Asa: Music, Femininity, and Defying Expectations

by 

Shalom Tewobola and Patrick Ezema

“Half the time, they said my music was horrible. I should sing what people understood. But in my heart, I knew where I wanted to go,” Asa says in an episode of Flow with Korty. 

From an early age, Asa knew where she wanted to go with her music, and despite facing pushback from her parents, the industry, and even society, she was going to achieve it. Born in Paris to a cinematographer father and a businesswoman mother, Bukola Elemide, better known as Asa, was always positioned for success. Her parents, who met in Lagos but married in Paris, gave birth to her before returning to Nigeria when she was two years old. Asa has been well aware of her musical prowess. After starting her studies in theatre at LASU, she left in her second year to attend Peter King’s College, a music school in Badagry. It was a bold move, but her focus, resilience, and blind faith in her craft enabled her to drop out of theatre and pursue her true passion 

After freelance performing in Lagos and doing background vocals, Asa met her manager, Janet Nwose, who introduced her to the talented music producer Cobhams Asuquo. With Asuquo’s help, Asa released her self-titled debut album, Asa (Asha) in 2007. While the album’s cover art, featuring Asa’s swinging dreads and happy face, might suggest a lighthearted piece, the opening lyrics of Jailer immediately dispel that notion: “I’m in chains / you’re in chains too.” The song represents Asa’s yearning for freedom and self-expression, challenging listeners to question their own sense of liberty and acknowledge the metaphorical chains that bind them—an activist sound in its own right. Jailer stands beside other powerful tracks like Fire on the Mountain, where Asa addresses the nation’s looming troubles that seem to go unnoticed, and Bibanke, a romantic ode to a lover. Despite spending extended periods in France, Asa’s command of the Yoruba language is evident in her music, as she masterfully bends and weaves it with percussion and Afro-soul influences. Songs like Bamidele showcase Asa’s ability to blend her cultural roots with thought-provoking lyricism and a soulful sound.

One of the most remarkable aspects of Asa is her detachment from the Nigerian music industry. Her individuality especially shines on her sophomore album Beautiful Imperfection (2011), where she channels the allure of jazz and folk. In Dreamer Girl, she sings about longing for a wonderful life, yearning for that potential future to come soon. Asa’s latest album, V, offered the rare instance of the singer plying the contemporary route with her choice of collaborators. Released in 2023 and primarily produced by P.Priime, she tapped Wizkid and the Cavemen while maintaining her distinctive sound and style-  a testament to her artistic growth and confidence.

As she has grown and evolved, her fashion and styling choices remain a reflection of her personality. Earlier in her career, while Asa basked in mid-tempo guitar rhythms and dispensed philosophical material about the bleak state of Nigeria and the world, she embodied an appropriate look: nondescript, almost androgynous, intending not to cause a distraction but to leave all the focus on her music. Being a woman in the music industry, especially in the days when it was even less popular, Asa had to challenge several of society’s preconceived, harmful notions. One of these was the inevitable slut-shaming, with some of this cruel gossip even emanating from her own family. “People think if you’re a female artist you’re sleeping around, so I had to prove that to family”, she told CNN in 2022. Therefore, as her career grew, she relegated her sexuality to the background. In the same interview, she talked about how she had to dress like a man. “I was very aware of my femininity, so when I went into studios, I had to wear baggy clothing, because I didn’t want to accentuate the fact that I was female. I didn’t want to bring attention to myself, I wanted to go there and do the job.”

Yet, a society determined to disrespect a woman will find means to do so, even if its means are illogical and contradictory. As her look tilted to the opposite side of her femininity, so did the controversy, and this time she was questioned about her gender and sexuality. “I’d have men comment, ‘Are you even a woman? What’s wrong with you?’” Famous women in the entertainment scene have to constantly keep a precise bearing as they navigate their social lives; steer too close to sexuality and be called loose, or lean too far from it and field concerns about sexual orientation. 

Already her family had not provided the biggest support at the outset. Her parents preferred a more professional endeavor for her, like law, while her mother in particular was scared that delving into the world of music meant slipping into decadence. “She thought going to the studio was sleeping around. And I would say ‘that’s the last thing I want to do right now, so I would have to prove to you that actually I’m going to the studio to work.’ So that was on my neck”, she said in an interview in 2021. She did not receive much support from her father either. “He was just there for saying ‘no daughter of mine will be a musician’.” In the end, she was able to win them over by being so successful that her chosen career could no longer be doubted, but before then was a lonely and tumultuous journey as she figured out the industry without their support. 

These obstacles that she had to painstakingly navigate are the defining experiences of the artist and woman we know as Asa. They are the reason she is so vocal about women’s increased involvement in music. She knows that the paucity of female acts is not due to a lack of interest but a series of institutionalized barriers that only women have to cross. When she contemplates the commonly-passed narrative of women not helping themselves in the industry, she insists that the industry hasn’t done nearly enough to help its women in the first place.

Like many other girls who grew up in Nigeria, Asa’s path was marked before she was born, and the supposed highlight was the role she would have to play in someone else’s life. She was “groomed to be a wife.” “You have to learn how to cook for your husband, you have to be sweet for your husband, and I was like, ‘Am I going to do all this for one person? And I don’t even know who the person is!’.” Now 41, unmarried, happy, and very successful, she stands as a flagpole for women who are contemplating breaking out of society’s prewritten trajectory but fearing what can be achieved outside it. Her answer: everything. She is one of our country’s biggest and longest-reigning artists: her latest single, Odo, arrives eighteen years after she received the Headies’s Next Rated crown at its inaugural 2006 edition. Asa is proof that women can not only survive in male-dominated landscapes but in fact rule, and she does not want the next generation of women, in any field, to constantly have to fight to get the chance to prove their prowess.