Written by: Nana Tenadu
There is something slightly amusing about Gina Baker’s CV.
On one side, there is Chemical and Nuclear Engineering. There is process improvement, data, supply chains and logistics automation. There are some very serious companies: DS Smith, International Paper, Procter & Gamble, and now Toyota Automated Logistics, where she works around automated logistics and continuous improvement.
Then there is Ginius. Ginius makes music. She sings about love. She writes about relationships. She makes songs that can sit comfortably somewhere between Afro-R&B, Afrofusion, Amapiano and whatever else happens when someone refuses to keep their musical influences in a box.
Gina Baker has spent much of her professional life figuring out how things work. Ginius does something remarkably similar with sound. Before the songs became increasingly personal, she was interested in what goes into making them. She started out as a producer, learning the piano and drums and becoming fascinated by the mechanics of putting music together. She was comfortable behind the beats. That detail is worth holding onto. Because the obvious story about Ginius is that she is an engineer who became a musician. The more interesting story is that she has always been someone who builds.
At the University of Leeds, she studied Chemical and Nuclear Engineering and became the first Black woman to complete the programme. She has since built a professional career in process improvement and engineering, moving through packaging, consumer goods and, now, automated logistics.
The achievement is impressive. But Ginius herself has been fairly clear about something that gets lost when people describe it. She did not enter university thinking, I am going to become the first Black woman to do this. She chose the course because she was curious. In fact, when she was asked about becoming the first Black woman to graduate from Chemical and Nuclear Engineering at Leeds, she explained that she had simply chosen a course that aligned with her interests.
Engineering interested her because of a question about how things work. Her original interest in chemical engineering came partly from wanting to understand how medicines were actually made. Nuclear engineering appealed to her because it was abstract and unfamiliar. She admits, with the kind of hindsight that makes a difficult degree sound almost funny, that pursuing it turned out to be one of the most challenging things she had done.
She did it anyway. Then she went back to music. She remembers being responsible for music at summer parties as a child. Later, she found herself producing, writing hooks and doing backing vocals. Eventually, a friend encouraged her to stop hiding behind the beats and become the artist herself.
On Here’s Where We Once Were, for instance, she is not simply presenting a collection of songs about a failed relationship. She is thinking about how the songs should move, what they should communicate, how they should transition and where the emotional temperature should rise and fall. She describes the project almost like a relationship unfolding in sequence.
Love Me Softly establishes the terms. Test Drive belongs to the honeymoon phase. Woman imagines permanence. And eventually Lost & Numb ends the story, where the promised future has disappeared and the person left behind has to figure out what comes next. It is a love story arranged by someone who knows how to arrange things. And that may be the joke hiding in plain sight.
The Chemical and Nuclear Engineering graduate is now spending her time thinking about failed promises. The engineer who works with automation is writing songs about feelings that are, by definition, difficult to automate. Maybe that isn’t a contradiction at all. Maybe it is simply Ginius being Ginius.
She has moved through two spaces where women, and particularly Black women have historically had to make themselves visible. But what stands out isn’t the fact that she has entered those rooms. It is the consistency with which she approaches them. She has spoken about the responsibility that comes with occupying those spaces, particularly for young Black women coming after her and has also drawn a parallel between STEM and music: in both places, people have to take up space if they want the room to change.
That might be the most interesting thing about her. She keeps moving. Producer. Singer. Songwriter. Creative director None of these identities seems particularly interested in cancelling the one before it. They simply keep adding another layer. And these days, instead of chemical compounds or automated systems, she has beats and melodies. Different tools, perhaps. The same curiosity.
