![]() “It wasn’t every week, but when the main people weren’t there, I would do what I could do.”īack then, his music tastes ranged from Dipset to Justin Bieber and, now that he’s making hits of his own, he credits his label as being the perfect partners. “Me and my family went to church on Sundays and while my mum was doing the praise and worship, I’d play the drums,” he says. ![]() His mum was a nurse and his dad a computer engineer and, growing up in Edmonton as the middle child of three, his first taste was playing drums at school and at church. “I need to get back on my fitness.”Ĭhelsea fan Wayne has always been into football, but music quickly followed. ![]() “I’m still recovering from playing football the other day, my body is so weak,” he admits. ![]() We catch up on a Saturday evening in November and Wayne (real name Dennis Junior Odunwo) is enjoying a quiet night at home. And the success keeps building: his Top 5 debut album Green With Envy (18,397 sales) features the hit singles Wow and Wid It, and the rapper also appeared on a remix of Ed Sheeran’s global smash Bad Habits. But really, it is the coming to fruition of Wayne’s team’s work in turning him into one of the most important artists in British music. This year, he has proven to be a real breakout star.”Īt first glance, the success of Body may appear to be a simple example of a good song naturally doing well commercially. “He’s got an incredible sense of what will work in the marketplace and knows how to capture the attention of the public. “Tion has continued to cross over into the mainstream while staying true to his unique sound and voice,” Harlow tells Music Week. Internationally, Body has topped the charts in Australia, Ireland and New Zealand, and reached the Top 10 in Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland.īody, clearly, is a huge deal, and Warner Music UK CEO Tony Harlow is delighted that it was Atlantic that led the charge. The song has been streamed half a billion times and counting and viewed over 5.5 billion times on TikTok. A remix was released shortly after the original, which helped propel Body to a UK No.1 in May. What happened next has emerged as a clear template of how to roll out the perfect single campaign. With instantly recognisable and quotable lines such as: ‘ English girl named Fiona, African girl, Adeola…’, the song started building traction within the first week of its March release, especially on TikTok. With 887,551 UK sales (OCC), the addictive tune has become a certified anthem, almost like a love letter of British youth culture to the rest of the world. The success that 28-year-old North London-born rapper Wayne has managed to achieve over the past two years is not only significant for his own career, but for the UK music scene as a whole. Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock this past year, you’ll be aware that one of the biggest songs to drop in 2021 has been Tion Wayne and Russ Millions’ No.1 drill sensation Body. Music Week meets the MC, alongside his managers, Warner Music UK CEO Tony Harlow, and Atlantic’s Austin Daboh and Rich Castillo, to chart the history of a campaign that changed the course of music culture for good. It's nominated in thr Song Of The Year category at the BRITs. In 2021, few success stories were more remarkable than Tion Wayne’s, a UK rap breakthrough powered by the success of the platinum-selling Body, which became the first-ever drill track to reach No.1.
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