The great thing about sound is the wide variety of genres and flow it has when it comes to the way it is expressed. Artists get to make it their playground to explore and combine different variations together like puzzle pieces until they make one massive symphonic picture.

Eze Egbukichi, a Fanshawe grad from the Business Analysis program, has been a part of London’s hip-hop scene since arriving at Fanshawe. He also goes by the stage name The Finesser and is a self-made rapper with a career spanning three continents, starting in his hometown of Lagos, Nigeria.

 From a young age, he was exposed to different types of beats and melodies from Nigerian music his father would play at family parties.

“Anyone who grew up in Lagos will tell you music is a really huge part of the culture there and you can’t go anywhere without hearing music,” Egbukichi said. “So my dad would have parties every weekend and that’s how I got my sense of rhythm already instilled in me like from cultural roots.”

Egbukichi started his journey in music by rapping and singing, teaching himself in his childhood bedroom, as a way to correct his speech impediment.

“My main goal was to improve my speech clarity and audibility and I practiced speaking slowly, which I still do today. Now, I’ll often rap over my favorite songs to develop my cadence and flow which I then apply those skills to my original music,” said Egbukichi.

At the age of 10, Egbukichi moved to France where he got his foothold in creating rhythms and the underground scene. It was there that he got to enhance his exposure to music by absorbing the modern cultural mixing pot that is Paris.

“I got the chance to experiment because that’s where I met the first people who took music seriously, with a studio in their room, like they had back then,” said Egbukichi.

As he got older, Egbukichi started to feel that rap was the better outlet, as he felt that the genre gave him more creative freedom as an artist. By his mid-teens, he moved from France to the town of North Bay, Ont.

This move is what offered a new opportunity for Egbukichi to experience the North American hip-hop scene on a deeper level. Unlike other rappers who draw inspiration from mainstream artists, the 22-year-old said he likes to draw inspiration from artists he feels are more “modern.”

“Everyone expects me as a rapper to say, Jay-Z, Kanye, but I feel like that’s a given. I want to give more modern, you know, examples, guys like Lil Yachty, Kid Leroy. I draw my inspiration from a lot of places,” said Egbukichi.

Other bands like the New York-based Infinity Song have influenced Egbukichi’s creative process with the sound of soft rock. He also likes to mix and match his lyrics to different genres and experiment with art through those creative channels.

“On my own time I’ve made my own rock-esque beats with hard guitars and started learning electric guitar for that reason,” said Egbukichi.

From the start of his career to where he stands now, The Finesser credits much of his creative foundation by drawing inspiration from all the unique and diverse cultures of the world which give him the tools to be creative and cultivate his own sound.

“I have a book of all my rhymes from when I was 12 years old and I’ll just look back occasionally and read a song I made when I was 14 and say, ‘Damn, I’ve really come a long way,’” said Egbukichi.