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The music and sports culture has seen a thousand tales of players turned singers or vice versa, starting from the school days of Bob Dylan as a boxer to those of Fergie as a cheerleader. Nigerian-Italian singer and songwriter Temidola Awosika, better known as Modola, builds another page for this book. Born on 17th April 2005 in Lagos and raised in Milan, Italy, Modola defied recent podcast confrontation of BBNaija’s Tacha by admitting to having played badminton at the competitive level as a teenager while growing up in Italy.
“I played badminton at the competitive level in Italy.”
Sports had disciplined and committed me, and I think that is the very reason why I work the way I do,” she stated, nudging the argument that the discipline in training sessions followed through to her intense creative process.
Modola’s youth was an intermixture of African roots and European refinement, and this sharpened her multilingualism in Spanish, French, and Italian, and also made her fall in love with acting and dancing. Her experience with sports wasn’t an after-school activity—there was additional continuous movement around for games, which also fortified her resolve. Music instruction came with a cost. During the same interview, Modola drew a brave move: migrating to Nigeria at the age of 16 years old without informing her parents, for reasons of art.
“I migrated to Nigeria because my mum and dad did not want me to pursue music as a profession. I did not let them know I was migrating to Nigeria. They were asleep when I booked a ticket directly to Nigeria alone.”
She disclosed. This bold move prompted her to chart a niche as a solo artist, cutting short-term deals prior to signing with PG Records in 2024.
Her breakthrough arrived with the single “Talk,” which went trending on TikTok and reached No. 59 on the TurnTable Top 100 chart, establishing her as a fresh face in Afrobeats and R&B crossbreed. Catching momentum, Modola dropped her debut EP New Light on July 31, 2025—a six-tracker whose self-searching wordplay, multi-lingual flavors, and genre-fusing moods submerged the globe in her sound. Hit song “No Stress” exploded on TikTok overnight, amassing over 1.5 million fan videos and hitting a peak of No. 20 on Apple’s Top Naija Music chart, while the EP itself gained over 2 million streams in its first two days and reached the Tanzania Top 100 Music Chart at No. 56.
Tacha praised Modola’s evidence on the podcast as evidence of no boundaries on passion and discipline, and the same can be testified to by online fans who luxuriate in her silky smoothness from the field to fame. Songs such as “Masun” (which is a tribute to relentless grind) and “Oro Owo” (which show ambition) evoke that energy, and Modola has called the EP her “love letter to every young woman who refuses to be boxed in.” At age 20, Modola’s narrative—of leaving Italian badminton courts to Lagos studio rooms—is the ultimate showcase of how determination on the court can lead to music genius, that gravity in one area can fuel the chaos in another.
