I had just returned from school one evening I was relaxing in the living room with my mum in Port Harcourt, Nigeria aged 10. Suddenly, a car drove in and we weren’t sure who it was till my brother stepped out of the car with lots of rags tied round his head. He was accompanied by his head teacher.

I immediately started laughing because I thought he was just fooling around as usual or maybe he had offended the head teacher. Within seconds, it became clear that it was a serious situation as my mother ran towards him screaming because she had seen blood dripping from his head.

The headmaster told us that he had been attacked by a gang of people and was stabbed several times on his head, neck and hands. I went into a state of shock and everything changed immediately after he was rushed to the hospital.

I couldn’t really comprehend it and I didn’t have time to do so as I was suddenly going to write an exam to join a new school in a different city (Lagos) and subsequently London. After he recovered from the brutal incident we both moved city and left home.

So much happened in such a short period, I only very recently came out of the initial shock of seeing my brother in that state. We never really spoke about it till this day. Perhaps, writing this song helped me deal with the situation.

I initially wrote “Lagos” on my guitar and then took it to Tony White who is a great producer and has produced some great music. We’ve been working together for a while now so there is trust between us. I told him this story as an artist and friend and explained how I wanted it to be produced in a sparse way. Because of the sensitive subject matter of the song, he instantly understood that this was not a song that required bells and whistles. He added some electronic pads along with acoustic guitar and piano to accentuate key points of the story and the results were exactly what I had imagined for the song. The final result has a hymnal quality to it.

It was very emotional to record the song, and I think that comes out in the final version. The vocal on the finished track is the first take I recorded. Perhaps, I could have aimed for a more technically perfect and pristine vocal but this was raw and honest — that’s what the song needed.