For me, marriage is not an achievement —Djinee WHAT have you been up to lately? Right now, I am all about my two singles Wonder and All right. I have been running around, promoting them with my management team. You know I haven’t been around for a while, with a lot of people I have to meet, having to go round with them has been tasking. Basically, we are working on promoting the singles and shooting the videos. After so long, why did you opt to release singles instead of an album? Like I always say, every brand has its own strategy. You need to be conversant with your fan base and demography. You employ all those strategy, who are you marketing to? For me as an artiste, an album is a fantastic idea; it will come by the grace of God before the end of the year. But for now I need singles to be out there to catch the audience. Right now, I don’t want to waste songs on the album. I want to be able to release singles and promote them so that when they come out in the album, you will have an album that you already have songs that are already anthems. That way, it will be easier to accept the album. My management team and I have decided that for now, we need to release singles. Ego was a slow song back then. Why the change in style of music? Ego was slower. I am someone that does not like to dwell in the past euphoria. The time of Ego has passed and for some reasons, I don’t like dwelling on that moment. It will be very lazy of me to keep referring to and keep talking about it. I have looked at the industry we have now, I have looked at my target audience and what they listen to. Who really pays for music? That influences the type of music you want to make and also the channel for that genre of music. In all my radio interviews that I have been opportune to do, the channel for sounds like Ego and I no dey shame, my first singles, doesn’t exist anymore. Those channels comprises of the studio where it is edited, to the audience that want to listen to it. There are the people who want to take this work from the artistes to the audience. And I stand to be corrected from my survey, only two types of music exist here in Nigeria. They are the club music and the juju music. Are you saying slow music is not well recognized here? I am saying the likes of Akpala and Juju music are usually been played on AM stations while the club music are played on FM. The Yoruba musicians have their own promoters who do not care about Djinee, they don’t care about P-Square, or Tuface. They deal with the likes of Kwam 1, Saheed Osupa, Malaika, Pasuma and the rest. Even newspapers that have fan base in the west will interview those musicians. So already, people who love Juju music already have a way of getting that music. Even there are marketers who only for that too. Now those doing juju can continue because their channel is already there. Club music is the other one, if you listen to the radio stations 23 hours of the day; they use it to play high tempo music. Nobody is playing rock or slows, and if you have, it is one or two stations. The show promoters usually are not show promoters that will hire rock or slow musicians. They want to hire the high tempo musicians. Trust me I am making money doing the music I am doing now. It’s not like I have sold out; it is not like I have changed. Overkilling won me a different audience and those audience pay for music. With these new singles, I know what I am getting from them. Now tell me where highlife is wrong music to make? It is not in our culture and I grew up listening to it. If you want to get the slow music, Ego and the likes, when the album comes out, you will hear it in there. If you want to book me for shows to sing those songs its fine. Like they say “every Mallam to him kettle”. I am happy right now doing this music. Isn’t there excitement in my voice? Do you feel that you get enough shows? I will not make comparison because I will tell you for free that one thing about this industry is that you never can say. I will not want to say a lot on paper and be making comparison. I am not in the position to do that. But I can tell you that, those that engage me engage me. If it was that bad, I will not be releasing the works I am doing now. It is very expensive to do that, so you show know I am earning somehow. Aside music, do you have other ventures? I co-own a production company, we do portrait generation. If you remember I have worked with the press before. In this life we have a short time to achieve everything we were brought into this world to do. So I am just doing what I know how to do best. I do lot of media work like content generation, productions and all that. And I tell you, it is very interesting. Are you signed unto any record label? I am not on a record label. I will call it what it is. Like I said I co-own a record outfit, and there are deals called the production deals apart from record deals. So I have a production deal, with a production company. And they handle my stuff. Do you have close friends in the industry? I mean everyone. I will not want to call names. For everyone who knows, I always have open hands for everyone, as long as we are doing the same music and the same pains is what we all go through, I guess we are all bonded by that. Like I put in my song, I don’t have beef for anybody. But if you mean close friends, I have those that I have known before music and I also hang out with them. Is there a reason for your absence at some public functions? I don’t believe that you should be everywhere. And I don’t believe I am the only artiste that has that notion. I will be where I am needed. Because of the amount of work I do, I might not be able to honour every invite I get. I don’t think you are in every event. Maybe I was at the event you didn’t attend. When is your album due for release? I am still working as much as I am promoting. I am still working in the studio and I still have other people’s production that I am working on. So it is crazy because my audience come first. And I have to give them something to be proud of. Now that you have been able to make a comeback, what are your plans to remain atop? I don’t see any competition. Maybe we look at life differently. Like I said if you look at life as a competition, you will live a sad life. There is space for everybody. When you look at life as a competition, you then start looking for a way to pull somebody down. It is simple for what it is. We have an audience, we are treating music and it goes beyond the money we make. Yes, we are going to make the money, but it is more than that. At the end of the day, the music business is big enough for everybody. It is not one that bothers me, because I am working. I no dey look anybody, and nobody dey look me. You can’t blame a monk for being a monk. You can’t blame me for my outlook towards life. Are in a relationship at the moment? I am single. I am not married and when it is time it will come. I am happily single if I must add. Don’t you feel that you should be married soon? Why? Is it a must that you must get married? Do you subscribe to marriage being referred to as an ‘achievement’? Achievement? Really, is that why people go with their eyes blind and get burnt? Is that why 90% of the marriages are shaft, because you see it as an achievement? I don’t see it as an achievement. It should not be seen as going to school to achieve a degree. They are not in the same category. Based on where I’m from and being a catholic, at its best, marriage is a sacrament. It is not an achievement and something to be shown off to the world as a badge on your shoulder. That is what I believe. So it is not what one should do, because everybody is doing it. If you don’t do it, it means you are lesser. Come off it; learn today that marriage is not an achievement. Don’t you think your views on marriage are misleading? If you care about everything people say, you will live a sad life. And it is because of notion like yours that make people to rush into marriage and get burnt. Women die in marriages, you have heard that. What do you say to her in her grave when she dies? Especially when it is caused by a marriage she rushed into. Oh, she didn’t achieve right, at least she was married right. Is that what you will say to her? People will always talk. I am happy the way I am. It is irrelevant what anybody says. You will ignore the achievement that I have made in the industry and all the good things that I do and just because I am not married, start talking about whom I am. Does that define who I am? I want to use you medium as a writer to change the notion that marriage is not an achievement.
Posted on: Thu, 18 Jul 2013 08:45:38 +0000
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