Meet Freda, The Creative Building Sets for Some of Afrobeats Coolest Music Videos

“I see props as colours”.It is probably the easiest way to understand how Freda Okikiola Frederick Wey approaches art. A self-taught visual artist and set designer, she doesn’t see a set as simply a collection of things placed in a room. Every object has a role, the colour it brings, the feeling it creates, what it says about the artist and how it helps tell the story of the song.

That way of seeing things began with painting. She started painting a few years ago, initially as a way of coping with stress. It became an outlet for expressing things she couldn’t always put into words. When she moved back to Lagos in 2024, she began working with Anita Shiru, an experience that introduced her to a creative space she hadn’t known much about.

“I felt like I got introduced into a whole creative space that I did not even know existed,” she says. One moment stayed with her. She walked into a studio and saw wooden boxes that had been transformed into an entire setting. “I was captivated.” She already understood what it meant to create a world on a canvas. Now, she was seeing what could happen when that canvas became an actual space. “I just saw that space as, you know, a bigger canvas.”

That was how art direction found her. Since then, that bigger canvas has appeared in music videos for some of Afrobeats’ familiar names, including Tems and Dave’s Raindance, Adekunle Gold’s Obimo, BNXN and Sarz’s “Emotional High”, “Young Jonn’s Elumelu”, Bella Shmurda and Olamide’s “Ara”, Nikos ” Call My Name “and T.I Blaze’s “Hope”.

How Freda Builds a Creative World 

Freda’s process usually begins with the music. A treatment from a director or client might provide the initial idea, but she wants to understand the song  itself its message, its mood and the personality of the artist behind it. “The song always matters because the song already carries the personality of the artist.”

From there, she starts figuring out what the message of the song might look like in a physical space. For Young John’s “Elumelu”, the brief was to create a version of a corporate office that didn’t feel like a regular corporate office. Freda reimagined what a real-life Tony Elumelu office would be like and then played with the contrast, introducing a kiosk into the office to bring in something more familiar and unexpected.

For “Raindance”, the approach was much softer. The set used water and beach elements to complement the mood of the song and the quality Tems brings to it. The video was intentionally made to feel unforced, almost as if friends had simply brought a camcorder to dinner at a beach and started recording. Freda’s job was to help create that feeling without making the set feel like it was trying too hard.

Behind the Scenes With Freda 

You watch Raindance and see Tems and Dave by the water. You watch Elumelu and see Young Jonn inside an office that doesn’t quite look like an office. What you don’t see is everything that had to happen before the camera could roll.

A treatment given by the creative director might arrive with a good idea, but turning that idea into something real means breaking it down into colours, props, materials and getting the right team. Then comes the sourcing, the building, the logistics and the inevitable question of whether the budget can actually carry the idea.

Sometimes, there isn’t much time to figure it out. The typical time for building sets is 2-3 days; for Freda, her longest time putting a set together is 24 hours. “We are there even before the call time, and we are there after the shoot has wrapped up, striking the set.” For Raindance, that meant moving heavy wooden props across the water to Ilashe. The finished video makes it look easy. The process wasn’t.

And that is part of what she wishes people understood about art direction. A budget can sound big until it is divided between materials, transport, artisans, construction and everything else that has to make the idea possible. Sometimes creatives even put in their own money to get the work across the line. It makes sense, then, that she doesn’t treat the projects casually. “I take the job as a personal project. I take it as a baby project every time.”

Her Career Started With Simply Trying 

There was never a grand plan to become the person designing sets for some of Afrobeats’ biggest artists. There was painting. Then working with Anita Shiru. Then one studio, one wooden box and the realisation that a set could be another kind of canvas. The rest has been a series of trying.

Her advice to anyone looking at her work and wondering where to begin is just as simple: “Honestly, the best thing I ever did was just trying”. You don’t have to feel fully ready before you start.” It sounds simple. But her own career is a pretty good example of what can happen when you do.