Tobe Nwigwe

One Liner: Houston rapper with a great range of voices who will fight you when Jesus won't.

Wikipedia Genre: Hip-hop/rap
Home: Houston

Poster Position: 4
Both Weekends.  Saturday.

Thoughts: Huh.  Yeah, I remember this guy.  No clue what he is doing on the 4th line of the poster, with a relatively low stream count and (and far as I can tell) very low name recognition.  HIs second-most popular song is funny.  But I'm still not sure how this isn't just a curiosity in the middle of the lineup.  [edit, this was written before I really dug in, and I still find it weird that he is so high, but he is good]

Tobechukwu Dubem "Tobe" Nwigwe is from the Alief neighborhood of Houston.  You pronounce his last name like nuh-wee-gweh.  He is apparently married to a woman named Fat.  Wikipedia says that he was a good football player at the University of North Texas and was eyeing an NFL career before an injury stopped those dreams.  If you want to see him doing some sweet football drills, I'm here to supply you with your thing:

When the pandemic was kind of kicking off, a friend asked me if I had heard of this guy, and he was very pleased with himself when I had never heard of him.  LOOK HERE, JON, SPOTIFY ADDS 40,000 FLIPPING SONGS A DAY TO THEIR DATABASE!  I CAN'T KEEP UP WITH ALL OF THIS!  Anyway, thought I'd give it a shot, and tried the Pandemic Project, a six song collection from 2020.  Its pretty okay.  A few quibbles.  First, the thirty minute track at the end, what the hell?  Stop it.  Second, and I'm probably about to step in something here, but I feel like the Breonna Taylor bit at the beginning has become more about attracting attention to yourself than actually doing anything good for her or her family.  Like the grand jury is going to hear this obscure ass track and be like "oh, yeah, until I heard this 42 second track that just repeats "Arrest the Killers of Breonna Taylor," I never would have considered it otherwise!"  Feels like something more factual would have been more useful and less self-serving.  Third, he's stealing Pusha T's "yoouggh" sound.  Stop that too.  BUT, aside from that, his flow on these tracks is good, and the final real song "Try Jesus" makes me giggle.  "Try Jesus!  Don't Try Me!  'Cause I Throw Hands!"  That is his third-most streamed track at 3.6 million streams.

That being said, this little EP didn't have much to it or any great beats (obviously not that track, but even the other ones that are actual rap tracks).  I was slightly interested, but I needed more.

His discography has a bunch of albums - Originals, More Originals, Three Originals, Fouriginals, Cincoriginals, and several live albums.  Which is an odd lineup of albums.  The most streamed of them all is the opening track of Cinco, from 2020, which features his wife, whose name is still Fat.  "Eat," with 5.3 million streams.

That video is absolute perfection - makes the song 38 times better.  Them partying when she says they'll be on a first name basis with Beyonce is amazing.  I just decided that I like him 73 times more than I did before.  Got a little of that Kendrick talking rapper thing, but then he goes into other modes as well.  "FYE FYE" is a little too screamy to be all that enjoyable.  On "JUICE" he brings in Paul Wall for some Houston sound and it's cool.  He can change his voice into all sorts of different tones and sounds, which is very entertaining.  He also rolls out a bunch of good collabs on the Cinco album - Bun B, EARTHGANG, Big KRIT, Royce Da 59, and more.  So maybe he's more noticed than I thought.  Just weird that none of his songs are getting streams.  And again, another long ass final track of meandering information.  Ten minutes.  Shut up!

The fun thing about the live albums is that you can tell he's got an actual band back there jamming along with him.  Way more fun than a rapper with a laptop.  And they do some cool stuff with crowd interaction, or like chanting like Outkast during "WILDLINGS."  But, that most recent live album is freaking two hours and forty-two minutes long.  It's a lot.

Back when he was coming up, he started by posting an original song and video every single Sunday.  That is a really hardcore commitment to creating - you have an off week but you still have to publish that new track.  He usually includes his wife and a friend and producer in each track (Nell Grant).  He also got a key shoutout at one point when Michelle Obama included "I'm Dope" on her workout playlist.

I went back to try out the initial Originals as well, and it's good stuff too.  Relatively chill beats but he sounds like he's comfortable as hell throwing his rhymes on top of them.  The top track from that is called "JOCKIN," with 1.8 million streams.

Those are his homies in the video.  Nell on the left and Fat on the right.  Lyrically, that is top notch stuff.  Now I'm getting annoyed that no one is listening to this stuff, despite my statement up above that I was confused for him to be this high on the poster.  Why is everyone just listening to stupid mumbler who aren't saying anything, when this guy is out there rapping clever streams about abstaining from sex or unfollowing him if you feel the need to write an essay in his comments.  More Originals, from 2018, has a little more singing than I want to hear.  But it also have Michelle's workout track, which we should peep.  6.6 million streams.

(Angelic Run)  Wait, why are you working out to that track?  It's cool that Erykah Badu called him dope and all, but that track isn't hyping me up to run another mile or pump another rep.

Whatevs, man.  I've enjoyed my day bumping these tunes.  I'd go watch it live.