To those whose viewing habits have introduced them to Oladokun's music, she may seem like a hot, new thing, but that status is amusingly at odds with her own outlook: She likes pointing out that she doesn't see herself as operating anywhere near the cutting-edge.
"The most excited I think I've ever been was when they sent me a request for Catfish," she says during our fourth interview to date, acknowledging her own avid viewership. Last August, "Sunday" appeared in two different reality shows, Love In the Time of Corona and Catfish. Oladokun started racking up placements precisely when that became hardest to do: after COVID-19 brought most filming to a halt, in turn, drastically shrinking the demand for music for movies and television. "I think about the future," she says on the phone, "but in terms of, 'OK, I have X amount of money or influence with which I can do something that I've always wanted to do, like get involved in prison reform.'" Oladokun's music has even appeared on Grey's Anatomy, that holdover from the aughts, twice to date.Īs the buzz builds around her, Oladokun is observing it from a levelheaded remove, taking the long view. The Nashville-based, Nigerian-American singer-songwriter has been tapped for timely, visibility-boosting, tech-powered initiatives, including Hulu's virtual Black History Month concert and YouTube's grant program for Black creators, while also benefiting from the sort of old-school, television-centric strategies that artists' promotional teams prioritized well before the streaming age, like performing slots on late night shows and song placements on primetime dramas. The only true constants in the music industry during the tumultuous pandemic era have been fantastically sobering ones: lost livelihoods interrupted career momentum belated recognition of the brokenness of a system built on the exploitation of Black innovation and labor.Īnd yet, during this same period, Joy Oladokun's career has quietly blown up.
In the past year, Joy Oladokun has been tapped for visibility-boosting initiatives, performed on late-night shows and had her songs placed on primetime TV.
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