What kind of childhood did you have?
I’d say I had somewhat of a privileged childhood, because I had seen a lot of things out there. I never wanted anything as a child. I was born abroad, but raised here in Nigeria. It was a lot of fun; I was in Nigeria until I was about 17 before I moved back to the UnitedStates.
How would you define Ikechukwu as a brand?
Brand wise, I believe I’ve had a rocky road as far as my career is concerned in Nigeria, but one thing is for sure, I am a significant name when it comes to entertainment and I am definitely one of those who brought the game to where it is today.
The brand has evolved to a point where corporate entities feel it’s high time they started dealing with me again, because there was a period when I went through a rocky stage; leaving Storm Records, back and forth with Mohits, and also the fighting situation.
After all that, I started to rebrand who Ikechukwu is. And after my father died in 2011, I released a track and that marked the rebranding of Ikechukwu. I was now independent as a brand, so I put out my album, WFA, and that started the coming of the independence for Ikechukwu all over again.
You started at a time when the Nigerian audience was not fully ready for rap music. What kept you going?
That is true; nobody was really caring for rap or hip hop at that time. And although it has been accepted to a certain point now, it is still not up to the way other genres of music are generally accepted.
Back then, it was just the likes of Ruggedman, Mode9, 2shot, Big-low, Too Fat, Thoroughbreds, Terry d Rapman, Oldie, and a few others; those were the rappers then, and they didn’t even get booked for shows unless they had one major hit. For instance, Ruggedman did a smart thing and incorporated all kinds of gimmicks to lock down the people, whereas his other peers in the hip hop were sticking to core rap; the lyrical vocabulary rap. But to the audience, that’s just too much English.
So prior to when I decided to come back home finally, I had been to Nigeria to spend just a couple of days, and all I did then was scout what was going on. I wanted to see what was happening in town. I was coming from New York City, I had a different orientation as regards music here and I needed to know.
Many of the rappers you mentioned now are rarely in the news now. What did you do differently?
Hip hop right from then till now has had one significant change; it’s been the dummying down of the lyrics and an infusion of a lot of local tongue. Based on that and based on the swag, looking at it up to 2006, Ruggedman was basically the only rapper that was commercially blown in Nigeria. He is the only rapper up until that point that was making headlines and getting any kind of bookings; nobody else. And all of a sudden, Ikechukwu came up. Of course, there was El Dee, El Dee was pushing for quite a while until he left for the States. And coincidentally, I came back from the United States then and once Darey put out Fuji and featured me on it, people liked it, and since then, I’ve been doing my thing. I don’t give regular music.
Are you a competitive person?
I can be competitive. It all depends, as long as it is civil competition. I’m not negatively competitive. And if I’m thrown some kind of competition, I don’t back down either. But I don’t seek competition.
What influenced your decision to leave Storm Records?
Unfortunately, things didn’t work out the way we planned for it to work. And although we were like a family, business wise, it wasn’t just lucrative for me, because I was at a point then where I needed my career to be lucrative. So we started bumping heads and I just decided to do things on my own and at the end of the day, I felt like I deserved some part of Storm Records because I had helped build it. And those types of conversations had taken place in the past and I had been given the confidence and security that it would be, but when years had gone by and it didn’t feel like it, I felt like it was time for me to ask if I was actually a part of it and when I realised that I wasn’t, I started focusing on my own personal entity instead of someone else’s.
But if I could take it back, I would have probably tried to find another way around handling that situation, because I am more mature and experienced now. I would have probably from a business kind of view try to find some kind of amicable mutual ground where we could both continue to thrive. But it didn’t seem like that was wanted on that end and I felt very betrayed and used at that point, so I needed to step away and that was what I did.
What challenges did you face, while trying to get into the Nigerian music industry?
