Nigerian musician Chinedu Okoli, better known by his stage name Flavour N’abania, recently talked about how he became a musical celebrity and shared an incident in which he was asked to leave the stage while performing for the well-known pair PSquare.
In a recent interview that was published on Sunday on the In My Opinion podcast, he disclosed this and talked about his formative years.
He said, “Things started changing when I started seeing some artists. When I left the band, I went into the streets. That was when the game became hard. All this time, I was in a good place; the music had procedures and all, but now I was in the streets.
“I remember one day PSquare with a temptation album, so they were promoting a show, and the promoters brought them to the spot; it was called City Centre in Enugu.
“In the spot I had built fans, everybody was there every weekend. On Friday, no matter the show happening in Enugu, my spot is always packed; cars were packed on the street.
“So, the promoters brought PSquare, you know, to come and promote the show. I was performing, and immediately PSquare came in. The manager said, Hello, stop that thing.
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“I switched off the device and passed the microphone. I went there and sat there. When PSquare came, the girls were screaming.
“Then Paul took the microphone and sang this temptation. When they left, the manager asked me to come back. I was cold.”
He went on to say that the encounter made him understand the need of developing his own distinctive style and turning from a musician into a true artist.
“So I was like, It’s the same music these people are doing. I’ve been with you, and you never shouted like this. I was so cold; I was just watching. When they left, the manager just told me to carry on,” he added.
“Then it started occurring to me that these guys, the difference is that they create their sound, go to the studio, and record. That’s how it’s done. So you are just a music man.
“So I decided to change from a music man to an artiste, and that was the difficult part of it because I thought it was going to be easy. I could play, I could sing, but to create your own sound, where are you going to start from?
“The best way to go about it was to start afresh.”
