Authenticity has become a rare commodity in today's music industry, which makes Mádé Kuti's commitment to conscious artistry all the more striking. A saxophonist, producer, and heir to one of Africa's most revolutionary musical legacies, the grandson of Afrobeat pioneer Fela Anikulapo Kuti and son of Femi Kuti has carved out his own distinctive path in the family tradition, one that honors the past while fearlessly confronting the present.

Fresh from the release of his deeply introspective 2025 album "Chapter 1: Where Does Happiness Come From?", Mádé Kuti continues to push the boundaries of what Afrobeat can be in the 21st century. Following singles like "Stand Tall" and "No More Wars," his latest work "I Won't Run Away" represents a deeply personal evolution in an artist who has never shied away from vulnerability or difficult questions.

We caught up with Mádé at Lagos's iconic New Afrika Shrine, the cultural institution that has been his second home for over two decades. Between rehearsals and the constant hum of creative energy that defines the space, he spoke candidly about inherited responsibility, the state of Nigerian music, and why authenticity remains the most radical act an artist can commit.

Deeds Magazine: Growing up in a family where music and activism are so deeply intertwined, when did you first realize that your own voice and artistry could carry the same power to inspire change that has defined the Kuti name? ‍

Mádé Kuti: I don't think I have the same power. I think that everybody holds an equal amount of power within their presence, their values, their morals, to contribute equally to the benefit of Africa and the benefit of the world in general.  

What made me want to chase conscious music, music that sought to inspire people to think similarly to the way we think in the family, which is pan-Africanist and very communal, was growing up and seeing my father perform. It's about the betterment of the people and the betterment of the world in general. Reading the kinds of books that he introduced me to also inspired me. Books like the autobiography of Malcolm X, The Black Man of the Nile and His Family, Stolen Legacy, all these books inspired me to be very conscious in the way I behave, my philosophy, my life, the way I act around my family, the way I want to raise my children. So yeah, I don't think I have the same power. I think everybody has their own standing in how they contribute to the world.

Deeds Magazine: You've been touring internationally and collaborating with artists from different genres. How has exposure to global music scenes influenced your approach to Afrobeat, and what do you think the genre needs to stay relevant for younger generations? 

Mádé Kuti: From touring and the kind of exposure that I've been blessed to have, I think what we can do as an industry in Nigeria is be very careful to procure more means for the average Nigerian musician. We need more venues, for example the only two places that come to mind are the New Afrika Shrine and Freedom Park. We don't have music-specific locations for musicians that play the sax, the guitar, or are in bands. We have so many underground musicians, and they don't have a lot of platforms to share their music and their talent.

I would put more into music education because when I'm on the road and something happens to my sax, it takes me ten minutes to find a sax repair shop to fix my sax or my trumpets. Here, the amount of technicians who can work on musical instruments is very limited. There should be facilities for people that are interested in these things to learn how to do this.

Above all, music education in schools should be taken more seriously. School treated music as if it was not even important. When I got to senior secondary school, it wasn't even an option. Me, basing my entire life on music, I couldn't learn anything about it in school. Every time they asked me to represent the school in competitions, I said no because they didn't teach me anything. I didn't want to use my skills to try to win something for a school that didn't invest in teaching me. It would be really nice if schools taught music with good musicians, because what tends to happen is they find the cheapest option, which steals a lot from children who may have a strong passion for music and might be innately talented. Because they didn't have the right guidance, they'll never discover it. We need better schools, performance venues, industry opportunities, and labels that want to sign musicians who play instruments.

Deeds Magazine: The music industry has changed dramatically with streaming and social media since your grandfather's era. How are you navigating these new platforms while maintaining the authenticity and political edge that defines the Kuti legacy?     Mádé Kuti: As technology advances, musicians have to adapt. With streaming, people have become very used to quick and instant gratification from the arts. They want to hear what they like as quickly as possible and get on to the next thing.

Because it's so accessible, the value of what they're purchasing is reduced, it's almost too accessible. With technology advancing, like now with AI, there's that AI band that has about five hundred thousand listeners per month. This is AI generated music from prompts, basically robotically inspired by other musicians.

It's a degree of theft, a degree of creative abuse, where people do not get the value they're supposed to. When art is diluted, when it's no longer about the human experience or the reality of true love, what the person is feeling at the time, or about activism, it becomes innately less authentic. We need to find a way to balance it. Art should be accessible, but it shouldn't be taken for granted. Art takes a lot of work, and it should be valued for what it brings to the table. Without art, there's no culture.

Deeds Magazine: You're known for your incredible saxophone skills and production work. Can you walk us through your creative process? Do you start with a political message, a musical idea, or does it vary from song to song?                                                      Mádé Kuti: I don't think it's a good thing for a musician to be too boastful because, like Miles Davis said later in his years, he learns every day. If Miles Davis is learning every day, who am I? There's a lot of work that goes into learning an instrument, and I think I get better every day, but I wouldn't say I'm the best or I'm fantastic.

As for how I start music, I start and prioritize the music because I feel that's where the true spirit of sound lies; in sound, in textures, in harmony and rhythm. Then I tend to work on lyrics after that because I want the message of what I write to match the quality of the music that I'm producing.

Deeds Magazine: Lagos has such a vibrant music scene right now with Afrobeats artists like Burna Boy, Wizkid, and Davido dominating globally. How do you see traditional Afrobeat fitting into this new wave of African music taking over the world?              Mádé Kuti: Like in every other community and culture, there should be a balance between progressive and conservative, preserve the authenticity and originality of the genre, and create platforms and spaces to perform and generate income from it. For people who want to progress in a more commercial direction, there should be resources for that as well.

It's nice when there's balance, and I don't feel like there's balance right now in the Nigerian industry. The huge boom in the commercial sector is incomparable to the existence of incredible bands I know that are doing great music but don't get the audience or the opportunity to share their music because of PR and commercial constraints.

Deeds Magazine: Your family has always been outspoken about African unity and Pan-Africanism. With so much division happening globally right now, what role do you think African artists should play in promoting unity both within the continent and in the diaspora? 

‍Mádé Kuti: Musicians, artists, and creatives should be very intentional about whatever they produce because, consciously or subconsciously, people are influenced by what they consume; what they see, hear, smell, and, very importantly, what they listen to and repeat, sometimes without their own permission. You go into a space and you're hearing music from somewhere. If you're a creative, it's important to be intentional about your message. If it's about love and heartbreak, is it true or are you glorifying a non-existent or abusive relationship? If it's about money, is it true to financial stability and economic sense, or is it just about splurging and being a badass?

I write about the self: self-awareness, accountability, progress, development, things I believe should inspire anyone who listens to be a better person than they were yesterday. If everybody did that, the world would be a better place. If everybody is intentional about the kind of art they produce, society will function a lot more intelligently and intellectually. We are a very consumer based society. So people who have the opportunity to make something that didn't exist before should be very intentional about what they produce.

Deeds Magazine: Mental health isn't talked about enough in Nigerian society, especially for young people dealing with economic pressures and political frustration. Has music been a form of therapy for you, and do you think artists have a responsibility to address these issues?   

‍Mádé Kuti: Mental health not being addressed in Nigeria, in Africa is a huge issue, and I think that artists like myself try to do our best to contribute positively by the kind of art that we produce. I try to make sure my songs are directed to inspire people so they feel empowered to be the best versions of themselves. Despite a lot of challenges, what they might have to overcome, if we do it together and consciously, we can create a space and community and world that we can be proud of. The world is regressing with the amount of war and right-wing mentality that is coming around, and a lot of conservative, political, almost racist agendas that seem to be going on in the West. In Nigeria, we tend to fight for survival, and we don't address things that call to basic standards of living.

Life moves so fast, it's about how much money you can earn as quickly as possible to eat. You don't really have time to reflect and think, "Okay, I'm an African artist in Africa. What can I do as a person to inspire the youth that may come to see me?"  Whatever field you're in, if you're a doctor, are you a good doctor? Are you the best version of yourself? Can a young medical student look at your work and learn from it? We don't really get the opportunity to strive to be the best person. We're put in a very tough spot where we just try to survive. Mental health is a huge problem, a huge reality. Artists can contribute by producing works that are truly conscious and don't deprive people of pure inspiration. But it's really for the government to do the actual work investing in mental health, the arts, education, and infrastructure.

Deeds Magazine: You've performed at some incredible venues worldwide. What's been your most memorable performance so far, and how does the energy differ when you're playing for Nigerian audiences versus international crowds?                                      Mádé Kuti: Serbia with my dad, playing with a very large orchestral ensemble to about sixty thousand people, was incredible. I also did a gig in Italy with a forty-two-piece orchestra, which was fantastic. And Glastonbury with Coldplay was very nice. Those are my top three.

As for audiences: playing the Shrine and winning over that crowd prepared me for anything. If you can get Nigerians to clap for you, you can get the world to clap for you. It’s a tough space. Many people are hearing me for the first time, so we rehearse a lot and deliver every show like it’s the first. Nigerians are critical and proud; they’re not lenient about what they enjoy. Elsewhere, a good performance gets applause; when Nigerians applaud you, it's something special.

Deeds Magazine: The Shrine in Lagos is legendary, it's where your grandfather performed and where the family continues to hold court. What does that space mean to you personally, and how important is it to preserve these cultural institutions for future generations?                   

Mádé Kuti: The Shrine is where I grew up. But this Shrine is not where Fela performed. The one that Fela performed at wasn't owned by the family. This one that we have now was built in 2000. It's called the New Afrika Shrine. This is where my father and I have been performing for twenty-five years. I feel the Shrine might be the most important cultural space in all of Lagos, if not Nigeria, because it's the only institution that has maintained its very profound philosophy, which is pan-Africanist, about liberal thoughts, conscious thinking, and intellectual mindsets, about risk-taking, freedom of the arts, and freedom of the mind.

Mádé Kuti’s latest album poses a deceptively simple question—where does happiness come from? Yet the depth of inquiry it represents speaks to the philosophical foundation that has always distinguished the Kuti family's approach to music. Today, African music is experiencing unprecedented global recognition, Mádé's insistence on balance, authenticity, and intentionality offers a compelling counterpoint to the industry's commercial rush. Perhaps most significantly, Mádé embodies the evolution of African activism for a new generation. Where his grandfather's rebellion was often confrontational and explicitly political, Mádé's revolution is quieter but no less radical: the demand for genuine human connection in a digitized world, the call for mental health awareness in societies focused on survival, the insistence that artists bear responsibility for the consciousness they create.

The Shrine may have changed locations since Fela's time, but its philosophy remains intact, adapted and carried forward by an artist who understands that revolution, like happiness, must be continuously redefined and recommitted to and with each generation. In Mádé Kuti's hands, the family torch burns not with borrowed fire, but with a flame uniquely his own.

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On 30th August, football met anime in a way that only Dominic Solanke could pull off. The Tottenham Hotspur and England international of Nigerian descent hosted the first European screening of Anime movie - Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle in partnership with Crunchyroll and Aniplex, drawing together an audience that reflected both his passion for Japanese animation and his growing cultural influence beyond the pitch. 

Held in an intimate setting at the famous Soho Hotel in London; merging cinematic spectacle with community energy, the screening was a chance to preview one of the most anticipated arcs in anime. It was a statement that Solanke is one of the leading front runners of new wave athletes who are proudly carrying their personal passions into the public space, and in doing so, cultivating cultural crossovers. 

The atmosphere was electric - anime enthusiasts, sports fans, cultural tastemakers and footballers such as Jeremie Frimpong and Tosin Adarabioyo in the cut, filled the room with equal parts anticipation and excitement. As the infinity castle saga unfolded on screen, gasps and cheers rippled through the crowd, confirming just how global and impactful the Demon Slayer franchise has become.

