Iniko - "The Awakening"

It's not an agenda; it's reality

Coming into 2025, there are a few debut albums that I’ve been anticipating, but only two that I could name off the top of my head without needing to consult my (extensive) notes and lists.

One of those names was Iniko.¹

Iniko is one of those inherently enigmatic artists — they surrounds themself with this otherworldly aura and a mystical facade which hearkens both to the past (with traditional African trappings) and the future (with space-era imagery and ideals which transcend the current political climate). They’re an openly queer black artist — the polar opposite of Jason Aldean singing about sundown towns; the fact that Aldean’s song features (and glorifies) lace-thin threats of violence against those who look, act, or think differently, and was his first #1 song on the Billboard Hot 100, underscores the fact that people in these minority communities feel that they are under attack.² This is what led Iniko to state in an interview with Buzzfeed last year: “It’s not an agenda. It’s reality.”

This reality means that any conversation around Iniko as an artist must be inherently “political”. Be aware of that as you proceed. This is because certain individuals in our society have opted to “politicize” how some people identify themselves. That identity cannot be removed from the music Iniko creates, though, as the below two principles will always hold true:

1. We cannot separate the art from the artist; and

2. No work of art, in any medium, is ever created in a vacuum.³

When prompted by Buzzfeed in the interview linked above, Iniko confesses that there was a time when they were afraid to be open about their identity:

Absolutely. When I started artistically developing at 27, the biggest thing that was hindering me was my confidence. I was going to a Baptist church and an independent, fundamental Christian school and had been told during the developmental stages of my life that who I was was not really who I was. You know, "That's evil. You'll go to hell for that." It led me to repress my true identity and made me feel like my gifts were not mine.

Any time I would get a compliment, I'd shy away from it. It started trickling into my performances. But once I started to be more public about who I am artistically, I was surprised to see how many people reached out to me. They were coming from all walks of life and appreciated me for me. It became much easier to continue being myself. It's still very hard. I get a lot of transphobic comments today. But I'm also reaching so many people.

Their music now fundamentally embraces their identity. They express themself unapologetically through their music. There’s a fierce confidence in everything they’ve put out over the last couple of years, starting with “The King’s Affirmation” in 2022 — to the point that there’s a hint of braggadocio in the lyrics of several songs. But it goes beyond just your typical self-aggrandizing statements — the bold statements of self-importance are meant to serve as buoys for others in Iniko’s broader community.

Which brings us to the artist, themself.

Researching Iniko isn’t easy — they just don’t have a huge footprint yet, despite the viral success. They do have an Instagram account, but I can’t really browse it for tidbits since deleting my own.

So I don’t know Iniko’s real name, but I do know they were born and raised in Brooklyn and that their preferred pronouns are they/them. I hear some of you asking, ‘wait, how do you know that ‘Iniko’ isn’t their real name?’ The answer, of course, is that I do not know for certain, but it does seem like it was deliberately chosen for its meaning:

“Born During Troubled Times”

The name is of Yoruba origin, and if these aren’t ‘troubled times’, I don’t want to know what is.

The name is meant to instill or inspire a sense of perseverance. Determination. And, for Iniko, that seems to have come to fruition.

Iniko has been actively releasing music since about 2018, at the least, but they didn’t break out until the aforementioned “The King’s Affirmation” in 2022. Even that song, though, pales in comparison to the behemoth success of 2023’s “Jericho”. It’s possible that you never heard the former, but consuming any social media with any audio inclusion in the last ~18 months has been incredibly likely to feed you something with “Jericho” sooner or later.

It blew up in a big way. Not everybody loved it, of course. There are always detractors. But one of those detractors had to make a Reddit thread to confirm that they weren't the only one, which speaks to how universal the love for the song has been.

“Jericho” is a good song to look at to start defining Iniko’s style. It has become a fairly definitive piece at this point, and is wildly unique. I’ve seen some credit the ethereality of Iniko’s vocals for this, but really I think it’s more down to a combination of rhythm and an inability to remain in the vicinity of a single note for longer than a beat or two. The vocal gymnastics on display here are wild.

