SONIC MAG | SOMEWHERE BETWEEN LETTING GO AND HOLDING ON.

On a Lagos Island rooftop, a conversation with Adoks about love, uncertainty, and the real-life emotions behind “Hold On”.

Words by Oladayo Feranmi Taiwo

Photography by Nony Vibez

The first drink is rarely just a drink. Sometimes, it is a small act of surrender: a loosening of the shoulders, a softening of the room, a quiet agreement to let the evening happen as it pleases.

On a rooftop somewhere on Lagos Island, the night was coming into itself. Cocktails sweated against their glasses. The city flickered in the distance, all restless lights and unfinished business. Music occupied the spaces between conversations, while cameras waited patiently for their moment to turn ordinary life into something worth keeping.

That was where the night started.

Not with an interview.

Not with a list of questions.

Just a couple of drinks, some conversation, and the kind of laughter that makes a camera feel less like a camera.

The rooftop became a set soon enough. Content for Hold On was being made in pieces; photographs here, videos there, a few takes repeated until they felt right. Nothing seemed rushed. The night had found its own rhythm, and there was no reason to interrupt it.

Adokoniyi Oluwatoyin, better known as Adoks, moved through it with the ease of someone who wasn't trying too hard to look like an artist.

He was dressed in black, from his shirt to his trousers, with Crocs grounding the look somewhere between nonchalance and studied indifference. His hair had been freshly plaited; black sunglasses obscured whatever the evening wasn't yet entitled to see. Gold rings flashed whenever his hands moved, catching little conspiracies of light, while a choker sat close to his neck like a full stop at the end of a sentence he hadn't finished speaking.

Black on black can be a refusal to explain yourself. On Adoks, it felt like one.

The gold did the talking. The sunglasses kept their counsel. His plaits framed a face that seemed perfectly content to leave a few questions unanswered. Nothing was fighting for attention, and somehow, everything held it.

There is a difference between an outfit that has been put together and one that has found its person. Adoks wore the latter. Even the Crocs felt like a quiet act of rebellion against the solemn business of getting dressed for the camera. Style, after all, is not always about adding something. Sometimes it is knowing exactly what not to bother with.

Eventually, the cameras became less important.

The cocktails were nearly gone.

The shoot was winding down.

And somewhere between the last photographs and the walk back into conversation, the night became something else.

An interview, almost by accident.

Maybe that was the right way to talk to Adoks.

Because Hold On itself didn't begin with a grand plan.

It began with feeling.

“I just wanted it to feel like me,” he says, speaking about the kind of music he wants to make. Emotional. Melodic. Authentic. Music people can actually feel themselves inside.

For him, honesty isn't a marketing strategy. It is the starting point.

He isn't interested in forcing himself into whatever sound happens to be moving fastest. He wants the person behind the record to remain visible; the confusion, the uncertainty, the relationships, the things that make sense only after you've had enough time to sit with them.

And Hold On came from exactly that place.

A relationship wasn't going the way he wanted it to.

He was trying to act fine.

His mind wasn't buying it.

Sometimes the body knows before the mouth does. Sometimes you can say you're okay ten times and still not believe yourself.

So he took it to the studio.

His producer, stubborn vibes, encouraged him to stop overthinking and put the intentions, the feelings, the confusion into the record. Whatever was happening in his head had already followed him into the room.

He just had to let it out.

“I put the emotions, the confusion, the relationship drama into the record.”

And suddenly, something personal had somewhere to live.

That is perhaps the strange thing about songwriting.

You can spend days trying to explain yourself to one person and fail.

Then you put the same feeling over a melody, give it a rhythm, and suddenly someone you've never met understands exactly what you meant.

That is what Hold On became.

A personal moment disguised as a song.

A piece of relationship drama that could easily become somebody else's relationship drama.

Adoks laughs at the irony of it.

The very things you thought were yours alone can become the things strangers sing back to you.

He doesn't force inspiration, either.

If something affects him, it can find its way into his music. A conversation. A relationship. A challenge. A random moment that refuses to leave his head.

Sometimes he can't explain what he's feeling normally.

So he puts it in a song.

Perhaps that is why Hold On feels less like an attempt to manufacture emotion and more like a document of one.

The record captures someone trying to hold together a feeling that is already beginning to slip through his hands.

And yet, He doesn't want the song to become a cage.

If anything, it is a foundation.

He is still experimenting. Still learning. Still discovering which parts of himself belong in the music.

He doesn't want to be placed inside one sound and left there.

There is an awareness in the way he talks about growth, the understanding that a debut shouldn't have to explain an entire artist.

It should simply introduce you.

And if Hold On is the introduction, He wants the rest of the story to keep changing.

He wants a stronger catalogue. Bigger collaborations. More performances. A wider audience. A sound that keeps stretching without losing its centre.

But underneath all of that ambition is something simpler.

He wants to be himself.

Because nobody else has lived his exact life.

Nobody else has his memories, his relationships, his mistakes, his particular way of seeing things.

Authenticity, he says in his own way, cannot really be faked.

The industry has taught him that music is only one part of the work.

There is branding.

Promotion.

Content.

Networking.

Audience connection.

The constant learning that happens behind the scenes, long after the song has been exported and uploaded.

Making the record is the romantic part.

Everything after that is the machinery.

And machinery can be heavy.

There is pressure, too.

But he doesn't seem interested in pretending there isn't.

If anything, he wants the pressure to move him.

To push rather than paralyse.

Outside music, his life isn't particularly complicated. He spends time with people, hosts events, watches things, thinks, rests, starts again.

And somewhere in all of that, music is usually still sitting in the corner of his mind.

Even when he's not actively making it.

He describes himself as someone who can be surprisingly quiet, more observant than people might expect.

The artist in him isn't always the loudest person in the room.

Sometimes he's just watching.

Listening.

Taking things in.

Maybe that's where some of the songs begin.

Not at the microphone, but in the moments before it.

A conversation.

A relationship.

A strange afternoon.

Something somebody says without thinking.

A feeling that arrives without an invitation.

Life leaves little notes everywhere.

Adoks is learning how to read them.

By the time the conversation reaches its end, the rooftop has changed.

The night is deeper now.

The city below has become a collection of lights.

The cameras are no longer the centre of attention.

And Hold On feels less like a debut than a doorway.

For anyone discovering Adoks through the song, he hopes they hear someone who isn't afraid to be honest. Someone who doesn't have everything figured out. Someone willing to turn his own experiences into something other people can carry.

And perhaps that is the real reason the song works.

Because holding on is rarely as simple as the phrase makes it sound.

Sometimes it means staying.

Sometimes it means hoping.

Sometimes it means trying one more time when you're not sure there should be a one more time.

Sometimes it is simply the name we give to the period before we finally understand what we need to let go of.

Adoks doesn't claim to have the answer.

He has the song.

And for now, that might be enough.

The night ends the same way it began, without forcing anything.

A few more conversations.

A few more photographs.

The last of the drinks.

Then everyone leaves with something different from what they arrived with.

For Adoks, it is the beginning of a chapter, he hopes will outlive the moment that created it.

Music with style.

Music with feeling.

Music that can exist beyond him and still find somebody years later.

Maybe that is the real thing worth holding on to.

Not the moment itself.

But what the moment leaves behind.