Braye’s debut single on Spotify is dated October 2024, but before he mustered the courage and resources to release his own music, he had already immersed himself in the scene for years; as a songwriter, instrumentalist and more. Instagram archives show him locked in studio sessions with the likes of Tems and Amaarae, while he only emerged from his shell on rare occasions to perform music himself at small gatherings. Now with six songs in total to his name, four of them contained on I Wish I Had More Time, Braye reveals himself to the world as one of Nigeria’s rare practitioners of Jazz and Soul.
He calls himself Braye the Badger, after the Honey Badger and its famously solitary behavior, so I Wish I Had More Time is an invitation into his innermost thoughts. In this debut EP, he bares his vulnerability about music and love, yet in the rounded richness of his music he reveals that he was always the one holding himself back—he is already very much the finished product. His writing is illuminating, and personal yet relatable; a conjuring of experiences he has allowed to mature for so long.
The EP is never shy or inexplicit about what it is—a Soul–Jazz–Reggae record that is an extension of Braye’s musical palette and built on influences from his favorite artists, like Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles and Bob Marley. It lives in his world of loss, longing and love; sometimes for a partner, sometimes for music but often for life itself. Stuck opens the EP on a downbeat, unguarded note as Braye sings to a woman about lost potential and the lack of an impetus to make a move, but the message is as much for himself as it is for her. “I think that you can be a star/ You just don’t see yourself the way you really are.” But he is ultimately hopeful because, this, after all, represents him putting himself out there. You hear fear morph into hope on the track, too, when the brooding Jazz template energizes to become Reggae.
Slight switches to genre within and between songs enable Braye to avoid sounding monotonous. Each song is cut from a slightly different section of his tapestry: Stuck drives from Jazz to an uplifting Reggae powered by live drums; I Wish I Had More Time resumes with the vibrant percussion, but this time fashions them into a steadied Soul template; Bring You Home ramps the tempo and energy with heavier basslines and hi-hats; before Slipping Out Of Time slows things down for a mournful curtain closer. For an artist who was raised in Port Harcourt and schooled in Accra, Braye captures these genres with soul and integrity, complete with excellent live instrumentation and a confident command of jazz vocalization. However, it puts him in an awkward situation with his current audience—even the Tay Iwars and Mannywellzes and Odeals of our world court the Nigerian audience with Afro-leaning blends and drips of Pidgin—but Braye’s intentions for his first project lie beyond the commercial.
Throughout the EP, Braye considers the opposing motifs of longing and loss. The titular track opens with “It’s my time I want it all/ Came up from the borrows/ And now I’m gonna fly,” but it is also about how a story can end just when it was about to climax: “Oh I’ve never felt something like this before/ So high till the moment I hit the floor/ Now I’m only wishing I had more time.” It is a sentiment that is echoed on closer Slipping Out Of Time, where Braye is accompanied only by mellow guitar tones and a steady drum for what is an ode to time passed with a loved one: “Baby, the morning so cold/ How did we grow so old/ Slipping out of time.”
I Wish I Had More Time is an exposition into Braye; a laidback journey with an introverted sentimentalist now cautiously emerging from his shell to take on the world. On only his first EP he has nailed the fundamentals: lyricism that crafts a consistent and relatable story, and a particularly vibrant production board that keeps his music authentic to its Soul and Jazz roots. There’s little in the way of African influence in his music, but it’s just as well because there are a multitude of artists already towing that ground, while the Nigerian Jazz scene is relatively sparse. Braye’s debut EP arrives a little late, but all those years spent creating in the shadows have made him a master of his own unique sound; I Wish I Had More Time is only the first fruit from a very rich vineyard.