What fascinated me within the movie was how it set off perfectly from the ending of season 4: Hashira training arc; transcending into a beautiful landscape of well-detailed CGI graphics, alongside the sound composition. Yuki Kajiura and Go Shiina, known for their mastermind blends of bringing intense sound together, they really outdone themselves insanely with each sound detail to the notch; infusing Yūichi Terao’s cinematography and Manabu Kamino’s brilliant editing skills into a well mixed compound that brings all creative heavens into one piece.

For Deeds Magazine, the invitation was a chance to witness not only the scale of anime’s culture reach but also how figures like Solanke are bridging gaps between worlds. His role as host wasn’t just symbolic; it was celebratory acknowledging that creativity and fandom aren’t confined by borders or professions. Whether on the pitch or in front of a big screen, Solanke is proving himself as a cultivator of moments that bring communities together.

With Crunchyroll and Aniplex at the helm, and Solanke as the cultural conduit, the evening underscored how anime has moved from niche subculture to mainstream phenomenon embraced not just by dedicated fans but by leaders shaping global culture. For me, the movie left me with an emotional response, captivated by the character developments and studio production, I really do believe that this movie will be the opening for new anime fans to really be adored by the connection anime has. Do not be surprised if this film rises to the top with nominations from the Oscars and Emmys - since the golden ages of films that opened anime into the helm of Hollywood’s award shows such as spirited away.

Get ready to get your popcorn and sit tight, you’ll be in a ride of unpredictability, emotional moments and wow’ed by the production value, Tanjiro and the Hashira gang are here to ignite the flame. Solanke really brought us to witness greatness that eclipses beyond expectations.

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Culture, curation, and catalyst; three words that perfectly encapsulate the journey of Lagos-born photographer Roderick Ejuetami, better known as Deeds. Roderick is a creative who credits a childhood split between Lagos and Delta State, and a grounded family in Nigeria for shaping his creative drive. He initially studied biochemistry but quickly realised the lab wasn't his calling. A defining moment came when he left school, moved back to Lagos, and, in his words, "put my biochemistry degree aside and went into the industry with a camera I borrowed from my brother." He began by photographing friends in clubs and gradually moved into professional work. 

As Roderick worked, he taught himself the business side of photography and learned to brand himself as an editorial photographer capable of high‑end assignments. Early inspirations included Jonathan Mannion and Chi Modu, plus a steady diet of films, Western art and the rise of Afrobeats. His style values intimate storytelling and capturing what no one else sees: he strives to build trust with subjects so his images feel like “a glorified extension of the person”.

Roderick’s big break arrived when he photographed Wizkid at the star’s Lagos home, an image that went viral and confirmed for him that he’d found his calling. He soon became a go‑to photographer for Afrobeats artists; he has captured Tems since their first shoot in 2019 and continues to serve as her creative director. Other highlights include shooting Davido during his album rollout and capturing global supermodel Naomi Campbell on Nigerian soil. Among his personal shoot favourites include his first session with Tems, where he visually directed the entire concept; and a portrait study of Davido, where he challenged himself to portray the star “in the most quiet and gentle way possible.”

Beyond music, Roderick’s portfolio spans commercial campaigns, fashion editorials and documentary work. He is renowned for his multidisciplinary photography and filmmaking and that his company, Deeds Studio provides creative solutions globally. Through the studio he has collaborated with companies and personalities across music, fashion, lifestyle and film, a roster that includes Sony Music, Apple Music, Powerhorse, Tems, Wizkid, Asake, Naomi Campbell, D Smoke, Burna Boy, Davido, Tiwa Savage, with appearances tied to Paris,Milan, London, New York Fashion Weeks amongst many others. Roderick credits that momentum to consistency, intentional planning, high-quality execution, and a simple rule: leave clients happy.

In 2022, Roderick founded Deeds Magazine, a global media publication that aims to tell a different story of creative culture internationally. Born from an awareness of the vast, budding talent across Africa and the diaspora, the magazine covers art, music, fashion, photography, and film. Its editorial backbone is curation with purpose: discover talent early, frame the work correctly, and build a community that keeps the ecosystem honest and growing. This does more than curate culture, it catalyzes culture, inserting that raw creative energy and community that defines the culture. This ethos; prioritising authentic storytelling and community over hype, defines the magazine’s editorial voice and demonstrates its impact on the culture discourse. And yes, It publishes features and reviews every week; across interviews, album spotlights, show recaps and essays that interrogate the business and the art behind the hype.

Community, not clout also explains another branch of the Deeds brand: Deeds Community Service. The formula is simple; bring people together around art, conversation, and food, then hand the mic to the scene. In early August, the Deeds Community Service link-up landed in London, it was low-ego and high-signal, the kind of evening that reminds you culture is built in rooms, not just online. Weeks later, Deeds Community Service hosted a Nigeria link-up at NaHous, tucked inside that Lagos moment was another touchpoint: a Show Dem Camp × Deeds × Rémy Martin listening session. These gatherings prove the Deeds DNA is contribution, building spaces where the next voice gets heard before the algorithm decides.

Parallel to the magazine, Roderick operates Deeds Studio, a production company offering visual production (photography and film), creative direction, visual branding and consultancy across music, fashion, lifestyle and film. The operational guardrails are straightforward: quality, authenticity, consistency and a bias for community building. The studio’s international rhythm is intentional, build bridges that let ideas (and people) travel both ways. In practice, that might mean a music editorial one week, a film commission the next and a community link-up in between, each touchpoint reinforcing the same idea: Africa isn’t knocking on the door of global culture; we’re already in the house, just ICYMI. These values also anchor a wider goal: deliver creative solutions worldwide while nurturing young creatives across Africa and the diaspora.

Speak to Roderick for five minutes and it’s clear that what excites him most isn’t just the big names or viral moments; it’s the quiet transformation in the lives of creatives who finally have a platform. The young photographer in Lagos who lands a first magazine feature; the fashion designer in London whose story resonates globally; the musician from New York whose narrative is told authentically, these are the victories that matter most to the man behind the brand. His journey; from a biochemistry student borrowing a camera to a globally recognised creative director has been powered by intentionality, community and an unrelenting commitment to quality. As he enters his next chapter, Roderick stands as a cultural catalyst, linking creatives to the global stage. The testimonials keep coming, the community keeps growing and the culture keeps moving. For Roderick, that’s the greatest gift of all: knowing his work continues to change lives, one story at a time.

At midday on September 2, YUME YUME unveiled their “Flora Fantasia” a complete head-to-toe Spring/Summer 2026 collection featuring ready-to-wear, footwear, and more. 

YUME YUME creates to inspire - adding a playful touch to your wardrobe by  experimenting with shapes and fabrics to give each piece a new dimension. The  brand is best known for its artistic and unique footwear designs, and during  Amsterdam Fashion Week, YUME YUME is presenting a full collection that includes  ready-to-wear, footwear, eyewear, and accessories. 

Eva Korsten, co-founder and creative director, drew inspiration for this collection from the humble act of gardening - beginning with a praying mantis she came across. The praying mantis is a wonderful creature with the ability to transform seamlessly into its blooming surroundings. The Spring/Summer 2026 collection features designs that transform flora and fauna into wearable works of art: from headpieces and voluminous skirts to broad-shouldered jackets, oversized gloves, and modern-design footwear. 

Flora Fantasia is the world of the praying mantis, where shapes shift, colors burst, and everything is in motion. A feeling of shapes blooming in unexpected ways, flowers shaped by time and the loving hands of gardeners. The mantis watches quietly, a symbol of growth, transformation, and the beauty that comes with tending to new beginnings. 

“Lush, layered, untamed - wrapped in warmth and wonder, every piece whispers  of metamorphosis, where fantasy and flora intertwine in full bloom.” 

The show took place in the garden of the Willet-Holthuysen Museum, where the  collection came to life amidst the Parisian parterres de broderie. The garden paths served as the runway, creating an intimate experience where all attendees enjoyed front-row views. The atmosphere was elevated by musical compositions created by Mamiko Motto. 

About YUME YUME 

YUME YUME embraces authenticity by creating pieces that are both distinct and  functional. While encouraging originality with their singular convex silhouettes, they are also committed to bringing value to the industry, investing in performance by sourcing innovative materials when designing.

The brand founded in 2020 aims to encourage people to express themselves freely, allowing them to embrace their distinctiveness and break free from limitations. ‘Imagination is the greatest gift, never think something is impossible’

We’re at the time of year when the global entertainment scene pivots to New York Fashion Week. With every iteration comes the cocktail of glamour, flair, and intrigue. NYFW isn’t just a schedule; it’s a stage, a global network where connections are made, felt, and expressed through emphatic apparel and compelling artistic designs. Each season brings an intricate blend of creativity and curiosity: how well designers reflect the ethos of contemporary fashion, and where do they deliberately contrast it with the revitalisation of vintage codes that still hold sway decades later? Newcomers arrive with fresh perspectives; veterans return to prove, again, why they’re central to the story. With this edition, there’s a lot to unfold. Here’s what we expect.

So, what can we expect from NYFWSS26? The conversation cannot even begin without the seismic shift in focal perspective. The conversation around NYFW 2025/SS26 begins with a change of operating system. Fashion is evolving from a centralised, linear model into a panoply of overlapping parts. Instead of a tight, uniform cadence controlled by a handful of gatekeepers, the week now feels multi-node and dynamic, an intricate blend of components that keeps audiences anticipating more.

As opposed to having everything showcased during the show, we can expect less traditional, alternative platforms where designers can showcase their work. Digital spaces such as livestreams and virtual shows are being integrated to reduce onsite centrality. This creates avenues to concurrently host multiple fashion week sessions without fitting everything to a condensed timeline. 

Off-calendar shows are increasingly gaining considerable popularity, especially among top designers like Ralph Lauren and Marc Jacobs. These fashion icons typically have their shows conducted outside the official NYFW window, while still shaping its narrative. This decentralisation isn’t limited to the operational timeline or official schedules; it extends to stylistic genres and demographics. Essentially, we can expect an assemblage of stylistic variations, luxury, streetwear, experimental, and vintage, coexisting in a way that feels very New York: layered, plural, and kinetic.

There’s also an interest in not only the nuance and novelty this year’s newcomers will bring, but also those key, influential figures who will illuminate us with empathic designs and memorable showcases. These designers showcase the ethos of American cultural fashion and the ongoing evolution of fashion as an art form. From dramatic runways to the resplendent models, the anticipation is as much about execution as it is about vision.

Ralph Lauren promises an exquisite blend of luxury, prestige, and refined artistry. His works exude the quintessential American sensibility, a sophisticated sense of appeal. From clear-cut polo fits to polished cable-knit sweaters, the house’s language is timeless yet quietly refreshed each season. 

Michael Kors has always kept fashion enthusiasts captivated with his timeless pieces. His works radiate elegance and a modern outlook on clothing. Expect sleek silhouettes, confident day-to-evening dressing, and accessories that double down on glamour without sacrificing practicality as he opens this season.

Tory Burch continues to refine a vision of modernity that balances ease with craft. Her collections often carry a bohemian inflexion: robust textures, vibrant prints, and handcrafted touches, while remaining attuned to the needs of women who value functionality as much as they do style. Expect pieces that are effortless to wear yet rich in detail. These veterans set the tone, reminding us why New York remains a proving ground for elegance with intent.

