From Tromsø to TikTok: How Afro-Scandi pop princess Tolou is shaking things up with her music – and microbraids

Does musical artist Tolou believe in fate? “Girl, absolutely,” she responds with a smile, a bright blue headband holding her signature, superfine blonde microbraids back from her freckled face. “I believe in God, I believe everything has meaning, that everything happens for a reason,” the Norwegian-Nigerian 26-year-old says. Whether or not you’re also a believer, you can’t deny something powerful is at play when it comes to Tolou’s journey.

Fittingly, it all began in a church. The Arctic Cathedral, to be specific, with its imposing triangular facade jutting out from the mountainous landscape of Tromsø, the northernmost city in the world and Tolou’s Norwegian hometown. “It’s so far north, if you go on a map, it’s as north as you can get. We’re right up near the North Pole,” she giggles. Within the towering angular walls of the remote cathedral, Tolou, with her natural vocal talent, directed the youth choir. And one day, as fate would have it, legendary Haitian rapper and record producer Wyclef Jean – renowned for his work with Destiny’s Child, Whitney Houston, and Fugees, to name a few – just so happened to walk through the cathedral’s doors. “He was here in Tromsø performing and they were filming an acoustic music video,” Tolou explains. After seeing her perform, Jean invited her to his concert, and then, with his manager, challenged her to sing on the spot. “I did, of course,” she says, her confident tone never wavering.

By this point Tolou was in her early twenties, but her foray into music came much, much earlier. “My mum has tapes from when I was about four,” she says. “I was just singing, singing, singing all the time. Rihanna, Shakira, all of it. My first album was Crazy in Love by Beyoncé. As a girl in Tromsø, I didn’t see anyone who looked like me. But then I see Beyoncé, this amazing pop star, and she looks a bit like me, you know what I’m saying? I had my role model, wow.”

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Alongside her pop fixation, the musical influences of Tolou's youth were varied and eclectic, including her Norwegian grandmother’s love of country music (“I sang Dolly Parton’s ‘I Will Always Love You’ to my school of about a thousand kids when I was super young”) and her older brother’s metal band, who called on her to step in as vocalist from time to time (“I was head-banging on stage, rock’n’roll, it came so naturally to me”). Tolou’s musical passion is so palpable that even the way she speaks is melodic, with staccato rhythms and syncopated pauses leading into breathy, rapid-fire riffs of words.

Tolou credits her unfaltering confidence, in part, to the time she spent working with Jean, albeit remotely; their collaboration coincided with the Covid lockdown, which left her stuck in the distant northern reaches of Norway. “It made me even more independent,” she explains. “Often as a female artist, you go to a studio with a producer and you’re just sitting at the back. You don’t know yourself or what you can do.” But by necessity during lockdown, Jean had Tolou writing, producing beats, recording and mixing all by herself, in Tromsø. “It really taught me that not everybody else knows better than me sometimes,” she says. “I should trust myself.”

Eventually lockdown lifted and her work served as a stepping stone to the US, sparking a series of further serendipitous events. After attending Boss’ spring/summer ’23 runway show in Miami, a sense of freedom dawned on her, bolstered by the fact that she was fresh out of a relationship in Norway. “I literally decided to stay because I was heartbroken and needed the sun,” she says. “So I followed my intuition and my gut and I stayed in LA for two months.” During that time, she caught the eye of a music executive in the elevator at Soho House. “He noticed me because of my style, I am always extra with my style,” she says. Suddenly she was introduced to more big names in the business, leading her to the holy Mecca for any pop musician: the office of Lucian Grainge, CEO of Universal Music Group. “He just signed me on the spot to the global company,” she recounts, simply.

The ‘suits’ of the music business instantly recognised a star quality in Tolou and her sound, which she has no trouble putting into words. “I’m an Afro-Scandinavian pop girlie. I’m using both of my influences. As a Scandinavian, I can say Scandinavians are the best at pop. We’re the best. I don’t have to say it. You already know,” she says. “So it’s like the cold of northern Norway, that’s just naturally in me, so my melodies are kind of cool and beautiful and melancholic. Then I bring in the warmth of Nigeria, because that always makes me so happy and it’s so danceable.” Put more simply, Tolou is “the cold from the north and warmth from the south”.

