Akintoye Adeyemi Asalu (born August 17, 1999), known mononymously as Akintoye, is a Nigerian-born Canadian rapper and social media personality. He gained prominence on TikTok, where he has almost 3 million followers as of May 2023 and has gone viral several times, including with the 2022 single "Pizazz". He has released five studio albums and been featured on songs with Charlie Curtis-Beard, Connor Price, and Idris Elba. Outside of music, he voices the recurring character of Anthony on the Disney Channel series Hamster & Gretel.
Early life
Born in Lagos, Nigeria, Akintoye moved to Vaughan, Ontario, Canada at age nine, experiencing what he called a "little culture shock". His father, a fan of West Coast hip hop, would often sing the infant Akintoye to sleep with The Notorious B.I.G.'s "One More Chance". As a child, Akintoye sang in choir, took piano and flute lessons, and rapped and recorded videos, but was not initially passionate about music. At age ten, he volunteered to perform Drake's verse in the Young Artists for Haiti version of K'naan's "Wavin' Flag" for a middle school end-of-year concert, which sparked his desire to pursue rapping.
Akintoye attended McMaster University in Hamilton. He later said he was "dealing with a lot of anxiety" in university and used songwriting to "make sense of things and maintain my sanity."
Career
Prior to joining TikTok, Akintoye had posted short rap videos to Instagram. While in university, he released his first album, Indecisive (2019), which has since been removed from streaming; he later described this early music as "atrocious" and credited friend and bassist Daniel Vucko with helping him improve. He had begun playing local shows before the pandemic left him unable to do so.
Akintoye joined TikTok shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic, initially believing he was too old for the app but encouraged by the middle school students he was working with, as well as a friend who wanted to send him videos on the app. He first began making TikTok content in April 2020, participating in a rap challenge with a video that reached 10,000 views in one day. He subsequently began posting daily videos. Another song he posted, "I'm Broke", went viral in late 2021, receiving over 28.7 million views and 20,000 videos using the audio.
During Black History Month in February 2022, Akintoye was included on TikTok's second annual Black TikTok Trailblazers list and appeared on a billboard promoting TikTok at the Scotiabank Arena in Toronto. One of his videos, a freestyle of EarthGang's song "Billi", was noticed and duetted by EarthGang themselves, and he subsequently performed the song with the duo as an opener on their Biodeghettable Tour, one of several chosen by indie music blog Pigeons & Planes.
Akintoye gained wider mainstream attention in April 2022 with the single "Pizzazz". The song, about the rapper's struggles with anxiety and depression, was inspired by a TikTok commenter asking "Are you okay? Like really?", to which Akintoye responded, "I'm fine. If I'mma be sad, I'mma do it with pizzazz", which became the song's opening lines. "Pizzazz" was subsequently used in over 300,000 TikTok videos and surpassed 8 million streams on Spotify. That same month, Akintoye performed at Maple Leaf Square (known as Jurassic Park) before a Toronto Raptors game.
Another single, "Ease Up", was released in June. The following August, Akintoye was featured on actor/rapper Connor Price's single "Aces", alongside Toronto Raptors DJ 4Korners and actor/singer Idris Elba. He released his fifth studio album, Anxiety & Circumstance, on September 2, 2022. In December, Complex included "Pizzazz" on their Best Canadian Songs of 2022 list and called Akintoye "the closest thing Canada had to a groundswell success story in 2022".
In March 2023, Akintoye released the single "Gentleman's Sweep", which had originally been included on his debut album Indecisive. Another single he released, "Beat It", drew criticism for a verse mocking Queen Elizabeth II shortly after her death, which he attributed to a conversation with friends about Nigeria's past as a British colony. He performed at Calgary's Sled Island Music and Arts Festival in June 2023, alongside Osees, Dehd, Helado Negro, Emma Ruth Rundle, Mannequin Pussy, Haviah Mighty, Spellling, Sumac, Liturgy, The Sun Ra Arkestra, Water from Your Eyes, Pelada, Pom Pom Squad, Gulfer, Kaina, and Sen Morimoto.