertainment capital, Lagos. One of them is Hi-10 (pronounced hi-ten), a young urban-highlife act who is coming up, but coming up on fast. Having started his career in 2012, the Umuahia born Ebonyi native grew up listening to highlife music within his nuclear family and it was inevitable for him to toe that line as well.
He was recently introduced by his record label Blue Lake Media at a presser, headed by Chidi Uzoeshi, a fourteen -year music business practitioner in the industry who has worked with artistes such as Soul-E, Jah Bless, ID Cabasa, Sexy Steel and many others. Hi-10, real name Joel Arochi– possesses a sonorous voice that has earned him a place on the label as it the first signed act. The two singles released by his label, ‘I Gat You’ and ‘247’ are highlife songs laced with urban influences so as to reach beyond his Igbo roots. A first-time listener would be forgiven for mistaking the singer for the more established Flavour. His vocal flows and the cadence of the beat is however unmistakenly unique and he has the backing of his label boss. ‘We’re proud to commence our company operations in Nigeria by introducing Joel as an artiste under our label arm. Personally, I identify with the pain in his music which he has been able to successfully translate into melody,’ Chidi Uzoeshi said.
Hi-10 himself is not unaware of the similarities between him and Flavour. ‘I’ve heard it so many times and I always explain to people that it’s just vocal resemblance and nothing else. It’s just the way two people look alike, it doesn’t mean one is trying to be the other, that’s just how God made it. Besides, Flavour is like a big brother to me.’
He’s currently working on the visuals to his two singles, scheduled to be released towards the last quarter of the year.
