TOBi released Elements Vol. 1 on October 21, 2020 through RCA Records and Same Plate Entertainment. This is a catalogue project, framed as catalogue: nothing here is new, and the record still matters because it won the biggest rap prize in Canada the following year, and because it is the clearest window into why the Nigerian-born, Brampton-raised singer and rapper, born Oluwatobi Feyisara Ajibolade, keeps describing his music with one phrase, unapologetic soul music.
He said the project itself gave him room to play. As he told Apple Music, Elements Vol. 1 is “a vehicle for me to push music that I have created in between album cycles, just to have the freedom to experiment and try new genres and sounds that I have not done before. It is a challenge to myself as a songwriter.” The official video for “Dollas and Cents,” his link-up with producer Juls, is embedded below.
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Ten Tracks, Five Styles, One Voice
The project runs 10 tracks: “Dollas and Cents,” “Made Me Everything,” “Conquest,” “Family Matters,” “Silhouette,” “Beige,” “Shine,” “Faces,” “Matter” and “Still Singing.” That sequence matters because the record was rolled out as singles before it arrived whole. “Dollas and Cents” came first, produced by Juls, then “Made Me Everything,” produced by Ace Harris and Alex Goose, then “Shine,” released on October 14, 2020, a week before the project. Put together on October 21, the three singles showed three modes: the Afrobeat lean of Juls, the soul-rap build of “Made Me Everything,” and the slow glow of “Shine.”
TOBi moved to Canada from Lagos, Nigeria as a child, first to Ottawa and then largely growing up in Brampton, and he studied biology and psychology at Wilfrid Laurier University. As a teenager he was in rap battles, including one with a pre-fame Tory Lanez. Those details help explain the record’s shape: a writer trained in science and in battle rooms, making a project that moves between hip hop, R and B, soul, grime and Afrobeats because, in his own words, “I have got hip-hop, R and B, soul, grime and Afrobeats on here because it is what I love.” Family, migration and growth hold the centre, and the closer, “Still Singing,” carries the thesis in its title, that no matter what he is going through, music keeps him motivated.
Dollas And Cents Connects Toronto And Lagos
“Dollas and Cents” is the record’s most complete postcard. The video, directed by C.S. and released in August 2020, toggles between Toronto and Lagos, telling a long-distance love story over a FaceTime call with dancer Tiwa Pearl. It is a small premise that does a lot of work: two cities the artist actually belongs to, the pandemic distance of that summer, and a Juls beat that makes the whole thing feel like sunlight. TOBi himself named it as a favourite at release, saying linking up with Juls off the strength of the internet and being fans of each other made it one of the easiest songs he had made, and that it just felt natural to rhyme on that cadence.
The voices around the project reached further. The “24 (Toronto Remix)” video, directed by Kit Weyman, was longlisted for the 2021 Prism Prize, and in January 2021 TOBi was named one of the winners of SOCAN’s inaugural Black Canadian Music Awards alongside Dylan Sinclair, Naya Ali, RAAHiiM and Hunnah, a Toronto and Canadian story told entirely through the music on this record and the debut album Still that preceded it in May 2019.
Juno Winner, Polaris Shortlist, A Series That Continued
Elements Vol. 1 won the 2021 Juno Award for Rap Recording of the Year and was shortlisted for the 2021 Polaris Music Prize. For a project the artist himself framed as an experiment between album cycles, that is a remarkable return: the in-between record became the trophy record. His follow-ups kept the run going, the EP Shall I Continue? winning the Juno for Rap Album or EP of the Year in 2023, and PANIC in 2023, revisited in our return to PANIC, winning Rap Album of the Year in 2024. The Elements series itself later continued with Elements Vol. 2 in 2025.
Heard now, Elements Vol. 1 holds up as the sound of an artist refusing to pick a lane on purpose, and being rewarded for it by the two institutions, the Junos and Polaris, that rarely agree on rap records in the same year. Released on October 21, 2020, it remains the project where TOBi’s many elements, Lagos, Brampton, battle rap, poetry, soul singing, became one written language, and where Canadian hip hop formally caught up to what Toronto listeners already knew.