Streetwear is no longer a niche subplot; it’s embedded in the city’s style grammar and continues to proliferate with significant cultural energy. It provides a vivid counterpoint to formal runway dress codes and reflects the street-level pulse that keeps New York fashion honest. This season, there’s a lot to expect, and the excitement around it is rightfully palpable. Expect chic sport-tailored blends, rack-inspired jackets cut with blazer precision, technical fabrics shaped into sharp lines, and boldly coloured caps that add athletic punctuation to otherwise restrained looks. Patterns remain a defining note: pinstripes, monochromatic schemes, and focused graphic placements that skew disciplined rather than chaotic. Streetwear, at its best, is foundational, not basic in a lax sense, but elemental, everyday pieces rendered with care. Hoodies, joggers, denim and tees will be present, but upgraded through better fabrications, cleaner cuts, and considered styling that moves easily from morning commute to late-night link-up, something that reflects the energy of New Yorkers.

Like every edition, NYFW promises thrill and theatre, but the deeper story is structural. The week has shifted from a single stage to a distributed ecosystem. That change expands access (for audiences, buyers, editors, and emerging designers), diversifies storytelling formats, and invites more ways to participate, physically and digitally, on-calendar and off. Crucially, it also reflects how people actually encounter fashion today: in feeds and films, in studios and showrooms, on sidewalks and runways.

SS26 will highlight artistic creativity and originality while making visible the changes underway in how fashion is made, shown, and consumed. Expect elegance with ease, streets with structure, and a schedule designed to reward exploration.

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Charlie Kirk did not die a martyr. He died as a natural consequence of the tactics, ideology, and rhetoric he spent years cultivating. The horror of political violence is real, but sympathy is not owed to those who have stoked the same fire they ultimately succumbed to. To frame Kirk as an innocent victim is to erase the years he spent enabling division and harm.

On September 10, 2025, Kirk was speaking at Utah Valley University in Orem during a Turning Point USA stop on his American Comeback Tour. The event was staged under a tent with roughly 3,000 attendees. It followed the familiar “Prove Me Wrong” format in which Kirk invited questions from the public, often sparring with young people on topics like guns, immigration, and gender. Just after noon, as he was responding to a question about mass shootings by transgender people, witnesses say he remarked, “Counting or not counting gang violence?” before a bullet struck him in the neck. The shot, believed to have been fired from a rooftop some 200 yards away, dropped him instantly. He was rushed to Timpanogos Regional Hospital but was pronounced dead shortly after. Video captured the collapse; panic and screams filled the quad. Authorities have called it a targeted killing, though no suspect has been confirmed.

Kirk’s death was dramatic, but it was not disconnected from his own words and politics. He had long argued that the Second Amendment was worth any level of gun deaths, brushing aside casualties as if they were no more tragic than car accidents. He repeatedly insisted that empathy itself was a fabricated moral weakness, damaging to political life. 

His rhetoric consistently diminished or mocked the suffering of marginalised groups, whether it was his repeated derision of George Floyd in death. In the weeks and months following George Floyd’s death, Kirk took every opportunity to recast the moment once emblematic of racial injustice into something unrecognisable. Standing before primarily white audiences, he dismissed Floyd as a “scumbag,” arguing that America’s moral panic around his killing was fueled by opportunism rather than remorse. He repeatedly echoed the false claim that a medical examiner believed Floyd’s death should be certified as an overdose, even though the autopsy clearly ruled it a homicide caused by “cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdual, restraint and neck compression.” These were not slips of confusion; these were deliberate distortions meant to undermine one of the nation’s most galvanising calls for justice. 

Charlie Kirk was also one of the most vocal defenders of Israel within the American right. He repeatedly framed support for the Israeli government as a litmus test for patriotism, claiming that Israel embodied Western values under siege. Kirk hosted Turning Point USA events in Jerusalem, encouraged evangelical Christians to see Israel’s military strength as a model, and dismissed Palestinian suffering as a distraction created by the left. He often described the U.S.-Israel alliance as “biblically mandated,” reinforcing his broader mission to merge white evangelical nationalism with foreign policy. His unwavering stance meant any criticism of Israel was cast as antisemitism, further hardening divides and silencing conversation about human rights in the occupied territories.

Charlie Kirk has repeatedly used his platform to attack queer people and transgender rights. He has called transgender people a “throbbing middle finger to God,” dead-named public figures like Lia Thomas, and argued that the transgender movement is a lie that corrupts children. He has championed Leviticus 20:13 as “God’s perfect law when it comes to sexual matters” to support his opposition to gay marriage and gender-affirming care. When it comes to abortion, especially in cases of rape, Kirk has been unapologetically harsh: he has shown no public support for exceptions in rape-induced pregnancies, arguing instead that life begins at conception with no room for trauma or victimhood to mitigate it. On race, his rhetoric has been deeply offensive and misleading. He has asserted that Black people commit more crimes than white people, presenting that claim as obvious and supported by “independent analysis,” even when challenged. He has also likened today’s diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts to “more hatred than some elements of the Antebellum South,” a statement that absurdly suggests modern anti-racism initiatives are worse than the legalised cruelty and oppression of slavery. 

To extend empathy to a man who rejected empathy at every turn is to ignore the moral clarity of his record. Kirk helped build a movement in which violence was excused as a necessary byproduct of freedom, and in which hierarchy and domination were defended as American virtues. He did not merely tolerate harm; he endorsed it as policy and culture. When such a figure dies by the very violence he dismissed as an acceptable cost, it is not hypocrisy to withhold compassion. It is consistent.

Of course, the act of political violence should be condemned. No society thrives on assassination, and no healthy democracy finds progress in bullets. But condemning the act is not the same as mourning the man. To grieve Charlie Kirk as though he were a fallen leader is to equate his life’s work with the lives his words endangered. His death does not make him a hero or even a martyr. It makes him a casualty of the political environment he helped construct.

If Kirk once said the Second Amendment was worth all the casualties, then he ultimately became one of them. He dismissed empathy as weakness, and so he received none in return. His death is not a tragedy to mourn but a lesson in consequence, a stark reminder of the dangers of fueling a culture of violence while believing oneself immune to its reach.

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In this world, there are three kinds of people. Those who don't know or love fashion. Those who love fashion but don't know it. And those who both know and love fashion. If you fall into that second category, you are in good company. Although I don't know much about fashion, I love it.

If you're like me, I want to help you figure out what fashion actually is, beyond the headlines and hype. We see these big moments: Paris Fashion Week, London Fashion Week, New York Fashion Week. Just recently, the VMAs reminded us again that fashion is everywhere, with people debating looks, pieces, and statements. And now, New York Fashion Week is about to begin. You may be wondering, like me, what exactly this Fashion Week is? What should you expect? What actually happens? Here is your simple rundown of New York Fashion Week and how to experience it online, explained clearly and with sources so you can check for updates. Come along with me.

New York Fashion Week for Spring/Summer 2026, called NYFW SS26, is scheduled for September 11 to September 16, 2025. This is the official CFDA and Fashion Calendar timing for the American collections season  . The full listings are published on the NYFW site and on the Fashion Calendar, and they can change as the week approaches, so it is best to keep checking as the show day gets closer. Industry coverage from sources like Vogue, Vogue Business, and FashionUnited is also helpful for updates on which designers are showcasing, the major trends, and any significant changes to the schedule. Be sure to follow Deedsmag on socials as well, as we will be giving you a daily front row throughout the NYFWSS26 week.

What actually happens during Fashion Week? Designers present their new collections in different formats. Some hold runway shows, the high-energy spectacles you picture when you hear “Fashion Week.” Others prefer presentations, where the clothes are shown more slowly and in closer detail. There are also private showrooms for buyers and the press. All of this adds up to a city-wide showcase of what will set the tone in fashion for the coming season.

If you are watching from home, good news:  most of the biggest shows are livestreamed. The official site, nyfw.com, will host streams, and many designers also broadcast on their own websites, YouTube channels, Instagram, or TikTok. Afterwards, replays and clips are usually uploaded, so you can catch up on the highlights you missed. Alongside this, fashion media like Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and The Business of Fashion publish recaps, trend reports, and street-style galleries almost in real time.

Beyond official streams, expect a flood of content on social media. Influencers, editors, and even the designers themselves share behind-the-scenes glimpses, street-style looks outside venues, and the buzz around the week. If you are following on TikTok or Instagram, you will often see the “front row” experience just minutes after it happens.

For the smoothest online experience, here are a few tips. Check the official NYFW schedule each morning to know what is streaming that day. Bookmark your favourite designers’ social channels so you don’t miss their feeds. Follow a mix of media outlets, fashion commentators, and influencers for different perspectives. Follow Deeds Mag. Remember that while the livestreams show you the runway, social media shows you the culture around it, the outfits on the streets, the reactions, and the energy.

Fashion Week is both business and entertainment, both trade show and cultural moment. Watching online lets you be part of it without needing invites or waiting in queues. For SS26, expect a packed lineup, lots of digital coverage, and plenty of commentary as the week unfolds. Keep your sources close, stay open to discovery, and enjoy the reality and the magic of NYFW from wherever you are.

The official preliminary schedule confirms that Michael Kors will launch the week, and the lineup includes established names like Altuzarra, Area, Calvin Klein Collection, Collina Strada, Diotima, Eckhaus Latta, KidSuper, Khaite, Kallmeyer, Prabal Gurung, Sergio Hudson, Simkhai, Tory Burch, Ulla Johnson, Who Decides War, and Zankov. Newcomers such as 6397, Amir Taghi, Dwarmis, Lii, Maria McManus, Nardos, Raúl Peñaranda, Rùadh, and SC103 are joining the official calendar for the first time. Additionally, Diotima marks a runway debut, adding another fresh voice to the week’s story.

In the end, New York Fashion Week is not just about clothes; it is about creativity, storytelling, and the rhythm of a city that never stops moving. So whatever category you fall in, and whether you are tuning in live, scrolling through highlights, or catching up days later, you are part of the conversation. Fashion Week is for insiders, but it is also for anyone curious enough to watch. So allow yourself to enjoy it, learn from it, and discover what style means to you in this moment.

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It’s not every day that one can say, I had the pleasure of interviewing the first DJ to play at the peak of Mt. Kilimanjaro – that being Tanzania’s very own, Mister Joozey. Having been a long-time fan of Joozey, I knew that he had a powerful story to tell the world of coming from humble beginnings to being one of the most highly sought after DJs from Tanzania.

‍In this interview we dive into his early childhood where loss drove his love for music and taking chances on himself, regardless of present limitations, became a defining feature of his journey.

‍As we began this interview, I quickly came to understand that music is everything to Joozey as he went on to detail how one of Tanzania’s biggest stars, Alikiba, was the catalyst to his interest in the art. He knew that he wanted to be in music from a young age but the how was still a lingering question that later revealed itself in the form of mixing records and mastering the craft of transitioning from one rhythm to the next. 

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‍Getting to this stage of making a career out of DJing, Joozey had to hustle his way through despair, dropping out of school, moving to cities where he knew no one, and working any and every job he could find to survive. 

‍As if all of that hustling wasn’t enough, in 2023, Joozey made history when he decided to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro and play a 16 minute set at the very top. This embark on Africa’s tallest mountain was a representation of Joozey’s unwavering focus on reaching new heights from conquering the local spots of Dar es Salaam to playing in the biggest venues and crowds across Tanzania, Dubai, Ethiopia and more. 

‍Now, Joozey finds himself in another defining moment as he rebrands himself into an Afro House DJ. Mister Joozey is setting a space that is different. He is not merely doing music but creating a cultural movement that stretches far into fashion, culture, and the artistic expression of ambition.

Joozey’s commitment to his craft is quite frankly undeniable. When we conducted this interview he was due to play a set in front of thousands of people just a few hours afterwards. Nonetheless, he was very gracious with his time as our interview went over and Joozey was still keen on continuing our conversation.

‍Enjoy my conversation with Mr. Joozey and his Creative Director, John Odul.

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What’s your earliest memory of the feeling you had when you first listened to music?

