Isaiah Presley is a music producer, songwriter, and singer from Bayelsa, Nigeria. He is popularly known as 2’Izzy. He started out as a rapper; his grade school crush (name withheld) asked him to sing her a Drake song. He spent time memorizing the song and serenaded her the next day at school. That experience piqued Izzy’s interest in rap and he listened to a lot of Drake, Lil Wayne, and Eminem. At the same time, Izzy started dabbling with writing and recording rap songs using his laptop.
He disliked the rap songs he made because he his voice lacked the tone and cadence of a rapper. He decided to pay more attention to singing and trained his voice frequently. Shortly after Izzy started singing, he wrote a song for his mother, titled Together. Izzy shared this song with his family and while his father was not in support of him singing, he commended his effort. Izzy’s mother took him to various branches of their church, where he performed this song and gained a little bit of fame.  Â
Izzy arrived PEI in 2014 with little knowledge of music production. However, he had begun writing his first album. He decided to teach himself how to produce music in order to save the cost of going to a studio. Izzy spent countless hours watching Youtube videos and reading materials on music production. He eventually started purchasing equipments for his own studio, which he set-up in his bedroom. By the time Izzy was ready to start producing, he had exhausted all the money he had, but he had never been so excited.
Izzy started recording in the summer of 2016. He spent a lot of time producing for other artists like Apee (Behind You), Blic-Bee (Ife Dakun), Eyesblood (Daddy oo), Oniel (Man Know Me), and Yomi (Over). His production skills got better and he decided to complete his album, which was almost all written out. Instead of releasing his album, Izzy decided to test the waters by working on a smaller project — an EP titled, Coming through. He pieced together freestyles and ideas from different studio sessions and released Coming Through as a Valentine gift to a dear friend (name withheld).
Coming Through is a 5-song EP (available on Soundcloud, Spotify, Tidal and Apple music), it was initially titled, In the Beginning. Most of the songs, especially Izzy’s favorite, Koko were serendipitous. He described his EP as a fusion of different genres, with inspiration from Bryson Tiller, on Sex You Now, and Tekno, on Akpataboom. Izzy is an eclectic; he believes sticking to a specific genre hinders creativity. The success of Coming Through has motivated Izzy to start recording his debut album, which is yet to be titled.  Â
Izzy gets his inspiration from the people around him and listening to contemporary Afrobeats. He currently under the management of Hometown Musik (www.hometownmusik.com) and works with a variety of underground artistes in PEI in his home studio. You can contact him on Facebook @ 2’izzy, Instagram @ 2_izzyy, and @ 2_izzyy on SoundCloud. Â
By: Obinna Esomchukwu