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Despite the belief and confidence in her artform – and the backing of a major record deal – Tolou acknowledged that it wouldn’t feel right for her “spiritually, in her heart” to release a track without ever having visited her father’s homeland of Nigeria. “It was something I had looked forward to my whole life, because it was weird, not understanding that other part of me,” she says. She had some preconceptions about Nigeria, but describes being enveloped in a welcoming warmth by family she had never met before. “They were sitting in a circle and giving me their blessing, praying for me to be a star”, she smiles, “I didn’t ask for it, it was just incredible.” Shortly thereafter, she released the song ‘Coco’, her biggest hit to date.

Though it was her first time in Africa, Tolou’s Norwegian mother Cathrine Kjeldsberg – who raised her daughter by herself – did her best to keep that part of Tolou’s cultural makeup present in her day-to-day life (this is most evident in the Nigerian art that dots their home). So, when faced with the problem of having a young daughter with Afro hair but no Afro salons available in Tromsø, Kjeldsberg reached out to her African girlfriends in London to learn how to do traditional Afro hairstyles herself. Tolou had her first microbraids by her mother’s hands at the age of six and has maintained the waist-skimming style to this day. “It’s a very intentional choice, the microbraids, because it’s an African hairstyle,” she says. “When I wear them, I wear my identity. I'm not just a tanned Norwegian person, I’m an African Norwegian person.”

Kjeldsberg has no difficulty in executing her self-taught braiding skills. Carving out the time to do them around her full-time job is the challenge. “I rush home from work and stay up for long hours, and use my days off and weekends to expedite the process” she says. “On those days, we see little sleep. Tolou is a busy young woman and finding the time isn’t easy.” But mother and daughter do always find the time, something for which Tolou is expressly grateful. “The amount of love and dedication that my mum puts into the braids has made me the person I am, loving and dedicated,” Tolou says. “That dedication comes through in how I put my heart and soul into my music. Everything I do, I do with meaning and I think it comes from her because she does everything with so much meaning and integrity.”

The centuries-old cultural significance of braids is synonymous with community, with the hours upon hours required for the intricate and deeply personal craft doubling as bonding time between family, friends and tribes. For Tolou and her mother, these countless hours form a sacred space for just the two of them to share. “We have a lot of quality time. Honestly, I'm so grateful for this hair for that reason, because I get to spend so much time with my mum,” Tolou says. Kjeldsberg mirrors the sentiment, describing it as “a wholesome, enjoyable opportunity” to talk, catch up on their favourite series, or simply enjoy the quiet moments together. “As the years go, I believe these sessions give my daughter a little space in her hectic life, some grounding time that allows her to stay true to her most authentic self.” “My mum keeps me grounded, literally grounded,” Tolou echoes. “I sit on the floor of the living room as she does my microbraids and we talk about everything.”

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Aside from her Spotify plays and live performance dates, Tolou’s popularity is most evident on social media where she’s racked up legions of fans – her recent drop ‘A Little Bit Sad’, which addresses the heartbreak that kept her, fatefully, in LA, resonated on her buzzy TikTok account. But Tolou is unfazed by the attention. “It’s really fun when I see all those views on my videos, but it doesn’t really affect me. Us people from northern Norway, we’re very authentic. We just are who we are. Like, we’re not that mysterious,” she smiles.

As her star rises and her name becomes more internationally recognised, Tolou’s sincere authenticity cannot be shaken. “I want to make global music and I want to be wherever the music takes me,” she says. “People ask me, ‘Why don’t you go somewhere else for your braids when you’re in the UK or USA? Why don’t you just have someone else do it?’, but I need to go back home for my soul. It’s crucial for me to stay connected to Norway and my mum, to remind myself of my values and where I came from.”