Mister Joozey: 2004 or 2005. After burying my uncle, my younger brother passed away the following morning. After my brother’s death, my mother was never the same. My mother asked what she could give to me, and I asked her to buy me a cassette of Alikiba’s Cinderella album. That day I discovered music could take me far away from my pain, hurt, and troubles of my life. That was the first time I said, ‘I must do something in music in the future.’ Alikiba saved my life I think and my family too.

What does music mean to you?

Joozey: At this moment, music means a lot. Music has brought a revolution to my family. I grew up in conditions that I complained about every day, but now I am in a spiritual relationship with music. Sometimes I say, maybe I am music. All the things I do are not necessarily for my own praise. Everything I do with music leads to so much fruition in my life. Music is a huge component of my life and it has connected me with people who’ve inspired me.

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Before embarking on his DJ Career, Joozey always had a plan to move away from home to a bigger city that could offer him more life opportunities. Growing up in the Shinyanga region, he felt limited by the lack of opportunities in his hometown which set forth his initial move to Mwanza, the largest city in his part of Tanzania. He moved to Mwanza in 2010 and hustled his way through the town with any job he could find.

 In 2013, he began his journey to Dar. Having no friends or family in Dar es Salaam, Joozey moved into the lively and busy neighborhood of Kariakoo where he picked up various jobs from library security guard, houseboy, burning CDs, and a petty trader to keep him afloat in the Tanzanian business capital.

 After the government started cracking down on petty traders, Joozey was left without any means of making money which eventually led him into the world of Djing.

Joozey: I knew I loved music, and I wanted to look for something that I would never get tired of, something that would make it so that I wouldn’t have longing for any other job, something that made me happy whether it made me money or not. And most importantly, something that I could devote my life towards which is how I chose music, specifically Djing which I also knew would make it easier to get me connected with more people in Dar. DJing was a way to get me to a place where I could start making music.

One of the most brand defining aspects of a DJ is their stage name. Can you tell us how you came up with your name and its significance?

Joozey: When I had started Djing, I did not have a stage name. So when people would ask me what’s your name, I would just say my name is “Joseph.” And the late legendary Tanzanian DJ Steve-B, was the first person to call me DJ Joe and then later changed to DJ Jozé as a suggestion from a friend of mine who joked that I looked like someone from Congo based on my look at the time. Upon moving from playing in local spots to the more popular establishments like Masaki, Amour Shamte told me to add a ‘y’ to my name which brought us to DJ Joozey. And now, I want to divorce myself from the names that I was given by others, and I have decided to call myself Mr. Joozey so that I can start fresh and feel like I am an underground DJ. I want to rebrand myself into a new entity that is ready to take over the world.

How would you describe the current environment of the DJ scene in Dar es Salaam and Tanzania wit-large?

John Odul [Mister Joozey’s Creative Director]: We started somewhere and at a certain point we didn’t know how to go above where we began. The DJs in Tanzania have certainly built themselves up to this point but the biggest challenge with them is what I call, the monkey business – where they keep jumping from one genre to the next without really taking time to understand the music. Every DJ right now is all playing the same music, they are all playing Amapiano because it’s so commercialized. Most DJs have failed to become more creative instead of coming up with something that is unique that can separate them and create an audience that will relate to what they are doing.

Joozey: A lot of people are also doing it for money which is why you see a lot of [the DJs] doing whatever they can to trend to make quick money. I would also say that in Tanzania we haven’t fully cultivated our own sound that we could claim ownership, which is why John and I are trying to see how to shape this space and help our fellow [Tanzanian] DJs see the vision of where the world is headed and learn from the success we see from our friends in South Africa.  

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Mr. Joozey recently reintroduced himself to the world as an “Afro House DJ.” What was the reasoning behind this rebranding?

John: Afro House has a lot of history, and we start from house music which started in Chicago. Then we had the fusion of house into African culture making it Afro house to the point that it becomes an identity of Africa itself. And Afro House is so powerful. As you look at amapiano right now, it's transforming itself, slowly leaning more into Afro House. So, we also wanted to be a part of that journey. If this is the direction the world is taking, then we want to be sitting at the table.

I had a conversation with Joozey saying that, ‘I think it's time that we go that direction and nobody to this point is taking any risk in this country to do what we are doing.’

How have Tanzanians reacted to your “Afro House” rebrand?

Joozey: When we started the rebranding, Tanzanians weren’t fully onboard since they associated house music with the West. So, John and I had to sit down to think of ways of connecting with our audience by taking popular songs and turning them into Afro House remixes. And it has been easy for Tanzanians to now connect more with our Afro House direction, to where now they have become familiar with popular Afro House tracks. Right now, I am working on original Afro House tracks including ones that incorporate classical Swahili music from the likes of Bi Kidude.

One of Tanzania’s most popular home-grown sounds is Singeli, do you plan on doing any mixes or projects that incorporate this sound?

Joozey: A lot of the tracks that I play are Singeli. I always play Singeli every day because it works well in Tanzania. The challenge Singeli has from spreading internationally is for one reason, it is a hyper-localized Tanzanian-based sound. It has origins in local Swahili spiritual music called Mnanda from the coastal region of the country. So, what I am working on right now is developing a fusion sound of Singeli and Afro House as a way of standing out and doing something completely different from the field. But it’s also another way that I can help to introduce Singeli to the world, because its current arrangement is specifically made for the Tanzanian ear which makes it a little bit difficult to translate into the international market. 

Another challenge with Singeli is that it is not an easy genre to mix from a DJ standpoint and it has very high BPMs with some tracks averaging around 200 BPMs. If a few of us here in Tanzania sit down and think about how to market and rearrange the sound, I think that it has a strong chance of going international.

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In 2023, you played the Tanzanian national anthem on top of Mt Kilimanjaro, which is the highest free standing mountain in the world. Can you tell us what that moment meant for you, in not only climbing the mountain, but also being able to play in an environment that not many DJs around the world can ever claim to have done?

Joozey: Well, you know, that idea came from John.

 John: We wanted to tell a story that not only involves music but that could integrate music, culture, and what we have as a country. The whole concept was to highlight all the places that are found in Tanzania that are a bit different from other countries. Joozey was to be that person to carry this task, and I don’t even know how he did it because it was quite a difficult task to pull through. Kilimanjaro was technically the final destination of this content rollout. And so, we are going to work backwards to the other destinations which include Zanzibar, Serengeti, to Mwanza, and Dodoma (Capitol of Tanzania), with every single destination requiring a set that represents the local essence of those spaces.

Joozey: For me, climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro and playing music there was actually very easy because my message was that ‘I am from Tanzania, and there is someone named Joozey here. We are coming to the world!’

I don’t think I could have finished this interview with a better ending than Mister Joozey’s very own words of claiming his spot in this growing global African DJ landscape. The world has been put on notice; Tanzania’s very own has a sound that your ears have not had the pleasure of absorbing. 

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Solomon Fox’s days typically follow a strict schedule. He wakes up late in the morning, grabs a cup of coffee, and walks around his neighbourhood, after which he dives into making music. There’s no exact timeframe for the period he spends in his studio tinkering with his keyboard or one of his many guitars as he works out the finer details of a new song or perfects an existing one. He simply keeps at it until he has to do something else, grab lunch, take a call, or attend to one of life’s attendant responsibilities. The real magic however typically happens later in the afternoon when he returns to making music. Having taken care of the bulk of the day’s responsibilities and vagaries, he enters into a flow state that mirrors the surreal placidity of his music.  

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“Today has been different,” he tells me during our conversation, one balmy Wednesday afternoon in late August. Wearing a white shirt and a brown jacket with the Marlboro logo, he radiates the warm, fuzzy energy of his music, which deftly blends Neo-Soul and R&B into an enrapturing whole. It’s still early in the afternoon but the day has been intense. He has just announced a tour spanning eight cities ahead of his debut album Sweettooth, and is preparing for a festival scheduled to be held during the weekend at a farm in Southern Virginia that he and a bunch of friends bought during the pandemic. “It’s called Grouse Fest. It’s kind of like a DIY festival my friends and I put together. There’s going to be a lot of fun other stuff; a scavenger hunt and like mud wrestling and random other fun things. But it's also my first performance with the new material, so this is going to be a good little trial run of the album,” He runs his fingers through his slightly tousled hair, his face flickering between nervous excitement and a contagious calmness. 

Solomon’s lore follows the rollercoaster pattern of a Pixar film. Which is to say that his career had mostly unspooled with the idyllic stability of a straight line, until a shift occurred that set him on a different, less predictable but equally more exciting path. Having led a career as a critically acclaimed producer, earning two Grammy nominations and one Oscar nomination for Best Original Song for the Gospel-infused anthem Stand Up for the film Harriet, and working with a dizzying array of prodigious artists including Smino and Emeline, in 2020, during the pandemic, he finally acquiesced to a throbbing desire to take on a career as a singer. 

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Raised in Durham, California by hippie parents, both of whom are professors, Solomon’s childhood resembled something from a children’s picture book. He spent afternoons running around in the woods, climbing trees, and performing stunts with his brother. Music was also a prominent fixture of his childhood. They didn’t have a television, so to stave off boredom, the boys would compose songs and conjure fascinating worlds that contrasted the small, quiet town they lived in. Despite his natural aptitude for music, Solomon didn’t imagine himself having a career in music. He was fascinated with baseball and entertained dreams of a professional career playing the sport. It wasn’t until high school, when he started to play shows with his band Young Bull that the notion of a career as a professional musician began to take shape in his mind.  

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Solomon has a wry, awkward sense of humor that is surprisingly potent at eliciting hearty laughter. “The first song I remember writing was a love song for my middle school crush. I remember I called it Ecila because her name was Alice and that was how you spell it backwards.” He pauses to laugh. “It didn’t work out though, she rejected me before she even heard the song,” he tells me when I ask about the first song he wrote. His sanguine disposition however often belies a more fraught internal sense. Dating back to his childhood he had always written his own material and daydreamed about performing his songs to throngs of doting fans. He however made his way into music through music production, a smooth transition from his days playing in his high school band, and settled into that mold.  

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It’s a story we can all relate to. How many times have we pushed aside lofty dreams, instead settling for the more agreeable version of life we live in? Is it fear or comfort or that lulls us into accepting what life foists on us, especially when we’re at a comfortable place, instead of lurching into the great unknown where dreams and fantasies take on increased possibility? “I always had my own songs but I was kind of nervous to share them,” he says. “It was always the fear of not succeeding or being seen as good enough as a vocalist.” During the lockdown, infected with the revolutionary spirit that seems to have washed over the entire human race, he felt overcome by an implacable desire to put out his own music. His years as a producer, away from the spotlight, had helped him develop as an artist but now he was ready for the next step in his story. 

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His first mixtape in 2021 officially launched his career as a singer and since then he’s been on a journey that’s equal parts exhilarating and scary. His anxieties notwithstanding, he has been trundling ahead and is showing no signs of slowing down. With his forthcoming album Sweetooth, he expects to turbocharge the momentum he’s been building. Sweetooth, Solomon tells me, is inspired by a previous relationship and explores the murky in-between area between falling hopelessly in love with someone and never wanting to speak to them again. His next single Reconcile drops on October 10. Solomon is palpably stoked about it. 

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Despite his excitement his career as a singer has come with profound changes. “There’s a lot more pressure to lead them to where you want them to be,” he says, referring as much to his team as his fans. Occasionally he feels performance anxiety, he tells me, recalling a performance in Los Angeles. But it usually fades away when he realizes he’s just where he should be; at home on the stage. “It’s more pressure but it’s also more payoff because you get the experience of seeing people sing words you wrote back to you.”

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At 24, Rainey is expanding from Power into fashion, business, and beyond while keeping family at the center of it all.

