September 24, (THEWILL) – I can’t remember how many people asked for my assistance in helping to get their children some mileage in the music industry. My response has always been based on two standard templates.
“I really don’t know much about the industry anymore, but I’ll ask a few people what is possible and what’s not,” if I’m not very close to you.
“Please tell your kid to do music as a hobby and not as a career because it’s not a very healthy space for any young person to be these days,” if I am relatively close to you.
I should know because I have run a record label, Strictly Next Level Records, that gave the world one of the best female rappers out of Nigeria, Bukola Folayan otherwise known as Bouqui. That was in the mid 2000s, before I decided to face the broadcast media space fully.
Back then, it was a little crazy, but trust me, these days, it’s more dangerous and a lot more toxic than you know and imagine. The subliminal nature of music makes it a dangerous tool that can penetrate your subconscious mind without much resistance and can take over your thoughts without your permission.
It is therefore frightening to see that such a powerful communication and indoctrination tool has been allowed to become a cesspit for drug abuse and drug trafficking, money laundering, youth indoctrination, gang wars, cultism, human sacrifices, all types of voodoo, Internet fraud practitioners, organised prostitution, and many more scary social vices.
What has been revealed to you in the past few days after the death of Ilerioluwa Aloba, otherwise known as Mohbad, is just a tip of the iceberg really. Many of your favourites in the industry may be social media sweethearts, but a lot of them are absolutely ruthless and borderline psychopaths in real life.
All you need to do is listen deeply to the lyrics of a lot of the songs out there and you will hear hidden messages and violent street codes that you didn’t take note of before now.
Ironically, churches have bred most of the biggest artistes out there, but the lack of requisite support structures and platforms, as well as systemic exploitation and under appreciation of these talents make them lose most of their ‘flock’ to the ‘world’.
Since nature abhors vacuums, a legion of unsavoury and shady characters have stepped up to fill that vacuum and are subliminally indoctrinating our kids into all sorts of vices right under our noses.
It is okay to support your kids in any venture they wish to undertake, but unless you own N30 billion like an Adeleke or your surname is Dangote, which will help you build a protective cocoon around them, make sure you do a deep dive into the company they keep in the industry.
A word is enough for the wise.
In many ways, we have all contributed to creating this all-powerful monster that is now feeding on our children with reckless abandonment and threatening to rip apart the very fabric of our society.
We danced to ‘Soapy’ without any inhibitions, despite the fact that it made our young boys masturbate their lives away.
We gleefully danced to ‘Ko s’ewe, ko s’egbo..’ even when we knew that the chemicals being mixed were crack, such as Fentanyl (also spelt as fentanil, a highly potent synthetic piperidine opioid drug), Skoochies (or skuchies), a household name in night clubs and parties both in the streets, as well as highbrow areas of Nigeria, containing a combination of boiled marijuana extract, codeine containing cough syrups, tramadol, alcohol, sometimes herbal tinctures, some juice/drink like zobo or cranberry, as well as the scoochies brewer’s secret ingredient which may just be another substance you know nothing about); colorado (a combination of strong marijuana variants but with a strong indication of potency beyond any synthetic drug) etc.
We joyfully chanted ‘If you no get money, hide your face’ even as we know it is insensitive, oppressive and likely to cause depression and anxiety amongst the financially vulnerable and the impressionable youth population.
We were quick to defend incredibly bad behaviour, such as a celebrity’s security team shooting a club patron just because his woman refused to be ‘toasted’ by a ‘god’ of music, and people reinforcing someone boldly claiming he ‘has no manners.’
We bully, threaten, insult, attack, maim and even kill those who have the decency and courage to say anything negative about our favourites even when they glaringly mess up in the worst ways.
We are quick to disrespect and cancel even our own legends who put in the work and helped to create the platforms and pathways that all these ‘new cats’ are using to shine on a global scale.
We still have relative disdain for the entertainment industry as a whole and the music business in particular, often seeing them as necessary nuisances, without us having a proper understanding of the power music has to indoctrinate even our own children, right under our noses.
We preach, in churches and mosques, against these young people who just want to express themselves, and keep them at arm’s length, thereby reducing the potential influences and guidance that could have been provided.
We refuse to mentor these kids, often deriding them as unserious and lazy youths because they choose to be entertainers instead of lawyers, doctors, engineers, and other respectable professions.
We seek elective offices without understanding the subliminal messaging potentials of music and the power of entertainment as a whole and the need to create buffer zones in our media spaces and platforms against the influx of local and foreign threats and destructive influences.
We tax these celebrities EVERYWHERE, on radio and TV via payola, at locations via area boys, at events, family, friends etc, making their lives miserable and making it harder for people with incredible talent, but without a pile of money to be heard or be seen.
We created a lawless society where bad behaviour is now the new norm and often vigorously defended, while good behaviour is frowned upon, treated with disdain, and sometimes even punished.
Afrobeats is not the problem here!
It is a solution to unemployment, youth empowerment, wealth creation, increasing Foreign Direct Investment and Diaspora remittances, and much more.
It is a platform that a lot of us invested our youth and talent to help build and develop to where it is right now, but like whatever good thing you don’t protect, a large chunk of it has been hijacked by some of the worst amongst us.
Almost all of us are culpable, one way or another and the sooner we own up to our part in this whole mess, the sooner we can start exploring ways to tame this monster we have fed, groomed and cuddled for the longest time.
It’s not too late to start correcting the mistakes of the past, at least for now.
Rest in peace, Imole. May your light shine on all the darkness and right so many wrongs in our beloved music industry. God bless.
