Oby Onyioha

Born in Lagos and connected to Nkporo in Abia State, Oby Onyioha grew up in eastern Nigeria before emerging on the country’s pop scene in the early 1980s. She developed a repertoire at the intersection of pop, disco and boogie, with dance tracks driven by electronic textures and the melodic sensibility typical of that period. Her career began in 1981 with the album I Want to Feel Your Love, written and produced by Lemmy Jackson, at the time when she became the first artist signed to Time Communication Limited. Oby Onyioha followed with Break It in 1984, moving toward a more rhythmic continuity rooted in the urban Nigerian styles of the era. After those early records, her music continued to circulate through several compilations devoted to Nigeria’s boogie, funk, pop and disco scenes from the late 1970s to the early 1980s, which firmly enshrined her in that musical history. After a long hiatus, Oby Onyioha announced her return to music in 2015.