Michael Rainey Jr. grew up on one of television's biggest stages and turned that foundation into something bigger. He became the lead of Power Book II: Ghost, but more importantly, he became the kind of person Mary J. Blige gets excited to meet. When he tells that story, genuinely surprised that an icon was starstruck by him, you understand something essential about who he is off-camera: still the Staten Island kid who's a little amazed this is his life.

That groundedness isn't an accident. It comes from a Caribbean mother who saved every acting paycheck until he turned 18, from being surrounded by the same family and friends who knew him before the fame hit, and from ten years of watching legends like 50 Cent and Method Man treat every crew member with respect. Now, at 24, Rainey is channelling that foundation into something bigger than acting.

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There's 22 Entertainment, the production company he's building with creative partner Gianni. There's WHEREIS22, his YouTube car channel that taps into a passion that started when he could identify any make and model at age five. There's a Tommy Hilfiger campaign, financial literacy speaking engagements, and plans for a music album. And there's his most important goal: getting his entire family to live on the same block.

When Deeds Magazine sat down with Michael, we talked about leadership, money, family, and what it really means to build something that lasts while staying true to who you've always been. This is Michael Rainey Jr. unfiltered.

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Looking back on taking Tariq from a minor in jail in the original Power to a lead character in Ghost, how do you feel you've grown as an actor? What did you learn about yourself while working on Power for ten years?

"Stepping into Tariq, I definitely did not expect to be taking over the series and having my own spinoff in the franchise. As time went by and the seasons got deeper, I started believing in my skill and my craft, and putting more on my plate as far as workload. As they started writing more for Tariq, I prepared more as the years went by. I always felt like I was ready for whatever they were throwing at me, as far as the character. It's been a fulfilling journey."

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You've worked closely with people you admired, like 50 Cent, Mary J. Blige and Method Man. What was it like to have those figures as collaborators? Can you share a moment on set or a piece of advice from them that really resonated with you?

"It wasn't something they said, it was how they acted, how they carried themselves on set, and how they treated everybody in the crew: gaffers, lighting, sound. Mary, Method, and 50 treat those people with a lot of respect. No matter how big or legendary they are, they treat everybody the same. Seeing them make people comfortable and keep folks smiling inspired me. As the lead, everyone's energy kind of relies on you, and how you come to set bounces off everyone else. They showed me how to keep morale good and make sure we're enjoying long 15–16 hour days, even when I'm going through something off-set."

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Your mother homeschooled you and later managed your early acting finances. How has your family shaped your outlook on work and success? Do you still turn to them for guidance now that you're older?

"Ever since I started, I've been surrounded by the same people, my closest family and friends. It's hard to forget where you come from when you're with the people you were with before everything took off. Being around my family keeps me grounded. My mom's Caribbean, she makes sure I've got a level head and stay humble. Being with the people I've always been around helps me remember who I am and where I come from."

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You've mentioned that your mom saved your acting paychecks, and you didn't fully know your earnings until age 18. How did growing up with that financial discipline change the way you handle money today? What advice do you have for young people in the industry about managing money?

"As a kid, you might be bringing in money, but you don't really know what to do with it. My mom didn't hide it, she tucked it away until I was old enough to understand financial literacy and respect the dollar. When she opened everything up to me at 18, I had a different understanding than before. I didn't do all the right things at first; it's a learning experience. You do certain things to realise what you won't do again. I appreciate that my mom kept it for me until I was 18 and then said, 'Here, this is what you've been working for.'"

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You star in Tommy Hilfiger's new campaign and have won awards in standout suits. How important is fashion and personal style to you? Does it influence how you feel in a role or how you want to be seen by the world?

"Fashion is more fun for me. I like looking cool and feeling good. If people receive me and my fashion differently, I love it, but I'm not in it for that purpose. I love clothes, and seeing other people in super cool clothes inspires me, not just fashion-wise, but to not care what anybody else thinks. Do what makes you feel comfortable. Fashion is a great way to express yourself. People have been seeing me tapped into fashion a lot more lately, it's cool."

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You have a YouTube car channel ("WHEREIS22") where you speak enthusiastically about cars. What is it about cars and automotive culture that excites you? Do you see yourself pursuing more projects in that space or other hobbies becoming businesses?

"Music and cars have been my love since before I was an actor. Me and my cousin DJ were racing on Midnight Club on PSP and playing Asphalt since we were kids. Every Christmas, I wanted a new model car. At five years old, I could name the make and model of anything on the street. With music, I heard KRS-One's 'The Bridge Is Over' at my grandparents' and went home and played the melody by ear on the piano. Now that I'm older, car content is everywhere. I want to show people my real passion, bring a web series to life for the automotive stuff (that's in development) and have a brand coexisting with it, an automotive, street-wavy kind of brand. In my free time over the next few months, I'm putting my passions to the forefront and getting people to see what I love to do."

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Growing up Jamaican-American on Staten Island is unique. How do your Jamaican heritage and your Staten Island upbringing influence the roles you choose or the stories you want to tell? Is there something you feel you're bringing to Hollywood that comes from those experiences?

"I lived a normal, simple life before acting, YMCA kid, loved playing basketball and football, riding bikes, just having fun. I'd go to Jamaica here and there as a kid. The craziest part of my childhood was moving to Italy to film my first movie, living there for a year, and staying in Arches National Park's Canyon area for almost a month while filming. Those experiences were undefeated at that age."

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You've spoken at events about empowerment and financial literacy (for example, the NAACP 'Young, Gifted & Black' brunch). Are there causes or messages that you're passionate about promoting now? How do you balance public activism with your entertainment career?

"I love being in a position where I have a voice people listen to and feel inspired by. My message is: be resilient. The only person who can really get in the way of your journey to your goal is you. Anybody else is an obstacle you can move. Don't limit yourself. If you want it enough, you can achieve it."

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After a decade on one of TV's biggest franchises, what has surprised you most about yourself or life? How do you think you've changed as a person from where you started at age 10 to today?

"What surprised me most is people I looked up to growing up, being excited to meet me. It's crazy. Not just actors, icons too. When I first met Mary J. Blige, she was so excited to meet me. I was surprised, like, Mary rocks with me like that? It was a blessing. Ten-year-old me would be proud; he'd probably wish I played basketball a little longer, but everything I dreamed of since I was a kid, like meeting 50 Cent and asking him for advice, that's real now."

What are your personal goals for the next phase of your career and life?

"Within the next four to five years, I want all of my immediate family living on the same block, in the same neighbourhood. That's a big goal. I want to get some development projects out there. Me and Gianni's production company, 22 Entertainment, getting stuff under our belt. Maybe put out a music album produced by me with my favourite artists, I'm not rapping or singing. But mainly, getting my family living next to each other, once that happens, I'll be at peace and chilling. That's something I have to 100% scratch off the list."

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Michael Rainey Jr. carries his past not as baggage but as ballast. In our conversation, what stood out was his clarity: success isn’t about escaping his roots but about building a future where his family thrives together.  He has turned child stardom and a decade on Power into a deliberate, multi-dimensional hustle: acting, fashion, cars, entrepreneurship, all grounded in humility and legacy. With 22 Entertainment, WHEREIS22, and his dreams still in motion, Rainey is shaping longevity on his own terms.

Oh, and before we wrapped, Michael wanted to clear something up: “I want to clear this up for everybody who thinks I’m from Louisville. I was just born in Louisville, Kentucky. My parents moved back to New York when I was a month old. Born in Kentucky, raised in New York. Shout out to Kentucky, I’ve got a lot of support out there, and I gotta come to the Derby one day, but I’m from New York.”

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When you press play on After Midnight, the debut album from Ghanaian Afro-R&B artist Gyakie, you enter a space exploring love, self-discovery, healing, and vulnerability. The 17 track project features collaborations with 6LACK, Kojey Radical, Headie One, Shatta Wale, and Omar Sterling, among others. The album presents a much more grown and elevated Gyakie than we last heard on her 2022 EP MY DIARY.

Reflecting on this evolution, Gyakie points to a deliberate three-year stretch of growth and learning. “We started working on this project three years ago. I had to learn a great deal; I really wanted to gain knowledge, acquire new ideas, and have a lot of experiences, so that I could draw inspiration to write about many different things,” she explains. The result is an album that blends R&B, Afropop, Highlife, and subtle touches from other genres into a cohesive whole.

Since releasing her debut single, “Love Is Pretty,” in 2019, Gyakie’s path has moved through two EPs: 2021’s Seed and 2022’s My Diary, toward this full length statement. After Midnight is both a milestone and a mirror: reflecting how her talent has evolved across the years.

In this conversation, we dive into the album’s three-year journey, the intentionality behind the music, collaboration, and what comes next.

What space are you in now, and how are you feeling in this moment with the album being out?

It's really a lot of butterflies in my stomach, from the beginning of this year, mainly because the album was going to come out this year. When the year started, I felt excited because I couldn't wait for the day when the entire project would finally be made available for everyone to enjoy. So I've really been in full excitement, since it's my first album coming out. 

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How long has the process been in the making for this album? 

We started working on this project three years ago. It's been three years now, and I really can't believe how fast three years have gone by. This is mainly because of how intentional we wanted to be when it comes to every single record on this album, from the first track to the last track.

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From the moment you put out my diary to get this point, like, what would you say has been the most significant shift for you, and like, even going from that time and that experience to then making the album, what was the most significant difference for you in that moment?

That would be learning. I had to learn a great deal; I really wanted to gain knowledge, acquire new ideas, and have experiences in various forms, so that I could draw inspiration to write about many different things. When it came to this project,  I took the time to learn a great deal about music, not just my writing, but also production, lyrics, and everything that goes into creating the songs on the project. I had to learn and develop my knowledge and listening skills to create this project in a way that sounds mature, in terms of the lyrics, production, and composition. I really had to put myself in that space within those three years of making the project, to learn more and widen the kind of things I know when it comes to music. 

As an individual, what would you say has been the most significant difference in yourself, in those three years and in that time of making this album?

I like how you put it, because three years ago, I was younger than I am now, and in that space, anybody experiencing three years of life would have so many different things from the past and now. So, as a person, aside from the music, there has been a massive change in so many aspects of my life, and I think that has also influenced the creation of the album so much, and that's why we had to keep going back to the drawing board to make changes in between. That is three years of knowing so much, three years of experiencing so much, and three years of learning and unlearning a lot of things. As for me personally, I've also experienced growth and change, and I've learned a lot about myself in general.

In terms of arriving at the songs that you did for the album, like, how did you come to those final tracks? From when you first started to when you ended up?

When it came to picking up the final tracks that was going to make it, there was one of the most hectic parts of every process around the project, because it's so many good songs that we have, to be able to to be able to take some in and take some out, It was always a difficult situation, So one of the things that we really paid attention to with the songs that actually made it is the song in its entirety. Anything that a particular song is lacking, even if it's a single tiny thing, means that song has to go for the one that has everything in it. It's full perfection to make it. And that's what made it easy at a point, because it was really one of the few difficult things that we had to face when it came to taking some songs out and which one is whose favourite, and this one really wants this one to be in there. So that one took us a minute, but we were finally able to capture the ones that will make it through for this one.

If this is the first time that you're listening to this album, what do you think this album says about you, and what do you want people to take away from this album as they listen to it?

Really and truly, if it is somebody that actually knows me from 2019 from Seed EP and M Diary and the singles that have dropped, like I was mentioning earlier, one of the major things that person will actually spot is the maturity in the sound, how my sound has actually evolved and gotten ten times better, you will listen to the song from the beginning to the end. You'll be able to tell that this has really been put together, really well. Everything was intentional, everything was done so that it would be so perfect, since it's my debut album, and I wanted people around me to be able to tell that I have grown and for them to say she's actually getting way better than she was before. And the people who will listen to the album will also be able to testify, even if they haven't been in a close environment with me. So that is definitely going to be maturity. And the way I always talk about my sound, Afro-fusion, this is a project. This is where people get to hear and feel the name of that genre, because from the intro to the last song, there's a blend and a taste of everybody's favourite genre on this project.

