Chyn on The Cheyenne Show: "It's Nostalgic, But Futuristic at the Same Time"

Ask Chyn where The Cheyenne Show came from and he does not start with the music. "If you notice, the album cover is like just a collage of my childhood pictures," he told PINCHED in an exclusive interview. "It was a time where I was happy, and it was just a good time. I remember it being a time of no worries." That collage is the whole idea behind The Cheyenne Show’s eleven songs: nostalgic, but futuristic at the same time.

Chyn as a baby. Source: Chyn (exclusive to PINCHED)

Who Chyn Is

Chyn was born Cheyenne Labesa. He was born and raised in Lagos, Nigeria. His father studied at Western Michigan University; his mother trained as a lawyer at Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria."My dad was very American influenced," he said. "He liked James Brown, Marvin Gaye, all those oldies, those classics, were in the household." The house ran on Walt Disney films and a television he was rarely far from. "They used to say I was always sitting down in front of the TV, like, 'Ah, this guy's always watching TV.'"

The name itself carries that same mixed inheritance. His father's university friend in Michigan was a Native American man named Cheyenne, and his father liked the name enough to pass it to his son. The name did not survive Nigerian classrooms intact. "The teachers butchered my name," Chyn said. "So at one point, I was just tired of people butchering my name, and I just made it short. I removed the E's. It's like an abbreviation. Chyn. Just to keep it easy, keep it simple, straightforward."

Rap arrived through writing, not singing. He was already the strongest creative writer in his primary school class, churning out poems and short stories, before he found in rap a place for that same instinct toward rhyme. "I liked poetry, I liked rhyming, and when I got to secondary school, I just caught the bug."

Chyn as a child. Source: Chyn (exclusive to PINCHED)

The Falz Partnership That Started It All

That bug caught more than one boy at once. At Olashore International School in Osun State, where Chyn met Folarin Falana, now known across Nigeria as Falz, and a group of them started making music together in SS1. What made the pairing work, Chyn said, was that neither of them was doing the same thing. "Falz had his own style, which was different. Very Nigerian. And I was like the Western balance to him. We always combined very, very well, and the songs connected with people." That partnership later produced the 2015 hit "Big", one of Chyn’s various collaborations with Falz.

They stayed in that lane after secondary school even as their paths split geographically, Falz to Reading in the UK, Chyn to Scotland. Both kept making music from opposite ends of Britain, and both eventually found their way back to Nigeria to keep going. The image below, taken at a bar years after they first started, is one Chyn shared with PINCHED as part of this interview, alongside a second photograph of the two of them performing together on the same stage, microphones close, years into both their careers.

That same balance, Western instinct against Falz's distinctly Nigerian sound, became the template Chyn kept refining alone after they went separate ways, relearning over time how much African texture his own music needed.

Chyn and Falz, friends and collaborators since secondary school. Source: Chyn (exclusive to PINCHED)

The Faith That Got Him Through

Every artiste has a stretch they do not put in the press release. Asked about his hardest one, Chyn did not name a single low point so much as describe how he got through all of them. "I just had faith," he said. "Life is about challenges. If you have a vision, if you're trying to chase something, you're going to meet stumbling blocks. That's part of life. It's how you respond, how you react."

The story he kept returning to, unprompted, was Joseph, son of Jacob: sold into slavery by his own brothers, jailed on a false accusation, and eventually made Pharaoh's second-in-command for the very gift, interpreting dreams, that his family once resented him for. "He didn't allow all those tragedies and misfortunes to define him. He was confident in his talent, and eventually, that gift came through." Chyn has clearly sat with that story more than once. "I feel like I have a responsibility to show my gift," he said. "I give the glory to God."

Source: Chyn (exclusive to PINCHED)

Building The Cheyenne Show as One Story

By the time he was ready to move from singles to a full album, Chyn already knew he did not want to overload it. "I didn't want to bore people with too many songs. I wanted to evoke an emotion, a feel that would connect with people." Eleven tracks, he decided, was the right length for an audience with a short attention span, his own included. "I wanted to keep it sharp, keep it simple."

The idea holding those eleven songs together is the same one on the cover: nostalgia paired with forward motion. "I want you to feel an emotion of, okay, yeah, this guy is quite futuristic, but he's also very connected to the past," he said. "So it's futuristic, but also vintage at the same time. That juxtaposition is what I was trying to evoke."

