Growing up in Cypress, about 25 miles northwest of Houston, EJ and AK Odjighoro felt like any other boys in Texas. They went to Whataburger, drove into the city when their parents would permit it, and spent Friday nights at high school football games. It was only after the duo—who record music under the name Kairo—began college at the University of Houston that their experience as twins and immigrants from Nigeria was contextualized in a new way.
As soon as the brothers, who are now 23 years old, arrived on campus, they realized just how homogeneous their suburban community had been, despite the fact that they’d run with what they call a “diverse” friend group. It was this eye-opening realization that informed Kairo’s origin. Blending pop, R&B, soul, hip-hop, and rock, the duo began telling their story across the 2022 EPs Love Letters From Houston and Return to Sender.
These days, EJ and AK are signed to Def Jam Records and live in L.A. With the arrival of their debut LP, Are We There Yet, on Wednesday, the brothers are more excited than ever to share their artistry as Nigerian Americans, Texans from Houston, and twin brothers hell-bent on taking over the treacherous music industry.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Texas Monthly: What precipitated your family’s move from Nigeria?
AK Odjighoro: Our parents looked at it as an opportunity to be in a first world country, and something can happen from that, which it did. We’re eternally grateful for it. We always talk about how if that never happened, our lives would look completely different.
EJ Odjighoro: Before we were born, my mom took us to the UK embassy. They rejected her and told her, “Have your kids and come back.” She had us in Nigeria, she came back, and they said no. When she got back, our uncle—as a joke—told her to apply for the U.S. visa lottery, which she won.
TM: When did you start making music?
EJ: I made one song junior year. I put it on SoundCloud, but before that, we would post covers on Instagram. We were doing covers on YouTube. We were trying to put ourselves out there. . . . It didn’t really turn serious until a few years after high school.
AK: It all started out with a single called “Teenage Dream.” We put that out together, and it didn’t blow up or anything, but it kind of blew up in our school. It felt kind of crazy. I was like, “I guess this is what happens whenever you put out semi-good music.” We put that out, and I think that was the first time we looked at music in a commercial, real-artist way.
TM: Did your parents encourage your creativity?
AK: For our parents to be happy with us making music, it had to overpower the normal route for a Nigerian or an immigrant—doctor, lawyer, engineer. We weren’t like, “Oh, no, I’m never gonna go to college.” We were very realistic about music. I studied computer science in college. I told myself that if music went off, I would fully allocate my time to music. That was the healthiest way to approach it, because I do know the opposite side of pursuing things with everything you have. That’s EJ’s vibe. For myself, it doesn’t have to be that way. You can chase two things—you just have to be smart about it.
It really clicked for our parents, though, when they saw one of our shows. We sold out White Oak Music Hall, in Houston. They realized it was something real, because they saw people coming up to us and congratulating us. Now they’re very excited. They’ve seen the growth in the three or four years we’ve done Kairo.
TM: You grew up in Cypress, a suburb of Houston. Did you make it into the city often?
EJ: We’d go to theater shows, the mall; we’d go thrift a lot; we went to the Leopard Lounge.
AK: We went to University of Houston for three semesters. For the first semester, we went in person until COVID hit. Our time in Houston was kind of robbed a bit, but every time we come back, we know all the places and everything like that. In high school, our parents would never let us just drive to Houston and do whatever. Even in one of our songs, we talk about how our parents never let us go to the other side of the neighborhood. In Nigerian culture, there’s no reason why you’re out past 8 p.m. So if you are out, it just feels like you’re causing trouble. It was mainly football games, the normal Texas stuff. Whataburger. It definitely shaped us for sure.
TM: Talk about the Nigerian influence growing up.
EJ: We would’ve gone anywhere and there would still have been a big Nigerian presence in our life. When we came to America, we became a transition home for other relatives. We had relatives that won the same lottery and would come and stay with us for one to two years, get on their feet, get a job, and then they’d move in down the street. That was how our family was set up. We always had a bunch of different relatives in the house with us at all times.
TM: Was there a Nigerian community in Cypress?
EJ: There was a little bit. I think it’s greater when you go closer to Houston, but we always had different events that we were going to. I was like, “Oh gosh, we are everywhere.”
TM: Did you ever feel like outsiders?
AK: If I was to look at it at this age, I would be like, “Oh, wow, we were outsiders there.” I don’t think we ever really felt like we were outsiders, because it was all we were used to. We went to a 90 percent white school, and it never fully clicked until we got out of high school that we didn’t go to a diverse school. But it always felt diverse because our friend group was diverse. I guess we were always outsiders, because we were very creative at a young age. Some kids would make fun of us for trying to make YouTube videos, and then two, three years later, those same kids would congratulate us and be hyped about all the success.
EJ: I remember we were scared when a random person found our YouTube. . . . Even in high school, we made a clothing brand. We got on the cover of the high school magazine because of it. We were always doing stuff that was just bigger and ambitious. We definitely had people that were congratulating us, but we definitely also had people that were like, “Oh, what is this? This is stupid.” We were always aiming to just be in a creative space, whether it was doing video directing, music, anything. We were just wanting to do something that wasn’t the normal route of a job or something. So yeah, I think we always kind of had that edge.
TM: How hard was it to leave your folks and move to L.A. to focus more on music?
EJ: It was pretty difficult, 100 percent. We were coming to a place where we didn’t know anybody. We were kind of prepared for it, because we also wanted to drop out in high school and move to L.A. We thought it was the only way. When we moved, though, it was perfect timing. We had learned a lot, grown, matured, and knew a bunch about the industry. We still have way more to learn, but now there’s an actual reason for us to be here. It’s more secure than just pursuing our dreams.
TM: What made you want to dedicate your first project, Love Letters From Houston, to your home city?
AK: It was about leaving and going to be somewhere else for a bit, so why not pay homage to the place where we started? A lot of the ideas for the EP started there, too, because a lot of them were voice memos on our phones from Houston that we just never pursued. We walked in the studio and then made them into real songs.
TM: With Are We There Yet?, what did you want to do differently?
EJ: We’re still baby artists, but I feel like our career and our outlook clicked last year when we put out a song called “Savior.” We were trying to figure out where we go from the last two EPs and how we begin to elevate our sound. . . . We wanted to talk about our story; we wanted to talk about us. If we were going to take this artistry more seriously and have a long-lasting career, we needed to talk about something more personal. For the longest time, we thought that our story wasn’t exceptional to write about. We realized our story is really important and it needs to be a vital part of our artistry.
TM: What’s the best part about sharing a career with your twin?
AK: It’s having someone that’s going through the exact same things as you, and having someone you can talk to about it. It means everything.
EJ: If I were to do this alone, it’d just be like hell on earth, to be honest. Artists do it all the time. They don’t have twins. It’s so nice, though, to have another person right along these exact same steps with you, even going through the same stuff with you or just being there to see an experience that you went through, and then being able to help you pull that out for a song or talk about it. Also, if I need to see how a ’fit looks, I just tell him to wear it.
