By Ayo Onikoyi

When the duo of Row and Zuwa of ROZE stormed Nigeria in January to announce their readiness to take the music scene by storm, not too many people took them seriously even with their banging single ‘The Whole Night’ getting louder and louder by the day.

Roze

Now that the two brothers, sons of House of Representatives member, Hon. E.J Agbonayinma, are out with the video masterly crafted by ace video producer, Clarence Peters, it seems the naysayers are beginning to realise these two brothers, with their American accent and African flavour, are the genuine article.

The song ‘A Whole Night’ is purely a love song with a wild and party flip to it. “The message is about girls, the clubs, youth life; most of  it has this club kind of beat, the type that makes you dance crazy and it’s what Nigerians like,” says one of the brothers when talking about the song.

It appears Clarence Peters got the message just as well and brought his craft to bear as he aesthetically infused romance and a bit of eroticism to make the video a delight to watch. The video, not surprisingly, has since been enjoying rave reviews since its release on Monday, April 23, 2018.

It is hard to pin ROZE to any particular kind of music genre because their versatility, their exposure and musical influences would not allow that and this much was explained by them in the press conference of January that held at Eko Hotel and Suites.

“We’re not really fit for any genre; we produce any music that sounds good to people and to ourselves especially; it doesn’t matter if it’s hip-hop, afro beat, rock or country music, if it sounds good, its music.   We incorporate whatever appeals to us. We’re not like people who like to stick to one sound their entire careers, because if you stick to one sound, you’ll not have the ability to enter another sound. It’s like saying, I’m a rapper and I’m going to rap my entire life; you’re not doing yourself or your talent justice, so we don’t want to restrict ourselves,” they chorused.

Zuwa on his part explained what inspired the single ‘The Whole Night’, saying, “It was a crazy story. It was a phrase I said to someone and we were just free-styling around it and before you know it we entered this mode that everybody was just singing and I just came out with it. I wrote it down and when I’m by my TV or playing video games, stuff come to me and I put them down and started developing it and we came together to create something. We didn’t know it would be good but while testing it, Mekoyo, who was helping us out, heard it and said this is good and we need to push it.”

Born Eghosa Rodney Agbonayinma (Row) and Osazuwa Michael Agbonayinma (Zuwa) in Houston, Texas, January 11, 1998 and July 30, 1999 respectively they are now studying Petroleum Engineering and Architecture at the University of Houston and Houston Community College in Texas, United States of America respectively.

In their high school, Immaculate Conception College (ICC), both brothers were known for their musical talent in their class. Zuwa was known in his set to be one of the best rappers they had, while Row was known to be one of the best vocalist. Ever since their childhood, both brothers have had a passion for music and affinity with several genres such as hiphop, R&B, reggae, country and many others.