Most people know Portable for the chaos: the controversies, the videos, the fights, the unpredictability. What fewer people know is where all of that energy comes from and why a man who seems to seek attention at every turn is also someone who had nobody looking out for him when he needed it most.
On The Honest Bunch Podcast, Portable sat down and talked about his life before fame and before the internet fell in love with his wildness.
The Loss That Changed Everything
He was 13 years old when his mother died. 
“I lost my mom when I was 13 years old, and there was nobody to take care of me,” he said. Before her death, there was at least structure, some care, and some semblance of a childhood. After that, everything was harder.
He says he searched for anyone who could fill that space. “I was looking for somebody to take care of me the way my mom took care of me, and nobody could.”
The Schools That Never Kept Him
Without someone to advocate for him or pay his way consistently, school became a revolving door. He moved between many schools (including Mother’s Joy Primary School and ODC), never settling anywhere long enough to build a foundation.
He clashed with teachers regularly. His account is that he was mistreated, beaten, and lied about. “They lied against me. People lie about me too much,” he said, a grievance that sounds personal even years later, reflecting the frustration of a child who felt the system was against him before he had the tools to fight back.
The school fees kept getting in the way too. “I didn’t see anybody to sponsor me again. The school fees were high.” Without money and without a parent, staying in education became less a question of desire and more a question of resources he simply did not have.
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The Street Became His Classroom
Portable has always been honest about what the streets gave him that school could not, and on this podcast, he said it plainly: “I learned from the street more than school.” He sold water on the streets as a child, hustling for food and doing whatever it took to survive each day. The independence forced on him at 13 shaped a man who learned very early that nobody was coming to save him, so he had better save himself.
He also tried everything else: football at Pepsi Academy, learning fashion styling, and performing wherever he could find a stage. In Abuja, he found the closest thing to belonging he had experienced since losing his mother.
He was not just singing; he was dancing, rapping, and performing in local talent competitions at venues like Eden Garden, winning the champion title repeatedly.
He was also watching. He recalls performing in the same spaces as Tekno during that period, watching a man who would go on to become a genuine star and learning from what he observed. Producer Sugarboy was also in his corner during those years, making music for him when few people knew his name.
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What Drives Him Now
Portable’s aggression in everything he does, including his hustle, his presence, and his refusal to be quiet or manageable, makes complete sense when you understand where it comes from. A boy who lost his mother, lost his stability, and had to build everything from scratch does not slow down. He cannot afford to.
Now, his mission is to make sure the people around him never feel what he felt.
He provides for his father, his stepmother, and his siblings. “My family, we are one strong family,” he said. For a man who spent years with no family structure at all, this sentence is the whole point of the money, the music, and the grind.
Success for Portable has never been about the cars or the recognition. It is about breaking the cycle that started when a 13-year-old boy was left alone and had to figure out what came next entirely by himself.
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