If you meet Llona and you don't already know he's an artist, chances are he will tell you he's a farmer.

It is the kind of answer that stops you for a second  , because he actually means it. Or perhaps, it is just something he says.  And once you spend enough time listening to him talk about his new album, "On The Road," you start to understand why.

Patience. Farming is patient work. It requires you to keep tending to something even when you cannot see the result yet. And this  is also the philosophy behind Llona’s  sophomore project.‍

The Concept of Motion 

Ask Llona what "On The Road" means and he will not give you a straight answer about touring or travel. He will tell you it is about motion itself, as a discipline, as a way of staying alive to your own work.

"You cannot tap in motion if you're not moving," he says. "You cannot sit and tap motion. We have to be on the road. Consistency, because that's all I have."

It sounds simple until you realize how literally he means it. The recreational vehicle that anchors the album's visual identity barely leaves Lagos, he admits it himself, barely holding a chuckle in.The vehicle is not really about geography. It is a symbol for a mental state, for staying in forward motion even when the body is standing still.

"I wanted to give my own POV of what I see," he explains. "On the road means I'm outside, I'm seeing different faces. I needed them to see what I was seeing, so they'll be able to feel it just like I did."

He was, in the literal sense, on the road for seven months while building this project. And he is careful to note that the motion did not come at the cost of care, it moved alongside it. "I just keep the motion going. I'm inside, but at the same time, I'm making sure that I'm not moving too fast from them. I'm making sure I'm healing while I'm moving, while at the same time, go, go."

There is an unspoken wisdom in that line that repeats throughout the conversation:the idea that healing and progress are not sequential. "If I have to wait for me to be at peace with whatever is going on with me before I, I don't think, I think I'm gonna have to wait forever. So I just keep the motion going."

The Road To Llona

Before there was Llona, there was Tooclasiq, a version of himself he describes with a kind of gentle distance now. "When I came in, even with Tooclasiq, I was not sure of what I wanted. So I think when I transcended into Llona, I figured a lot of stuff out."

“Figuring it out” happened far from the industry entirely. He worked as a security officer before Lagos. He taught nursery and kindergarten, the only male teacher at the school, standing in as support staff for the lead teacher, helping small children rehearse a marching parade for an interhouse sports day with none of the proper equipment. "No matter how, even though we didn't have the equipment and the resources, we still did our best," he says.

And then there is the lore of the phone. To shoot the video for his song "Comforter," recorded in the north after what he describes as a spiritual pull toward Kano, he sold his phone to fund it. He stayed in the north for three months, and it became the period where his real questions surfaced. "Why am I giving Lagos what they already have? Why am I not giving them where I'm from, and how I'm built?" That question, more than any single record, is what pushed him to stop performing an aesthetic and start building from something original to himself.

 Afro Depression Or Not?

For an artist known for emotionally rich, introspective songwriting, Llona pushes back hard against one label in particular.

"I hate that," he says, when the phrase Afro depression comes up. "I don't sing music for you to be depressed and wallow in your depression. I don't go to the studio because I want to go and sing a depressed song. That's weird."

It is the sharpest moment in the entire conversation, and a necessary corrective. His music sits with difficult feelings, but the intent, as he describes it, was never to keep listeners stuck inside them. If anything, the through line of "On The Road" argues the opposite, that movement itself is what carries you out of the heaviness, not around it.

He is candid, too, about the quieter periods people mistook for silence. "You get people thinking I stopped working," he says. "But there was a lot I needed to figure out and make sure we were in place and able to put in place for my people." He talks about wanting his fans to know they were not just streamers, they were concertgoers, ticket buyers, people willing to travel to experience the music live. Building that infrastructure took time the internet does not always account for.

The Twelve Disciples of Llona

Every Llona album, he says, has twelve tracks, and that number is not incidental.

"My own songs are my own disciples," he says. "Send them to the world to go preach. The fact that there are twelve in number, I think they're going to age well. And even when I'm gone, far, far gone, they'll still continue telling the world about my gospel."

It is a striking way to talk about a tracklist, less like a collection of songs and more like a mission. Each record carries a piece of him outward, built to keep speaking long after the album cycle ends, long after he is not the one doing the talking.

That is the real meaning behind "On The Road." Not a tour, not a vehicle, not even a genre. A commitment to staying in motion, sending the work ahead of himself, and trusting it to keep moving once he lets go.

Llona has already told us who Anger Management represents. The other eleven, he's kept close. So we're turning it over to you: which disciple do you think each track on "On The Road" carries? Drop your picks, we might just run the best ones in the next issue.

                                     

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