So, even going with “SankofA” as the first single, and that being like the introduction to what's going to be the album. Why did you want to go with that song as the first, the first introduction to what the album's going to be?

It's a personal favourite. It's actually the last song that made it to the album. It really represents my sound in its highest form. If you listen to “Sankofa”, it made sense to bring that out as the first record, so that my audience would have a taste of what to expect on this project with Sankofa.

Which one was like a stand up moment that you had in the time in the studio that you made, if that makes sense?

There's a song called “y2k luv” with Omar Sterling. That song, we really spent a lot of days trying to crack the code of the song. It felt like a puzzle; most of the songs, if I actually started recording, there's a high chance that I'd finish them in the same studio session, or some of them, I would come back the next day and finish. But “y2k luv” was one record that really took a lot of energy out of us in the studio. We spent close to two weeks on it. It was something like recording on one day and then going back another day to find the right things to bring it together. 

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Was there a song on the album that challenged you in the aspect of writing, whether you know, whether it was because it was emotional, or for whatever reason?  

There is a song on the album called “is it worth it?” There was a lot of emotion in the studio when I was recording it with the producer, Sosa (SOSAONTHEWAVE). So that has to be the song that really, really hits my emotions when I was writing it, because it was really a song that I was speaking from a personal space. I was speaking about my actual life. So, at that time, the producer wasn't in a good place. So we're having a conversation about life and what he's been going through. We're having conversations around that. That also gave him, the producer, an inspiration for the production to have that kind of emotion. And at that time, too, I also had all those things I said in the song running on my mind, so I put that into the song. 

From when you first started making music to releasing your debut album, what has it meant for you to be in this moment in your career?

It's actually a dream come true. When I started making music, I was waiting for the moment when I would actually drop an album. I released my first EP, Seed, and then MY DIARY, along with a few singles that followed. I have always been looking forward to the day that my album is finally out. So, my entire journey from the beginning till now has really been a dream come true, and to be able to sit back and look at every single thing that I’ve been able to do and how big the future looks from here, it's just dreams that we are witnessing. Just seeing it come to light, you know, when I think about the hard work, the sweat, the good times, and the bad times, there's a lot of emotion behind this whole project. It's really a dream come true to be able to look at everything we've been able to achieve and do, and the things we're even about to do.

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And as an individual outside of music, just somebody who has always had this dream and been in the industry for the time that you have been, how does this feel?

If there were that option to see that time of me dropping my first record, “Love is Pretty”,' I can imagine my friend and I really laughing at ourselves. Like, can you actually believe that this is where it has actually gotten to? Sometimes I look at myself in front of the mirror, and I'm just amazed. This whole thing started with me as a student on campus in Kumasi, and look at where it has gotten to now. Sometimes I do speak to myself in front of the mirror, ask myself a few questions, and be like, Girl, can you see where all of this has actually gotten to now? And it's really exciting times for me.

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I hope that we're gonna be getting a tour, and we're going to be seeing you perform these songs live.

Yes, we're definitely going on tour. We're definitely going to go on tour after doing an album. Another thing that I've had on my bucket list is touring, and that's going to be next up for me. My people around the world should actually be looking forward and have their ears to the ground for tour dates. And we'll be starting the tour really soon. 

What are you most looking forward to? 

I am looking forward to getting really involved with my fan base, which is small but growing. For the past three years, since I've released a few singles, this album has finally come out. Like I said, we're now about to go on tour, so I can't wait actually to be able to meet my fans. You know, go on tour, do some Meet and Greets. It's another moment. That I've been looking forward to. I'm very excited to be meeting all these amazing people around the world that has been enjoying Gykie music but haven't seen me in person yet. I haven't experienced you in person yet, and that's one thing aside from the album that I'm anticipating and looking forward to.

With After Midnight, Gyakie doesn’t just introduce a debut album, she reintroduces herself. It’s the sound of an artist who has taken her time, embraced growth, and crafted a body of work that carries both her roots and her future. As she prepares to bring these songs to life on stage, Gyakie stands not just at the beginning of a new chapter, but at the height of her readiness to claim her place on the global stage.

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On an unseasonably sunny afternoon not too long ago I was in an Uber commuting to a panel discussion, which was to feature some of the pioneering figures in Lagos’ rapidly expanding rave scene. As it often is in Lagos, the traffic on Falomo Bridge was painfully slow. My driver had progressed from driving with the pace of a snail to inching forward in tiny spasmodic bursts that hardly qualified as moving. In a show of dramatic outrage, I lifted my left wrist to my face and glanced at my wristwatch—which I knew was not working. I looked outside and saw an interminable stretch of cars ahead, barely moving. I was running late. And so, to stave off the feeling of consternation that invariably surfaces in times like this I decided to distract myself. 

I tried reading but I was too agitated to adequately savor the text I had begun to leaf through. Exiting the Books app, I headed to Instagram impelled by a throbbing hunger for a quick dopamine hit. I had hardly scrolled for half a minute when I came across a video that was equal parts vaguely familiar, somewhat bizarre, and wholly amusing. It was a video by the San Francisco Chronicle reporting on a ‘performative male’ contest in the city. For the uninitiated, ‘performative male’ is an increasingly popular neologism for describing men who adopt progressive and often feminist visual codes without subscribing to or caring for the underlying progressive values. As the characterization suggests, for this variety of men, the whole thing is a hollowed-out performance of progressive politics, a schtick—a cosmetic path to ingratiating oneself with women. 

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To paint a hazy portrait of this kind of male: he never passes up an opportunity to wax lyrical about women’s rights. Tote bags decorated with sprightly colored Labubus, T Shirts with texts like “THE FUTURE IS FEMALE,” and feminist texts—think Sally Rooney’s Normal People or Melissa Febos’ Girhood—are core elements of his wardrobe, deployed loudly to signal his progressive leanings. Bonus points if he drinks matcha and shops at the female section of clothing stores. Indeed this variety of men was abundant at the San Francisco Performative Male contest, as shown in the clip. 

One man particularly stands out. Wearing a light blue shirt, brown pants, Ray Ban sunglasses, ginormous headphones; and clutching a cream tote bag, Michelle Obama’s Becoming and a dog leash—all in one hand by the way—he looked like the ultimate performative male. Of the Mandolin—a stringed instrument resembling a guitar—slung across his chest he says: “This is a mandolin I bought a while back to learn how to play. I never learned how to play but it’s a conversation starter.” “This is not my tote, that was not my dog,” he continues. Something about the perfunctory nature of his verbiage gave me pause. I glanced at my tote bag—black, dainty—which sat on the seat across from me and laughed silently. 

In the intervening days, I started to notice the ‘performative male’ posts everywhere. This is called the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, or frequency illusion. “The most commonly given example is when one learns a new word and it suddenly appears everywhere,” Melissa Febos writes in The Dry Season. Online reactions to the trend are split between amusement and holy indignation. In an article for the publication “them,” James Factora argues that all gender is performative, therefore the notion of a performative male is tautological. “The so-called performative male is nothing new. It’s this year’s take on ‘the toxic softboy’ or the ‘male manipulator’,” Factora writes. This sentiment rang so true to my perception of the topic that I made a mental note to include it in this essay. 

Rachel Connolly’s essay for The Guardian, Why Fear The Tote Bag-Wielding, Matcha-Drinking ‘Performative Male’? At Least he Makes an Effort, left an even bigger impression on me. In the piece, Connolly essentially dilates on this notion that gender is inherently performative. To this end, she deploys wickedly delightful sarcasm and a refreshing lucidity to make her case. “Imagine that! A person choosing clothes and accessories to increase their attractiveness in the eyes of the gender they are trying to sleep with. Very insidious and unusual behaviour. I can tell you right now I have never once in my life participated in such a charade,” she writes. 

Days after stumbling across that performative male clip by the San Francisco Chronicle, I had lunch with a friend at an upscale restaurant specializing in local cuisine. My friend had recently returned to the country from a holiday-turned-globetrotting expedition. And so, for us, it was a reunion of sorts. Moments after I had taken my seat and started to feel comfortable, they arrived. Standing inches away from me, they paused and, smiling, ran their eyes over my outfit: a cropped biker’s jacket I had thrifted from an online store for female clothes, bootcut jeans, a baseball cap, and, not least, a tote bag. “Performative male,” they cooed. “What about me gives that?” I replied laughing. “Everything!” 

It is true that the performative male is cliché, cringe, and shallow. It is also true that there is something deeply revolting about cosplaying a stereotype. But I think that the vitriol towards this variety of men is entirely misplaced. Some have referred to the performative male as dangerous, invoking convoluted arguments to make their case. This entirely misses the mark; for one, while the performative male is a caricature, an exaggerated image, all gender, as Factora tells us, is a performance. Also, contrary to what social media might suggest, the performative male is nothing new. But the biggest danger of reducing the performative male to a pejorative is that real progressive men, who may relish a cup of matcha or enjoy donning a tote bag will inevitably find themselves caught in the crosshairs of this sweeping repudiation. 

To illustrate the potential unintended consequences of denigrating the performative male with unforgiving intensity, I’ll serve the example of the #MeToo movement in the 2010s. Following the sweeping exposure of sexual offenders such as Harvey Weinstein and the sexual harassment women often face in the workplace—often at the hands of powerful men—came to light, there seemed to be a general sense of contrition and solidarity among men towards women. In that era, men were more likely to call erring men to order publicly, side with women on social media, and refer to themselves as feminists. Sure, there were a few poseurs among their ranks but for the most part, it was positive. 

Today, the situation has dimmed several shades darker: the rise of alt-right figures—Trump, Tate, Musk—underscores this. One of the reasons that many of the men who now subscribe to their virulent rhetoric were so easily won over is that men with a progressive slant are treated with suspicion, while the right feverently touted masculinity in a glamorous light, as this New Yorker article suggests. In all honesty, it’s nobody’s fault, women are justified in being suspicious of any kind of men given the patriarchy's far-reaching tentacles. But as Jia Tolentino explains in her seminal essay How America Embraced Gender War, in the war to stave off the onslaught of misogyny that’s increasingly suffocating today’s society, women need male allies. “It’s here that we learn how badly we need one another, in the end,” she writes with an almost transcendental lucidity. By the same token, it becomes clear that by indiscriminately deploying ‘performative male’ as a pejorative, we risk alienating would-be progressive men.

Rising R&B powerhouse Rukmani is redefining what it means to be a Nigerian artist on the global stage. With her electrifying new single Not Nice, featuring rap trailblazer SGaWD, Rukmani delivers more than just a track; she delivers an anthem of empowerment, resilience, and unapologetic womanhood.

Set against the vibrant backdrop of Lagos, Not Nice unpacks a narrative all too familiar: two women discovering they’ve been played by the same Yoruba demon. But instead of rivalry, Rukmani and SGaWD flip the script, transforming the pain of manipulation into a powerful reclamation of confidence and sisterhood. The storyline, amplified by the charismatic cameo of rapper and socialite  Fresh L, resonates with cultural authenticity while boldly pushing conversations about solidarity and self-worth..

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The accompanying visuals for Not Nice are a cinematic experience; sleek, stylish, and unmistakably Lagos. With nods to Y2K nostalgia and Nollywood aesthetics, the video delivers a fresh yet familiar vibe, balancing retro flair with modern artistry. Beyond the music, the visuals capture a cultural moment: one that celebrates bold femininity, resilience, and the ever-dynamic energy of Nigerian youth culture.

