EP: RISE

Tracklist: Essence (feat. Blake) / Peru / Joro / Sister / Need You

(A/N: most of the songs are sang by fireboy and essence and Joro by wizkid and sister is an original by Frosh himself l.)

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Frosh woke to the sound of his phone vibrating against the wooden stool beside his mattress. Not one notification. A waterfall of them. Buzzing that wouldn’t stop, each vibration running into the next until the stool itself seemed to be humming.

He reached for it without opening his eyes. The screen burned his retinas. Messages. Mentions. Trending topics. He squinted at the first text from a number he didn’t save: *"Your boss get secret family o."*

Then another: *"Dayo and Luna? Since when?"*

Then a group chat he had muted months ago, suddenly alive with blue ticks: *"Frosh you dey JD Records right? This Luna story na true?"*

Frosh sat up. The mattress groaned. His little sister was asleep on the other side of the room, curled under a thin blanket on her own mattress, her back to him, her breathing even and untroubled. She was eleven. She didn’t care about trending topics or secret families or whether her brother’s EP was dropping in three hours while the world looked at something else entirely.

He checked the time. 6:47 AM. Lagos was already sweating.

Frosh walked to the window and peeled back the curtain. The street below was ordinary. A woman sweeping her storefront. A bike man arguing with a passenger about change. Life going on without knowing that Jason Dayo, the man who had built empires in silence, had just had his silence broken. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞

The reason the whole Nigeria knows about Dayo is because of his current project that just finished the onew where he provided school busses for students in Lagos so any student going through a particular areas has at least three Big BRT bus going through that route after the accident it was made sure that the project worked and it did so many Nigerias knew him so when they news of him having a whole baby without them knowing of course they will talk about it .

He sat on the edge of his mattress and stared at the wall. The paint was peeling near the ceiling, a water stain shaped like a map of a country he didn’t recognize. Three months ago, he had been sleeping on the floor of a different apartment, recording covers in a bathroom with a phone that had a cracked screen. His sister had been there too, bringing him jollof wrapped in aluminum foil, never asking when he was going to give up.

Now he had five songs sitting on a server somewhere. One of them had Blake’s voice on it. Another one had his own words, his own story, his own blood on the page. And the world was supposed to hear it today. But nobody was talking about music.

His sister stirred. She rolled over and blinked at him, her hair sticking up on one side. "You’re awake early," she mumbled.

"Go back to sleep," Frosh said.

"Did your song come out?"

"Not yet."

"Then why are you awake?"

Frosh didn’t answer. She was too young to understand algorithmic timing and scandal cycles and the cruelty of launching into a storm you didn’t create. She just knew her brother made music and that something was supposed to happen today.

He stood up and dressed in the dark. White shirt. Clean jeans. The same outfit he had worn to the restaurant with Blake because it was the only thing he owned that didn’t look like struggle. He checked on his sister one more time. She was already back asleep, her arm draped over the blanket.

Frosh walked out and locked the door behind him.

The studio at Admiralty Way was empty when he arrived except for a security guard who nodded without making eye contact. Frosh sat on the couch in the lounge and stared at the blank television mounted on the wall. His knee bounced. His hands wouldn’t stay still. He kept refreshing his phone, watching the Dayo/Luna story climb higher, watching his own name get pushed further down the feed before it had even arrived.

He didn’t hear Faye come in. She just appeared beside him, settling into the couch with a cup of tea she had brought from somewhere, her hair still wet from a shower. She didn’t say good morning. She just sat there and let the silence do its work.

"You shouldn’t be here this early," Frosh said.

"Neither should you."

"I couldn’t sleep."

"Because of the scandal?"

"Because of everything." Frosh’s voice cracked slightly. He cleared his throat. "I keep thinking about that bathroom. The cracked phone. You remember what I told you? My sister used to sit outside the door and listen. She was ten then. She didn’t know the words were bad. She just knew her brother was singing."

Faye nodded. She knew. She had heard this story before, on the day they both got selected, when the shared terror had loosened their tongues and turned them into something like family.

"Now she’s eleven," Frosh continued. "And she’s sleeping on a mattress in Lekki while her brother’s EP drops in two hours. And nobody is going to hear it because everyone is crying about Dayo’s baby."

Faye set her tea down. "Listen to me. Three months ago, you were getting evicted. You were hungry. You were recording songs on a toilet seat. And now you’re sitting in a JD Records studio with Blake on your track and an EP that drops today. Did Dayo know about this scandal when he wrote those songs?"

"No."

"Did he know about it when he flew Blake to Lagos?"

"No."

"So why would he stop today?" Faye leaned toward him. "Dayo built this for you. Not for a headline. Not for a trend. For you. He saw you in that bathroom before you saw yourself. And today is still your day. Not his. Yours."

Frosh looked at her. Her eyes were serious and warm and completely certain.

"I don’t know if I believe that," he said.

"Then believe me," Faye said. "I’ve been wrong about a lot of things. But I’ve never been wrong about you."

Hearing this Frosh took a deep breath and nodded.

The door opened. Kazeem walked in, hood up, eyes puffy. Amara followed, phone in hand, scrolling. Tunde came last, calm as always, holding a newspaper he wouldn’t read.

At 11:47 AM, Akin turned around from the mixing board.

"RISE," he said. "It’s live."

He hit play.