The major challenge I had was cross-over, because obviously, you can’t always dance to rap music; you can only feel it. But Nigerians and Africans want to dance. So transitioning into that Ikechukwu was hard. Even though I had the capability of singing, it wasn’t my passion. It was like bending me and that is where you learn that your love as a child has become a business as a career. You have to start making decisions with your head and not your heart. All of that happened for me as an artiste and I realised that I have to start bending. So right after ‘My Name is Ikechukwu,’ I dropped ‘Naija Boy,’ which didn’t fly, because it was majorly rap.
So I had to blend and that was why I made songs like ‘Wind am well,’ ‘Shobe-dobe-do,’ ‘My P’ with Naeto and others. That was our transition. When we came, we didn’t really want to follow anybody else, we didn’t follow anyone’s music formula, we created our own.
What is the situation between yourself and Dbanj?
People read a lot into what they see or hear, but they don’t really know what the situation is, because they are not that close. The sources they are receiving their information from are apart away from the original situation and they can never really tell what is going on.
So maybe they have noticed that lately, I am focusing more on myself than on anyone around me. Anybody would tell you, Ikechukwu is always caring for those around him more than himself, it is true. So now, I am so focused on myself to make myself better, instead of being worried about that guy or that lady. It is all about me now.
Dbanj and I are very cordial; he is doing his thing and I’m doing my thing now. When we see, we are cool. There is no beef, no madness. I don’t have beef with anybody but myself. The only person I am beefing right now is myself, and I mean that I expect more from me, because everybody’s windows of opportunity have a life span. And for the simple fact that I still have that window of opportunity open to me, I might as well capitalise on it as much as I can. And I can’t do that when I am focusing on other things apart from myself.
If you could go back and do something differently, what would it be?
I would have applied this state of mind right now five years ago, because at that point when I was one of the most booked artistes in the country, I would have been focusing on Ikechukwu and WFA brand and how to take things to the next level. Though I did that back then, it was probably at a 20 per cent level, instead of at a 99.9 per cent.
How would you describe your music?
Depth; it is always something I like to involve in my music even if it is in the slightest way, no matter how commercially successful it is. Second, it is emotional, very passionate music. Third, it is educational: I always try to teach even if it is by blowing too much grammar. And lastly, if there is one word that is synonymous with my music, it is evolution. My music constantly evolves. I don’t get myself restricted to a time frame, or a genre, I allow myself to grow.
Is Ikechuwkwu single?
I am single. It takes a while to get over the type of last relationship I had. We were together for over four years, we were engaged and it didn’t work out. I never thought that I would be that guy who would propose more than once. So I took 2013 to get it out of myself and at the end of the year, I realised I had to move on and I am taking a better attitude towards life. I have been single since then.
Who is your ideal woman?
First and foremost, every man must realise that there is no such thing as a perfect woman. You just have to accept her with all her imperfections and flaws, and she has to do exactly the same thing for you. Once a woman can accept you for all your flaws, especially if your flaw is something really crazy that needed to be changed, then that is a perfect woman. There is no size, height, colour, or shape about it.
What next step are you taking now?
As far as music is concerned, I’ll probably just end up producing only a couple more albums, but I’ll remain making music, drifting a little bit more away from the rap aspect of it, and being more involved in my RnB or poetic expressions. And I’ll also work towards putting out more artistes.
Were you ever a part of the Mohits Records?
No, I was never a part of it. I was just like family to the group, there was no signed paper work. Never.
What exactly is the World Famous Academy (WFA) about?
WFA has always been a communal meeting place. It was an open home for talents that were not getting the empowerment that was needed. Naeto and my brother, Uzi, were the original members of WFA. As time goes on, we’ve come to represent a lot of original swag not found in the industry. We sign artistes, and not too long ago, Peter Clark released some singles just to get him publicised and it’s done well for him and now, we are working on an album for him.
I have also expanded on the brand, so it is no longer just WFA Music, but now WFA Media. We create and provide contents, series, documentary-series, short films, full feature films. I have my hands in a bunch of other things, but the brand is definitely here to stay.
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