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Written By
Folake Ajao
Some of Shorae Moore’s earliest memories of music are tied to a car ride to Mr Biggs in Kaduna, where his family listened to Panam Percy Paul, Ron Kenoly and other gospel voices. Music was present in his childhood, though it was not necessarily the centre of the family’s identity. His siblings, however, were deeply involved in it. His sister was the singer of the house, while his brother played bass, lead and drums. “Safe to say my siblings played a huge role in my development,” Moore says.
At seven, his mother bought him a keyboard. He played a few notes instinctively, but the instrument remained mostly an object in his childhood until years later. Around 13 years after receiving it, Shorae was in a hostel with a friend, working on a cover, when someone attempted to interrupt them with a joke. He was livid, and the reaction revealed a passion he had not consciously articulated before. “At that moment it occurred to me that this is one of the few things I take seriously in my life,” he says. That realisation became an entry point into music as a craft.
Moore began teaching himself the keyboard, and the process became important to the way he understood both emotion and sound. Learning without formal instruction meant that mistakes became part of his vocabulary. “Most of the mistakes in my learning curve became new pockets in my writing that I didn’t even know existed in music as a whole until the occurrence in those moments,” he explains. That unconventional learning process eventually became part of what shaped his approach to songwriting and sound.
His musical education was also much broader than the Afrobeats landscape immediately around him. Wande Coal, Jon Bellion, Mali Music, Chris Brown, Usher and CZY each gave him something different to study. He points to Jon Bellion as an influence on his understanding of songwriting, particularly the idea that simplicity can carry depth. “Jon taught me simple deep is the most relatable and reliable aspect of music,” he says, while Mali Music, Chris Brown and Usher taught him techniques that expanded his understanding of performance and songwriting. For Moore, studying music means refusing to limit the possibilities of what an artist can make.
His own description of his sound is “Afro soul, broken but hopeful, simple deep, relatable yet enlightening, real life and dreams all in one.” It is a concise description of a sound built around emotional honesty without making the emotion itself the entire point. Moore is interested in songs that can communicate something recognizable while leaving enough room for listeners to bring their own experiences to them.
Moore began as an artist. Writing for other people came later, almost by accident. Friends started calling on him to help embellish their projects and singles, and what began informally became another source of income before growing into a significant part of his career. The transition brought its own challenge because he had to learn how to distinguish between writing for himself and writing for another artist without losing his own identity in the process. “I’ve always known the possibilities were there,” he says. “What I couldn’t place my hands on at the time was the balance of my sound and the sound given to other artists.”
That balance remains one of the more complicated parts of being a songwriter. Moore acknowledges that something personal can inevitably enter every session, but he has learned not to treat that as a loss. “You lose a piece of yourself in every session,” he says, “but the reality is you can always give both of you if you keep at it.” The objective is not to disappear inside another artist’s music, but to understand what the song needs and find a way to contribute without forcing his own identity into it.
Shorae does not believe every idea needs to remain with the person who first created it. He has come to see songs as things that need the right environment to become what they are supposed to be. “An idea is an orphan. Only when you take it in, feed it, and nurture it, will it be called your biological child,” he says. “So I just search for the best parents for them.” The joke in the analogy carries a serious point. For him, songwriting is partly about recognising which voice can bring an idea to life most effectively.
That requires constant study. Shorae does not believe an artist can remain fixed within the sound they first developed and continue to grow. “You have to keep your sound fresh and updated from your own sands of time in order to give anything to anyone,” he says. “Every approach requires studying, research and that has been my life in music from time.” His process is therefore not limited to melody or lyrics. He pays attention to the conditions around the music, including the energy in a room, the feeling created by a melody and thoughts connected to past, present and future experiences.
Shorae Moore believes the inner child is essential to making art because it allows the music to emerge without being overmanaged. “The playful child, the inner child, is an essential part of the art, because it brings out the purest part of the music,” he says. It is particularly relevant for an artist whose career now involves considerable technical and professional demands. Technique can be developed, but instinct still needs room to operate.
His growing recognition has offered some confirmation that the work is landing. Awards and achievements, he says, are reminders that the effort has been noticed. They have not fundamentally altered how he sees himself. “It just further certified the things I’ve always known,” he says. The pressure to improve was already there. Even before awards became part of his CV, Shorae was measuring himself against his own standards, reflecting on where the craft had taken him and where he intended to go. “The goal has always been to be better than yesterday.”
That mindset also explains why songwriting has received so much of his attention in recent years. Shorae has invested more time into writing, but he does not see the songwriter and artist as competing identities. If anything, each one depends on the other. “If I don’t get better as an artist, I’ll definitely not get better as a writer,” he says. His artist side may not currently occupy the centre of his career, but he sees its return to full focus as inevitable and necessary to his growth.
That also means resisting the temptation to let other people define the full picture of Shorae Moore too early. Asked whether people misunderstand him as an artist, he is careful with his answer. “I can’t genuinely say they misunderstand anything because I haven’t given enough materials to give them a solid spectrum of experience as to who Shorae Moore the artist is,” he says. “But I’m sure in due time they’ll get the bigger picture.” There is no urgency in the statement. Moore seems more interested in allowing the work to accumulate than forcing a definitive explanation of who he is.
One of the things he values most in the artists he writes for is a willingness to retain what made them distinctive in the first place. He points to an experience where an artist did not move too far away from their original sound. “The fact that he didn’t deviate too far from his original sound, I’m grateful for that in more ways than one,” Shorae says. It is a revealing preference. For all his emphasis on research, freshness and growth, Shorae does not equate evolution with abandoning the foundation. The point is to understand what can change without losing what makes the music recognisable.
That principle extends beyond his own work. When he thinks about the future of music, he is interested in changes to the value placed on craft, personal growth and the way music develops alongside the wider world. He is still figuring out what his own place within that future looks like, but his position remains clear. “It’s all about the music, and I’m really here for the purpose I was brought here for.”
Shorae Moore is not presenting himself as a finished artist. The writer is still learning, the artist is still developing, and the music continues to give him new questions to answer. His story has moved from childhood car rides in Kaduna to a keyboard bought at seven, from hostel covers to professional songwriting sessions and eventually to public recognition. None of it has convinced him that he has arrived. If anything, it has reinforced the need to keep finding out what the music can become.
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