Sage Todz is finding power in the in-between

Calling in from his flat in Cardiff, it’s a sunny spring morning and light covers the wall behind his laptop screen. Originally from Harlow in Essex, Todz moved to North Wales with his family when he was seven. Both his formative years in the small rural village of Penygroes, just outside Canarfeon, and his family’s musical influence bear shape on the tracks he’s been creating for almost ten years. 

“My family is just like, music is something we all massively enjoy,” he says. “My sister taught herself guitar, my dad and mom have always sung. I feel like every car journey was an opportunity to burn a new CD. We had a whole CD cabinet of all sorts of music ranging from Barry White, Al Green, Kirk Franklin, loads of gospel stuff as well as King Sunny Adé, a lot of Fuji traditional Yoruba music as well.”

The move from Harlow to Penygroes was like night and day, with Todz immediately needing to learn Welsh if he wanted to fit in. “You don't really get a choice. Everything apart from English lessons was in Welsh. So it's like, if you don't learn the language you cannot integrate at all,” he says. “I was sent to an immersion school. I was there for twelve weeks and then I had the basics. I kind of just learned it from there.”

As a black family in a white, rural village, they experienced targeted and ongoing racism. Despite the hate levelled at him, Todz has embraced and celebrated his Welsh identity. “That's something that I've had to work on and adjust to make sense for me. If anybody asks where I'm from, I’m from Wales. But in terms of when people ask me, ‘Are you Welsh?’ Yeah, but not the entirety of me. I'm Nigerian. I was born in Essex. I'm a few things,” he says. “You have a lot of external voices letting you know what you can and can't be. I've been in Wales for twenty years since I was a little child. So yeah, it's a part of me 100%.”

There were periods when escape was attractive, and Todz would spend hours on trains, pragmatically distancing himself from his small village. But it was the time he spent away at uni, studying sport at Brunel in Uxbridge, that helped him to fully understand the nuances of his cultural identity. “I think uni was very good in helping me develop who I actually am,” he says. “I've been rapping in English and in Welsh, but the Welsh stuff I did got a lot more attention when I first brought it out. The thing that you're biggest for is kind of what you get labeled with, so I definitely embrace it.”

Through his time away at university, Todz’s musical confidence also grew. He’d begun producing music in his gap year, working at a cafe in Caernarfon to save up enough for a mic and interface. But it was the encouragement he got from his peers in London that pushed him to work harder. “I've got earlier releases from 2018 on my SoundCloud - that wasn't about achieving anything more than feeling better and not feeling sad and depressed and angry - a lot of these emotions that are natural but you don't necessarily have an outlet for it in society,” he says. “In uni there were people that I was like, I think you're really cool or I rate what you do, and they're giving me positive feedback, even on my earliest tracks. As long as you've done your studying you can do whatever you want. That unique sort of time and space I had to just create without thinking of anything else was really good.”

In 2022 he released the track “Rownd â Rownd,” an addictive rush of buoyant hiphop that moves seamlessly across the Welsh and English language with dynamic delivery and power. Pushed by his peers to share the track on TikTok, he eventually relented, surprised by the way his work organically spread. “It did nothing, for probably a good week, it was at one-hundred views,” he says. “But then a week later it jumped up to ten-thousand, one-hundred-thousand, two-hundred-thousand, up to 500K. I was like, ‘Oh man, I didn't know this could happen so delayed!’”

Packed full with energy and emotion, the clip was instantly engaging, but Todz believes his race and identity played an equal part in its virality. His newfound visibility brought with it the pressure of representation and an unsolicited responsibility. “Me being black and speaking Welsh is unusual to a viewer. I think that was something that took a few people back,” he says. “If you asked me a few years ago, I would have said I don't feel a responsibility at all because I'm just making music. But now I'd say, as I'm getting older, 100%. I think music has always been a catalyst for social change, and having conversations with people and people reaching out to me, especially people of color, and being like, ‘I identify with the things you're saying and the experiences you're expressing and I feel empowered by you speaking out’ - more and more I accept that role. I think some of my purpose is to speak on behalf of those that can't speak, and I think hip-hop in general, as a genre, as a culture, has always been about that. So, I'm just digging into those roots and learning more and more and trying to align myself with that.”

Off the success of “Rownd â Rownd,” the Welsh Football Association reached out to Todz to record the official track for Wales’ 2022 World Cup campaign, “O HYD.” Turning a track around in two weeks, he interpolated Dafydd Iwan’s “Yma o Hyd” into a cut of incendiary bilingual UK rap. “I had full creative control,” he says. “I was trying to think of what song would be known enough but that means something to me from Wales, and that's one of the first anthems I heard when I moved. So for me, Dafydd Iwan being from pretty much the same area as me as well, it was an opportunity to just let me pay some homage.”

Alongside his artistry, Todz also works for Cardiff youth organisation Sound Progression as an artist manager, helping educate developing acts on the business side of the industry. “There's all sorts of small things that I feel like artists miss out on their way up,” he says. “I did everything myself. Everything I learned was just YouTube tutorials, Google, and then there were a lot of things that I missed out on. So, for me, it's kind of just helping fill in those gaps.”

It gives him a unique perspective on his upcoming performance at Focus Wales, the Wrexham-based conference and showcase festival that’s been platforming new Welsh music for the past decade and a half. “I think it provides a foundational step. I think it provides a hub of potential,” he says. “I think in North Wales, there's very little going on there. So anytime you have something that attracts people from all over, I think that's really important. Whether it's music, networking, and just to have that foundation of music culture. If you're in music in Wales, you know about Focus Wales. It's a rare time where you'll see most of the artists from all the different genres come up for three days, so I think it's really important.”

Following on from new single “Yuck,” Todz has a fresh project on the horizon. “I can't say exactly when, but it's called Not Upset, Just Motivated,” he smiles. “It’s kind of me exploring different sides of my musicality without the pressure. It's music I just want to make and it's vibes.”