Shake Body came at the moment when I had issues with my former label. They had a vision, they wanted
me to just rap. For me, I was more than a rapper, I could do other things. I remember me and Jay
Pizzle (the producer) worked for two, three years. We were just looking for hits because I didn't
know how to make songs that made people dance and that was my target. So me and Jay Pizzle just
focused on that. I remember one day, he called me and told me he made this exciting beat, saying he
knows that's what I've always told him about - because I’d always tell him that I wanted to make
something that would make the world dance. So he sends me just the intro of it in a voice note - I
think it was 2013. I was like, wow. Remember that time, I'd left the label already and I was on my
own, I was homeless and staying with some friends. So I told my friend that I heard this beat and I
really believe in the beat. I want to go meet Jay Pizzle because if I don't go, I think he might
give it to somebody else. So I took a cab and I remember the cab broke down on our way by a bridge
around Surulere so we had to trek down to his studio. He played it for me, and I heard the beat. I
was like, this beat is too special. I don't want to rush it, let me take it home. So I remember
taking it back home to where I was squatting with my friends, and I started recording. I still
didn't get the idea but I already laid the “oya shake body” line on it. I wasn't really feeling it
but anyways, I left it like that. Some things happened and I had to like relocate… So I moved into
Timaya’s house. It was in his house I recorded most parts of the song. Fast forward to my birthday
in 2014, in April, one of my friends hosted me in his house, he had a pool, and he was like, “oh,
it's your birthday, man, you need to be excited” because I was going through a lot at that time. He
wanted me to feel better, so he threw me a little house party. I invited my friends, like Victoria
Kimani, Osagie my manager at that time was there too. I remember I was like the DJ, so I was playing
random songs from my laptop and blending my songs into them, because like I said, I wanted to just
make music that makes people dance and feel good about themselves. So accidentally, Shake Body just
entered the rotation and everybody just said, “whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa… who’s that, what song
is that?” So they made me play it again and again. And yeah, everybody was like, man, this is a hit.
This is such a smash. I remember Osagie looked at me and said, we're dropping this and it was just a
SoundCloud link that Osagie uploaded initially. The rest is history.