The Cheyenne Show Album Cover. Source: Spotify

Inside "Sauce 89"

The song most responsible for that feeling is "Sauce 89," built around a reference Chyn returns to with real affection: Miami Vice, the 1980s American television series about two Miami detectives, one Black, one white, working cases against a backdrop of pure visual excess. "Every scene was beautiful. It was not just about solving crimes. They were intentional about making every scene beautiful and I appreciated it," he said. "When I was writing 'Sauce 89,' I wanted it to evoke beauty, luxury, sauce, flashy gold chains etc." The show's two detectives, Crockett and Tubbs, get a direct name-check in the song's second verse.

The chorus belongs to A$IRI, an artiste and producer Chyn met 3 years ago and who produces most of the tracks on the album.

I called the song “Sauce 89” because I wanted the title to also express some kind of nostalgia.

The video came after, built from a place of “Joy and Love”. He pulled together roughly two minutes and forty seconds of vintage 1980s footage and brought it together to create a Visual Art piece. "It made me happy. I was like, that was a good time, let's just put all this beautiful imagery into one video."

Asiri, Blublood and the "Refinery"

Chyn calls himself a refinery, and the description holds up against how he talks about the people he works with. A$IRI, he said, arrived with talent that had not yet been fully shaped. "He had a lot of beats. They were raw, but I could sense the talent, I could sense the rawness, I could sense the authenticity, and I was ready to refine it." Blublood, another producer on the album, handled "Subliminals," the record's biggest song. “I had a vision, and I'm a minimalist. I don't like too many things going on in the sound. I had to be stubborn to get the desired goal, because you need to be stubborn sometimes," Chyn said.

"Subliminals," the Song Built to Hook You First

Of everything on the album, "Subliminals" is the one that surprised its own creator. "I'm actually surprised how people really connected to that song," Chyn said. "I'm just like, wow, how?" The answer traces back to a deliberate choice about what a listener notices first. "When you go to a club and you see a woman, the first thing you notice is her face and her body, not her mind. That was how I wanted to create Subliminals. The beat is nice, it's smooth, it's calm, the chorus is beautiful, something that attracts you immediately. Then eventually, when you've heard it a bunch of times, you realize, okay, this guy was spitting."

Where He Places Nigerian Rap

Chyn does not see Nigerian rap as struggling so much as under-packaged. He counts Odumodublvck, Blaqbonez, Vector, Ladipoe, Falz and MI Abaga among the artistes proving it can work, and argues the country's size makes room for more than one dominant sound. "Nigeria has 300 million people. It's just like a buffet. Sometimes you want fish, sometimes chicken, sometimes pork." Everybody loves a good rap song, he added, pointing to how far the Migos-associated "Hotel Lobby" wave has travelled outside rap-first audiences. "It's just how you package it. Not everybody knows how to package it well."

What Comes Next

Asked what he wants to be able to say about his own contribution to Nigerian rap in ten years, Chyn kept coming back to the same word: responsibility. "It's bigger than me. It's bigger than you. It's bigger than Nigeria. I'm just trying to do God's work." Pressed on a specific legacy, his answer was almost plain by comparison. "I want to be known to always be working. Always working."

Asked what he'd tell PINCHED's readers directly, he was less certain. "I have no answer for that, to be honest. I just believe everybody should be free to do what they need to do, choose what they need to choose, be themselves , and find happiness."

Source: Chyn (exclusive to PINCHED)

Frequently Asked Questions

Who Is Chyn?

Chyn, born Cheyenne Labesa, is a Nigerian rap artiste and visual artist born and raised in Lagos, and the creator of the 2025 album The Cheyenne Show.

What Is The Cheyenne Show About?

The Cheyenne Show is an album about identity, ambition, pleasure, memory, and the tension between the life you dreamed about and the person you become while chasing it.

Who Is A$IRI, the Artiste Featured on Sauce 89?

A$IRI is an artiste and producer Chyn met in Abuja, who produces most of the tracks on The Cheyenne Show and sings the chorus on "Sauce 89."

What Inspired Sauce 89?

“Sauce 89” is inspired by the glamour, excess, style and cinematic mythology of 1980s pop culture, using that era as a canvas for Chyn to express his own identity

How Did Chyn and Falz Start Making Music Together?

Chyn met Falz, born Folarin Falana, in High school , where they began making music together before both moved to the UK for university and later returned to Nigeria to continue their careers.