Iniko’s music is clearly poppy, first and foremost — Indie Pop and Folk Pop feel appropriate; the latter due to the clear African and World influences which appear pretty regularly. In an interview with Archer, Iniko states that her father was eclectic, listening to a variety of “specific artists and genres…from The Eagles, to world music and then Beyonce – and I never understood how he could enjoy them all together.” Naturally, Iniko listened to these varied influences alongside him. Now, the music she creates takes these diverse stylistic influences and distills them into something new — and it often sounds incredibly unique.

Not always, of course. In the Buzzfeed interview, she lists a few more artists who she considers to be strong influences, but she pauses to emphasize that “[t]he constant inspiration was Michael Jackson.” That comes through powerfully in “Icarus”, for example — from the beat to the lingering synth to the vibrato-laden verses. It sounds so much like a Jackson song that I felt the need to search to see if it was a deep-cut cover.

“Icarus” is followed by “333”, which still feels Jackson-esque in the vocal line, but the accompaniment is a lively Disco vibe. But the song uses dystopic imagery of enslavement and authoritarianism. It’s an interesting clash, and frankly I’m still working to dissect the lyrics on this one.

Circling back to trying to describe the album as a whole, then, we have this poppy base with a strong Jackson influence. Jackson, himself, has had a laundry-list of genric labels applied to his music over the years, which means that any of those could also pop up, at any time, in any of Iniko’s songs — Soul, R&B, Disco, Rock, Funk, and Dance-pop, to name a few.

Even then, there are some things which are hard to label, such as the love song “Eden” — it utilizes acoustic piano and Iniko’s vocals wax into pseudo-operatic mode frequently. It doesn’t carry the same sort of galactic mysticism as much of the rest of the album, especially in comparison to “Marisol”, another love song which immediately follows it.

And that’s really The Awakening’s major problem — it does sound more like a compilation of songs than a cohesive album. To be fair, it’s far from the first album to have this issue, and it’s actually pretty common for debut albums.

Several songs make it clear that Iniko has something (or many things) to say; and some of these even agree on the message. But the album is still very broad and scattered, despite the strength of some of these lines — “Earth’s Castaways” addresses the looming environmental cataclysm that scientists have been ringing alarm bells over, louder and louder, for decades now. The couplet opening the first verse goes right for the jugular:

“Water is life, and we killed it
God anointed the oil, and we spilled it”

The Awakening has many great moments, musically and lyrically. But as a unit, it feels a bit disorganized. I do strongly recommend this album, especially for anybody looking for something new or novel. I do appreciate that the title fights back against the buzzword that the right has turned “woke” into (and it’s reinforced in the post-chorus of “Icarus”), but it needs a little more focus.

Rating: Green⁴

1. The other, for the curious, is Nati.

2. And some will dispute whether they are, in fact, under attack. I believe that it’s undisputable, given the evidence of legislation being passed which limits the freedoms of the trans community and attacks the voting rights of the black community, among other things. But that is a much bigger conversation than I’m trying to have here; I simply feel that it needs to be acknowledged.

3. The politics of the time are always a valid angle of attack when dissecting any work of art.

4. Don’t forget — Green ratings are still good. I gave Chappell Roan a green for her last album. This is still just shy of an 8/10 rating.

Most of all, I want to underscore that Iniko is already, I believe, gaining a significant amount of influence. “Jericho” and “Armor” will likely inspire and drive other artists to pursue similar sounds and styles in the coming years; these same songs will be held up as anthems for Queer folks of many stripes. “Yosemite” might well be used as a marching song. So while I don’t believe that this will be one of the best albums of the year, by my standards, it doesn’t mean it, or Iniko, won’t be incredibly influential. I’m already excited to see what her sophomore effort looks like in a few years.