Lánre

Lánre is an Atlanta singer and songwriter whose first memory of music is rewinding a Lion King tape at two years old.

He came into the McBastard Studio for Salty's Live Music, the music side of the SALTYmf GOAT Podcast, and played two songs before anybody asked him a question. Brad had spent the night before listening to him on Spotify with his kids. What Lánre said he liked about the setup was that the performance felt closer to a rehearsal than a session, the players looking at each other to catch the hits, with no media company standing over them making sure every take came out clean. It turned out he and Brad had lived about a mile apart for most of his life.

His great grand uncle is Ebenezer Obey, one of the biggest gospel artists to come out of Nigeria, and his father toured with him as a boy. Once his parents saw the bug in him they went all in. His mother drove him to auditions in New York and put him in choir schools. Both of them are entrepreneurs, his mother ran a daycare for over 30 years and his father is a sales engineer with his own business, so when he told them he was releasing music they told him to get an LLC and build a first year budget. His EP Up All Night collects whatever happened to him at night. Strangers came out of an ex who came back into town during the pandemic. What Happens Next started at Fetch with his dog and was written by Clint James, a folk artist in LA, off a five minute Zoom call. The first version was Lánre and a banjo.

The cost is the timeline and the isolation. Early on a fraternity brother in the industry broke it into chunks for him. Years one and two you get good. Three to five you start seeing money and a manager. Then five to ten. Lánre was sitting in year one doing the math on ten years, and he is in year five now. Friends who used to text him about nothing check in at birthdays, and he says he needs that more now than he did then. He also thinks the timing protected him. He wanted all of this at 14, writing demos in his mother's room, and he does not believe the version of himself that existed then could have carried what turns up every day now.

Two years into his career he got the Lion King tattoo, so that when things got loud he would have something on his arm reminding him what he had always wanted to do. He does not chase fame. He says if someone offered him a residency singing in a hut in Honolulu, nobody would ever see him again. When Fetch gave him an opening, he built an artist showcase series for the background singers and bass players who keep asking him how he got in, and the artists keep 100 percent of the ticket sales.