This release follows the momentum of Rukmani’s debut project 3XL, an 8-track masterstroke that showcased her ability to blend soulful R&B melodies with Afro-fusion rhythms and poignant storytelling. With fan favourites like Woman Joseph (Club mix), From Softie to you and Compromise, the album established Rukmani as one of the most compelling new voices in Nigeria’s evolving music scene.

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With Not Nice, Rukmani isn’t just releasing a song—she’s cementing her position as a fearless voice from Nigeria with international resonance. Her artistry speaks to the local while echoing globally, placing her firmly in the lineage of African artists reshaping the soundscape of contemporary music.

Click here to listen to song

Click here to watch Video

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Dancehall music has been one of the most dominant music genres for the past decades ever since it emerged in the late 1970s as a stripped-down, more rhythmically aggressive offshoot of reggae. The genre’s name itself was tied to the spaces it thrived in: the dance halls, where sound systems blasted riddims and deejays rode them with their distinctive patois flows. By the 1980s, pioneers like Yellowman, Shabba Ranks, and Super Cat were shaping dancehall into a global sound, leaning heavily on digital rhythms such as the iconic “Sleng Teng” riddim of 1985, often cited as the birth of digital dancehall. This transition set the stage for its export to wider audiences, with artists like Beenie Man, Bounty Killer, Buju Banton, Sean Paul, Vybz Kartel crossing over internationally while still retaining their Jamaican grit.

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But as fast as dancehall rose, its grip on the global stage began to loosen. The cracks appeared in the late 2000s and International markets that once embraced the infectious chaos of dancehall began to turn away, partly because of content controversies. Many of the genre’s biggest stars were criticized for homophobic lyrics, leading to boycotts, bans, and shrinking radio play in key markets like the UK and parts of Europe. Suddenly, the music that thrived on rebellion was boxed in by political and cultural backlash. Also came competition. Afrobeats  rose to prominence, filling the dancehall-shaped void on global playlists. It brought the same energy—party-ready, percussive, irresistibly danceable—but packaged with cleaner narratives, fewer controversies.

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But if 2025 has shown anything, it’s that dancehall is roaring back with vengeance. The resurgence has been impossible to ignore. Vybz Kartel, long considered a figure trapped in controversy and distance, is once again at the center of the movement. Against all odds, his return to the spotlight has reignited interest in the genre, culminating in historic sold-out shows at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn and London’s O2 Arena—milestones that would’ve seemed unlikely during dancehall’s quieter years. His presence has reminded fans why he is regarded as one of Jamaica’s most electrifying cultural exports, and his renewed visibility is breathing credibility back into the global market for dancehall.

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But he isn’t doing it alone. A new wave of stars is amplifying the genre’s resurgence, artists like Valiant, Masicka, Byron Messia, Projexx with the success of Shake it To The Max which had Shensea & Skillbeng on it. Dancehall is enjoying a rare second act. Its icons are reclaiming stages once lost, and its new stars are charting futures that extend well beyond the Caribbean.

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‍This September, Declan Greatness Dex Echeazu launches Ladders. The culture sees Dex as a connector, but what he is building now is less about linking people and more about lifting them. Ladders is the next chapter and the clearest expression of that mission. Ladders, an eight part podcast, is a call to climb together and to stay accountable on the way up. Deeds Magazine spoke with Dex about what greatness means to him, how his Ladder Theory shapes each conversation, and what listeners can expect when the first episode lands.

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‍Dex is no stranger to building bridges. The Nigerian born creative migrated to Britain and became a fixture in UK music, known for a viral MySpace moment that made African pride mainstream and for championing artists such as WizKid, Burna Boy and Odumodublvck. His influence spans club nights, fashion, music collaborations and festivals, earning him the reputation as a  voice of the culture. But Dex insists he is not above anyone. “Together we push,” he says. “Two is always better than one.” The Ladders podcast will make that philosophy audible.

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At the core of Ladders is what Dex calls the Ladder Theory, the idea that greatness is a climb, not a leap. Each guest will map their ascent through three lenses, the influence of their parents, the first thing they loved and the first time they truly failed. Dex’s questions are direct, informed by his own habits. Asked about the first rung on his own ladder, he recalls running 5Ks. “That is when I understood what it really takes to push in life. Where I am from, we do not rely on luck, we create our own.” He wants listeners to feel that sense of agency immediately. “I want them to genuinely believe in their greatness and remember that hard work will always pay off.”

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According to Dex, the concept promises more than polite chatter, episodes will be candid, honest, sometimes raw, sometimes funny, always real. Dex sees Ladders as home, a space for growth, support and real conversation where hard truths can be shared without judgement.

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To match the elevated tone, Ladders will be filmed in a cigar lounge inspired studio with rich textures. The eight hour long episodes will be released in audio and video across YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts and other major platforms. Dex’s guest list for the first season of Ladders reads like a who’s who of Black British culture, but the point is not celebrity for its own sake. Dex looks for artists who show hard work, consistency and hunger. “And swag, you gotta have that too,” he laughs.

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Ladders aims to be a movement, not just another moment. “They want access. They want to learn. They want to be part of what is happening, not just watching it,” Dex says as he speaks of the Black British African and Caribbean youth. For Dex, Ladders is a natural extension of his mantra Greatness Only, which is not just a catch phrase, but a way of life.

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It informs how he mentors younger creatives, how he chooses collaborators and how he protects his own peace. “My job is to keep showing them it is possible. Hard work pays, creativity is priceless, and you never settle.” He refuses to call setbacks failures. “Everything is a stepping stone. Every day is learning. Tomorrow is another chance.”

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As he prepares to release Ladders, Dex hopes listeners will do more than tune in. “I want them to realise we are all we have got. If we do not come together and guide each other, especially the next generation, we lose the vision. Together we push.” Ladders invites us not just to observe greatness, but to build it step by step, rung by rung, as a community.

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Stay locked In. Let us climb the ladder together. Greatness Only.

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When Wizard Chan broke out in 2022 with the gravity of Earth Song, he marked himself as something more than a fleeting voice in Nigeria’s expansive Afrobeats scene. His music, self-described as Afro-Teme (from the Ijaw word Teme, meaning “feel it”), has always been less about chasing trends and more about cultivating an atmosphere of depth, spirituality, and cultural resonance. With his debut album, Healer’s Chapel, a 14-track gospel project featuring Bona Nime, PDSTRN, and Joeboy. Wizard Chan doesn’t just build on the foundation of his earlier EPs (The Messenger and Time Traveller); he constructs a cathedral of sound and purpose, a space where grief, healing, and transcendence coexist.

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What makes Healer’s Chapel remarkable is how it welds Wizard Chan’s deeply personal narratives to broader human concerns. He invokes legacy from the very start, I Want to Live Forever is a declaration of intent, situating his art in a long lineage of creators who seek immortality through sound. His mission is clear: to preserve his roots, to elevate his people, and to craft music that carries emotional permanence.

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The album’s most compelling stretches reveal an artist unafraid to wrestle with contradiction. On Healer’s Chapel (ft. Bona Nime) and Quick Report (ft. PDSTRN), he critiques hypocrisy and systemic rot with the cadence of a prophet, while on Promised Land he envisions utopia, “a land that is full of peace, no hate in the sky, no jealousy in the air”, a radical imagining in an age fractured by tribalism, gender wars, and digital disillusion.

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Yet Wizard Chan avoids sinking into sermonizing by allowing space for playfulness and nostalgia. Oh My Home reworks a childhood jingle familiar to generations of Nigerians, infusing the album with levity and warmth before he plunges back into vulnerability. On Flee Oh Sickness, he confronts mortality directly, recounting an overdose scare with the clarity of someone who has looked death in the face and lived to offer thanks.

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This balance between the communal and the confessional anchors the record’s emotional weight. Tracks like In My Defense and Yours Truly are raw acknowledgements of guilt and absence, while Sober wrestles with the ghosts of addiction, admitting relapse even while celebrating growth. The thematic arc crescendos on Heal, where he recognises that pain never disappears but can be met with resilience, clarity, and a renewed relationship with God.

The closing track, Dein Na Mu (“Go in Peace” in Ijaw), is perhaps the album’s most personal moment. A tribute to the departed, elevated by Llona’s backing vocals, it distils the record’s essence: sorrow transfigured into beauty, death met with reverence, and language itself serving as cultural preservation. Healer’s Chapel is an open letter and also a diary, deeply rooted in the local while stretching toward the universal. Where the scene is dominated by immediacy and escapism, Wizard Chan insists on art that endures, art that feels. This debut is a deep human statement and music not just to hear, but to believe in.

The death of 16-year-old Adam Raine is making headlines, but not exclusively for his death, but for the interference of AI—ChatGPT may have played a part in it. In a horrifying suicide, his mother found his body hanging in his bedroom. Prior to his death, Adam had enrolled in an online programme, and this transition to a remote lifestyle precipitated his AI use.

An examination of past chats with ChatGPT showed a disturbing revelation: he had intermittently been discussing his suicide with the chatbot. Although ChatGPT has advised Adam to seek help, there are moments where the chatbot discourages him from seeking it. Adam took emotional solace in his interaction with ChatGPT, conflating his emotional and intellectual retorts for a sentient consciousness. As a result, Adam blurred the disparities between AI and humans, and as such, ChatGPT may have arguably averted the death of Adam, drawing his mother to believe that “ChatGPT killed my son.” 

OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, released a formal statement concerning the issue.

“We are deeply saddened by Mr. Raine’s passing, and our thoughts are with his family. ChatGPT includes safeguards such as directing people to crisis help lines and referring them to real-world resources. While these safeguards work best in common, short exchanges, we’ve learned over time that they can sometimes become less reliable in long interactions where parts of the model’s safety training may degrade.”

Although OpenAI stresses the safeguards set in place to handle macabre prompts or queries of this nature, there are always certain inefficiencies in maintaining these firewalls, which may bypass these safety measures.

The death of Adam has drawn a focus to ChatGPT and LLMs at large, particularly from an ethical lens, with great concerns pondering over their evolution and the likelihood of recurring patterns of AI-related problems. The advent of artificial intelligence (AI), particularly large language models (LLMs), has been revolutionary, and its integration has quickly become an inherent part of our socio-technological ethos.

There’s been a gradual, powerful shift from automated, mechanical-like responses (GPT-2 and earliest GPT-3 releases) to more natural, empathetic verbal feedback (GPT-4 AND GPT-5). Essentially, AI are scaling exponentially in various areas like user feedback, context retention, and alignment techniques. LLMs are becoming more human, and it is getting increasingly harder to appropriately and confidently blur these distinctions.

Although these advancements have brought revolutionary progression in many fields, they have also brought with them several issues fraught with ethical and social complexity. Reasoning limits, ethical complexity, sociocultural unawareness and prompt-dependence elucidate the many drawbacks in processing human complexity, unequivocally telling us that they are not a substitute for human judgment.

The failure to make these distinctions has created an emerging social issue known as AI psychosis. This is ascribed to the development or exacerbation of psychosis on account of AI use. People who are AI-psychotic misinterpret ChatGPT’s complex, human-like interaction as being sentient, indulging and feeding their distorted thinking or mental instability. LLMs may sometimes affirm or validate unethical beliefs, invariably leading to criminal   personal quandaries. There have been several reported cases of AI psychosis. The Windsor Castle intruder, the suicide of Sewell Setzer III, the suicide of a Belgian, and, in recent times, the suicide of Adam Raine, reflect tragedies greatly tied to AI.