*Essence* filled the room. That warm, humid groove that Frosh had lived inside for months. His voice came in smooth, unhurried, gliding over the beat like he had been born there. Then the bridge — Blake’s voice sliding in, that rap-sung hybrid answering Frosh’s melody from across the ocean. The room went still. Kazeem closed his eyes. Amara stopped scrolling. Tunde sat back with his hands folded.

*Peru* played next. The travel groove. Frosh listened to himself sing about places he had never been and women he had never met, and somehow it still sounded true.

*Joro* followed. The intimate whisper. The humid night. The wanting.

Then track four started.

The beat was stripped down — just a piano and a drum pattern that breathed. No bass. No synth. Just space. Frosh’s voice entered, but it was different this time. Not Dayo’s polished writing. Not the smooth romantic formulas. Raw words. His own.

He sang about the eviction notice taped to their door. About the bathroom where he recorded covers while his sister sat outside on the floor. About the jollof she brought him wrapped in foil. About sleeping on mattresses in a room too small for two people. About her telling him to sing loud enough that someone would hear.

The room changed. Faye’s hand went to her mouth. Kazeem stared at the floor. Amara blinked fast, holding something back. Tunde was very still, his jaw tight, his eyes closed.

Nobody spoke. Nobody needed to. The song said everything.

Frosh couldn’t look at them. He stared at the mixing board while his own voice finished the last verse, singing about his sister’s faith in him before he had faith in himself. The final piano note hung in the air and died.

Amara was the first to move. She reached over and took Frosh’s hand. She didn’t say anything. She just squeezed it.

"Again," Kazeem said quietly. "Play it again."

Akin shook his head. "One more track first. Then we can go back."

*Need You* closed the EP. The stripped-down confession. Frosh’s voice at its most vulnerable.

When it ended, the room held its breath.

"Now," Akin said. He restarted track four.

*Sister* played again. This time, everyone listened differently. They weren’t hearing it for the first time. They were catching the details they had missed. The way Frosh’s voice cracked on the word "floor." The way the drum paused when he sang about his sister’s face. The way the piano sounded like a lullaby and a war cry at the same time.

Faye was crying. Not dramatically. Just tears sliding down her cheeks while she smiled.

Kazeem stood up and walked to the window. His shoulders were tight.

"Your sister," Amara said when the song ended. "She’s the one on the mattress?"

"She’s eleven," Frosh said. "She’s at home. She doesn’t know about algorithms or scandals. She just knows her brother’s song is supposed to come out today."

"Then let’s make sure people hear it," Amara said.

She pulled out her phone. Opened her Instagram. Started typing.

Kazeem pulled out his. Faye pulled out hers. Even Tunde had his phone out, typing slowly with his reading glasses on.

"What are you doing?" Frosh asked.

"Promoting your EP," Amara said, not looking up. "What does it look like?"

Faye read hers aloud: *"’Sister’ by @frosh just broke me. Track four on RISE. Listen to it. Then listen to the whole EP. Trust me you would thank me later."*

Kazeem typed: *"I’ve seen this brother’s struggle with my own eyes. Now his EP is out. Blake is on it. But track four is HIM. RISE by @frosh. Out now."*

Tunde posted without reading it aloud.

Amara held up her phone to show Frosh her story — a screenshot of the EP cover with the caption: *"My brother @frosh just dropped RISE. Track four is his story. The rest is his future. Listen."*

Frosh stared at them. His eyes burned.

"Your turn," Faye said.

Frosh opened his Instagram. His hands were shaking. He typed five words: *RISE. Out now. Link in bio.* He tagged the streaming platforms. He hit post.

Then he put the phone down and waited.

The first hour was modest. Nine thousand streams. Not terrible. Not the explosion. Frosh watched the counter on Akin’s screen and felt his stomach tighten.

Around 2 PM, something shifted.

Akin called out. "Frosh. Come here."

The graph had spiked. TikTok. Someone had used *Essence* in an emotional video. Then another. Then ten more. Faye’s post about *Sister* had gone viral on Twitter — people sharing their own stories about siblings, about struggle, about believing in someone before they believed in themselves.

By 4 PM, *Essence* was in five hundred TikTok videos.

By 6 PM, Lagos radio played it without being asked.

By 8 PM, Frosh’s stream count had multiplied by thirty.

He went home. His sister was awake, sitting on her mattress with the old tablet she watched cartoons on. But she wasn’t watching cartoons. She was listening to Beat FM on a small radio, and when Frosh walked in, she turned to him with her eyes wide and bright.

"They played you!" she said, bouncing on the mattress. "Your song! On the radio! I heard your voice!" She was eleven years old and oblivious to algorithms and scandal cycles and the machinery that had carried her brother’s voice out of a bathroom and into a speaker. She was just happy. Purely, simply happy. "My friends are going to hear it!" she said. "My brother is on the radio!"

Frosh sat down beside her. She was humming something under her breath — a melody that sounded like *Need You*, the closing track. She didn’t know the title. She just knew her brother’s voice.

Frosh put his arm around her. The stream count on his phone was still climbing. The world outside was still talking about Dayo’s family. But in this small room with peeling paint and a water stain on the ceiling, none of that mattered.

"Track four is my favorite," his sister said, leaning her head against his shoulder. "The one about me."

Frosh closed his eyes. He didn’t say anything. He just held her and listened to her hum his melody, knowing that tomorrow the numbers would be bigger, and the world would know his name, but tonight, this was enough.

Tonight, he had risen.

(A/N: Shameless author asking for Golden Ticket 🎟 it doubles during this period so if I get up to ten one extra Chapter )