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You started your career early at the age of 13 as a background vocalist. What difference did starting early make for your career?
The early start gave me experience, expertise, insight, steadiness, and focus. Having worked with different artists in various genres and segments of the music industry, I became sure of what I wanted to do and followed it through. I knew I could be whatever I wanted to be and make an impact.
How did you transition from being a background vocalist to becoming an established artist and band leader?
It is growth. When a path is destined for you and you take it seriously, you will always evolve into the original divine idea behind it. Help will always come your way so that you can get bigger, as long as you play your part. I didn’t always know it was destiny; I just did everything my hands found to do really well. So, when it began to open up to me that it was destiny, the transition and evolution were seamless. That’s why we should be serious and do things well because we don’t know if it’s destiny calling us into its fulfilment.
What were some of the important lessons you picked up during your days as a backup singer?
I may not be able to put those lessons into words here. But, basically, I observed singers, took in a lot, and it helped me to select or choose what I wanted to be and how to be it.
Did you face any pressure from your parents not to study music?
I didn’t have that parental pressure experience per se because I didn’t have parents who had much influence on me. I had been left to myself to decide on life from a very early age. So, by the time I made the decision to study music in school, the choice was entirely mine. I only informed my parents. But my dad, if he had his way, wouldn’t have allowed me and, indeed, opposed it. However, I had already begun. You know, most parents of my generation saw artists as beggars and people of low virtue, so looking back now, I do not blame him.
What informed the choice of the genre you do?
I didn’t particularly choose it. I express myself as my soul opens up. It is the human system and the existing order that categorise my music under a genre. And I don’t even agree with the genre I have been identified with. But then, it doesn’t matter. Souls are being blessed, lives are being helped, I’m letting my light shine through the light of God, and purpose is being fulfilled. That’s the most important thing.
It’s been over two decades since you entered the limelight. How have you been able to stay relevant over these years?
Being human, pure and simple, and, as I’ve mentioned before, pouring my soul into my songs. Showing my vulnerability to my world, using my failures and my victories, revealing my scars from my mistakes, telling my story—the parts I choose to tell per time—as truthfully as possible, and baring the state of my heart. Everyone can identify with it because we all have these experiences. Maybe not in the same way, but technically, the same thing. Staying relevant depends on this because the society we’re reaching out to and selling our works to is made up of human beings like us; all of us are souls wanting the same things—hope, happiness, joy. As people in this kind of business, the way to go is just to be pure and simple. Of course, it is also essential to stay in the place where one’s spirit is regenerated, remain awake and conscious, and stay connected to the source of all.