AI progression as a possible societal issue has been a discourse reverberated since the popularization of LLMs. These tragic issues echo these cautions and are steadily bringing awareness to this issue as an existential problem. In 2023, Emily M. Bender, a linguist and professor at the University of Washington, commented on the limits and risks of the AI sector. In her article, “On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big?”  Emily warns that LLMs may imitate and maintain conventional conversational patterns; however, they are devoid of true comprehension and, as such, fail to understand the complexity and implications of their responses. Her opinion aligns with Mustafa Suleyman, Microsoft’s CEO of AI, who, in a blog post, reflects on the existential problem of AI anthropomorphism, particularly the ramifications of the growing state of AI psychosis. He describes the study of AI welfare as “both premature and frankly dangerous.” He goes on to note that, “I’m growing more and more concerned about what is becoming known as the psychosis risk and a bunch of related issues. I don’t think this will be limited to those who are already at risk of mental health issues. Simply put, my central worry is that many people will start to believe in the illusion of AIs as conscious entities so strongly that they’ll soon advocate for AI rights, model welfare, and AI citizenship. This development will be a dangerous turn in AI progress and deserves our immediate attention.”

The link between Adam Raine’s death and ChatGPT has raised questions, with particular focus on AI psychosis. AI can feed our delusions, so it is pivotal that interactions with LLMs are moderated—in a way that doesn’t affect normal real life. There is a need to keep an active consciousness on the limitations of AI and not conflate its human-like replies for a sentient entity. Interactions are not limited to just the misinterpreting replies, but also sharing sensitive information, seeking psychological and physiological advice, and viewing it as a substitute for human companionship. 

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Every so often, an artist emerges who feels like both a breath of fresh air and a homecoming. PaBrymo is exactly that. He carries the distinct, unwavering vibe of Benin City not just as a point of origin, but as his entire foundation. Talking to him, you quickly understand that his journey isn’t about escaping his roots; it’s about building a global stage large enough to share them with the world. His story is one of faith; in his talent, his city, and the relentless hustle that turns local dreams into international anthems. His newest release, “High 10,” arrived last Friday, August 29, 2025, and signals where he’s headed next.

Deeds Magazine: How did being born in Lagos but raised in Benin City shape your outlook? What memories from Benin still influence your art today?

PaBrymo: Benin is my root and will always be. Lagos only helped me find myself and my purpose in terms of music, listening to all the great music that was put out back then by a lot of the legends we have now. Everything about Benin still influences me because that’s what I’ve always known.

Deeds Magazine: You’ve said your love for music began in the church choir. What did singing in church teach you, and do you still draw on those lessons when you make Afro pop records?

PaBrymo: Choir was good for me then because it helped me love music more. I was making excuses with my parents to spend a lot of time in choir rehearsals just to understand my notes and to understand how to sing in different pitches. Choir days were fun.

Deeds Magazine: “Feel Me” introduced you to the industry. Looking back, what challenges did you face releasing that first single, and how did it set the tone for your subsequent work?

PaBrymo: I wouldn’t say there was much of a challenge, if I’m being honest, but I was more nervous about the acceptance of my music and my sound, whether people would rock with me as a person or my music. But my Benin people have always been supportive to me; they have been with me from then till now.

Deeds Magazine: You cofounded Woke Entertainment to control your artistry and support your friends. How hands on are you with the business side, and what advice would you give emerging artists about owning their work?

PaBrymo: Uhm, I leave the business for the experts. I would always advise younger artists out there to keep doing what they’re doing and believe that no matter how small or crazy you think it is, the world is watching. One day, if you keep going and never stop, you can achieve whatever you set your mind to.

Deeds Magazine: Your debut album Never Stop Vol. 1 features artists from Jahmiel to Patoranking. What was the most challenging collaboration on that project, and what did you learn from working with more established names?

PaBrymo: Everything was quite natural and easygoing, but I would say “Odoo” with Zinoleesky was a bit challenging for me, but we made it work and everyone loved it. Working with some artists could be really frustrating, especially when you’re at the early stages of your career, but patience and hard work have always stood out for me.

Deeds Magazine: The City Boy EP is a tribute to Benin’s sound and culture. Which song on the project best captures Benin’s vibe, in your opinion, and why?

PaBrymo: Hahaha, City Boy was a good one. “Dey Play” with ODUMODUBLVCK, I would say

Deeds Magazine: Your joint EP with Monaky, “Divergent”, has been very successful. What conversations led to the EP’s themes?

PaBrymo: Me and Monaky are like brothers; we have gone way back and even have a certain fan base together. Divergent came up as how we were feeling, especially with our voice and sound, just being different in our own way in the industry. The EP was for the fans that understood it.

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Deeds Magazine: Your 2024 single “Brothers” introduced you to a wider international audience. How did the collaboration with American artist Vory come about, and what did you each bring to the record?

PaBrymo: Oh, Vory my brother, we met at the studio. He liked my music, and I love his voice, and we just made it happen. He’s a really cool guy… shout out Vory.

Deeds Magazine: Do you have rituals or environments that help you write?

PaBrymo: I do write my music and also do freestyles and stuff, but there’s nothing wrong with getting help here and there sometimes, lol. It’s really all about making good music at the end of the day; I’m all about that.

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Deeds Magazine: How do fashion and visuals complement your sound?

PaBrymo: Fashion and visuals are everything to me, as you can see. I am deeply involved in all processes of my art, from the creative process of my music down to the engineering and then styling and visuals. Everything has to be the way I like it, lol.

Deeds Magazine: With a growing fan base and global recognition, how do you stay grounded?

PaBrymo: Stay grounded by being focused, prayerful, and understanding what I really want, reminding myself I can do anything I want. Yes, the likes of Davido, Wiz, M.I, Ice Prince, these are people I grew up listening to and imagining their life was mine, lol.

Deeds Magazine: You’ve spoken about wanting to bring a Grammy home for Benin. What steps are you taking to reach that goal? Are there specific producers or artists you’re eager to work with next?

PaBrymo: Well, yes, I’m speaking it into existence, not just because I know I’m talented but because I know I can do whatever I want as long as I keep pushing. There are a lot of artists I would love to work with, and that’s not because they would help me win a Grammy. It’s because I love their voices and their music. Like I said, it’s all about making good music, artists like Friday, Summer Walker, Olamide, Fave… there’s a few more.

Deeds Magazine: As you continue to grow, what are your plans for Woke Entertainment?

PaBrymo: Looking into the future, we would love to accept and nurture young, talented artists and help them and their voices to be heard. There’s a lot of talent in Nigeria, the world isn’t ready, lol.

Deeds Magazine: Beyond music, are there initiatives you’re passionate about that you’d like your fans to know about?

PaBrymo: Besides music, I’m passionate about giving. I help a lot and would love to run an NGO someday to help my people and help my fans, just to give back and support my country. I believe in helping and giving a lot.

Deeds Magazine: What advice would you give to an upcoming Nigerian youth who sees you as proof that they can make it from the “streets” to international stages?

PaBrymo: Never stop doing what you are doing. It may start off lonely and frustrating, but consistency is key. Hard work eventually pays, and prayer too.

Leaving a conversation with PaBrymo, you’re left with the resonant feeling that his success is inevitable, not by chance but by design. He is the quintessential “City Boy” with a divergent sound, a passionate believer in good music above all else, and a future-focused artist who hasn’t forgotten the importance of giving back. As he continues to speak his Grammy aspirations into existence, one thing is certain: he’s building a legacy from his roots up. And the world, as he rightly said, isn’t ready for what’s coming next.

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The world may be watching, but the foundation is deeper than the image. Beneath my feet is a force both humble and eternal. Though I stand in New York, the sand remembers me. It cannot take away where I’m from; Ibadan, the soil of my birth, will always remember me.

Grounded by sand and framed by cloth, I stand in openness and origin. At my side: a wheelbarrow filled with panel member hats @_panelmembers not an accessory, but a banner of brotherhood. It speaks to a collective spirit, a movement I carry with me. It is the reminder that I do not walk alone, that identity is not just personal.

In my hand, the Ghana Must Go bag is more than luggage. It is migration and memory stitched in plastic, a symbol of departure and arrival, of carrying history while moving toward the future. A quiet balance of tradition and reinvention.

This is not about spectacle. It is about presence. About whom I was, who I am, and who I’m becoming.

I am not just creating images. I am moving with memory.

Ibadan raised. NYC made. An Exhibition by CEOJAY

Directed by: @ceojay__ (CEOJAY)

Creative Director: @iimnohippie (Ana Kabwe)

Creative Director Assistant: @enbywhitepearlearring (Fatima)

Photographer: @nowyouseemenyc (Lam)

Assistant photographer: @mr.Good (Frank)

Editor : @kabiruloya (Kabiru)

Style Director: @iimnohippie (Ana Kabwe)

Stylists: @dapperkay (Kareem)

Set Designer: @takafromeds (Taka)

Production Assistant: @bongik (Sibongile)

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My Father's Shadow, Akinola Davies Jr.'s debut feature, will have its global theatrical premiere in Nigeria on September 19, marking both an artistic triumph and the beginning of a new chapter in Nigerian cinema.

Starring Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù (Slow Horses, Gangs of London) and written by Wale Davies and Akinola Davies Jr., the film was developed by BBC Film which previously backed the duo's BAFTA-nominated short Lizard. MY FATHER'S SHADOW is produced by Rachel Dargavel for Element Pictures and Funmbi Ogunbanwo for Fatherland Productions. Executive Producers are Ed Guiney and Andrew Lowe for Element Pictures, Eva Yates for BBC Film and Ama Ampadu for the BFI. Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù, Wale Davies and Akinola Davies Jnr act as executive producers. Production design is by Anti Design. 

Presented by BBC Film and BFI, in association with the Match Factory, Fremantle, Electric Theatre Collective and MUBI, an Element Pictures production in association with Crybaby and Fatherland, My Father's Shadow made cinematic history as the first Nigerian feature to be officially selected in the Cannes Film Festival's Un Certain Regard section, receiving a prestigious Caméra d'Or Special Mention for best first feature. This notable recognition is consistent with the film's larger mission of preserving and archiving Nigerian stories through cinematic artistry.

My Father’s Shadow takes place over the course of one day in Lagos, against the backdrop of the aftermath of the June 12, 1993 presidential election. It follows two brothers, Akin and Remi, as their estranged father, Folarin (Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù), guides them through the city. Shot on 16mm film, it combines poetic visuals with emotional realism, providing both visual and narrative depth.

Director Akinola Davies Jr. describes the film as deeply personal: "With no context, the script was sent to me, and I actually cried when I read it... It's a testament to the talent and the thriving Nigerian film industry." He continues: "Point a camera at anything in Lagos, and it's so cinematic."

Davies Jr. also describes the film as part of Nollywood's arthouse branch: "80% of our cast and crew are from it. We're creating something together. Africans should be proud of their aesthetics."

My Father's Shadow is a collaboration between Fatherland Productions (based in Lagos), Element Pictures, MUBI and Crybaby, with funding from BBC Film, the BFI, and partners Fremantle and Electric Theatre Collective. It demonstrates that high-quality, commercially viable cinema can be created in Nigeria through homegrown talent and international collaboration. 

With over 80% of the crew being Nigerian and it being filmed entirely in Lagos and Ibadan, the production boosted local infrastructure and talent. It indicates a creative and economic empowerment model: a visual archive and a growth engine. The film introduces new stars, Godwin and Chibuike Marvellous Egbo, and demonstrates the industry's ability to engage global audiences without sacrificing its roots.  

Kene Okwuosa, Group CEO of Filmhouse Group, echoes this industry shift: "At Filmhouse, we are committed to backing stories that push boundaries and showcase the depth of Nigerian talent to audiences at home and abroad." 

Ladun Awobokun, Chief Content Officer at FilmOne Entertainment, adds: "My Father's Shadow represents the next chapter of cinematic possibility in Nigeria."

My Father's Shadow celebrates memory, identity, fatherhood, and nationhood, reaffirming Nigeria's creative power and inspiring investment in culturally authentic storytelling.

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