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Joy Oladokun VibeZ

A queer Nigerian-American folk singer from Arizona, writing about faith, race and doubt over acoustic guitar. Joy Oladokun does not fit any available box, which is precisely the point.

The songwriter working in the gaps

Joy Oladokun grew up in Casa Grande, Arizona, the child of Nigerian immigrants, and has described picking up the guitar after seeing footage of Tracy Chapman — a specific and revealing origin story, since Chapman is the obvious precedent for a Black woman writing serious folk songs and being told there was no audience for it.

She spent years as a worship leader in evangelical churches before leaving, and that history sits underneath everything she writes. Her songs deal with faith without either defending or attacking it, and with queerness, race and depression in the same unadorned register. She is now based in Nashville, which puts her inside a genre establishment that has historically had very little room for anyone like her.

What to listen for

"i see america"-era material and "jordan" are where the writing is most direct. "breathe again" is the one that has reached the widest audience — a song about surviving a low period, written without a single reassuring platitude.

"sorry isn't good enough" and "taking the heat" are the sharpest. "let it be me" and "Somebody Like Me" are the tender ones.

Her cover of "I Can't Make You Love Me" for Spotify Singles is worth its own listen — the Bonnie Raitt song is close to untouchable, and she gets somewhere new by underplaying it.

The collaborations show how many rooms she fits into: Maxo Kream on "Revolution," Tim Gent on "Fortune Favors The Bold," Aly & AJ on "Way of Nature Way of Grace," and JORDY on "i get high." A folk singer, a Houston rapper and a pop duo is not a normal collaborator list.

"Purple Haze" is not the Hendrix song, though the reference is doing work.

Go deeper

in defense of my own happiness (2021) and Proof of Life (2023) are the albums, and both are best heard whole — she writes in sequences.

Tracy Chapman's self-titled debut is the essential ancestor. Brittany Howard, Allison Russell and Yola are the contemporaries doing related work — all Black women operating in genres that have long been coded white, and all making some of the best records in those genres.

For the faith-and-doubt lineage specifically, Sam Cooke's Soul Stirrers recordings and Sufjan Stevens' Carrie & Lowell come at the same problem from opposite ends.

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