Nigeria’s current reigning pop heavyweight is the cover personality of Native Magazine’s latest edition and the DMW boss used the opportunity to shed some light on a lot of unanswered questions about his career.
Davido while answering questions from the interview, talked about his then celebrated international deal with Sony Music and how creative differences were responsible for the poor performance of his 2016 EP, ‘Son of Mercy’ prompting him to decide to go ‘Back to Basics’ by returning to Nigeria where his type of music and sound once held sway.
“Nah, the EP was shit”, the singer is quoted to have said when asked about the mixed reactions to him switching-up for a more dancehall vibe on the Son of Mercy’s lead single, “Gbagbe Oshi”. for that, Davido admitted that he wasn’t in the right place and wasn’t responsible for picking the songs that made up the final cut.
“I knew myself. I was like, ‘this is not Davido’. My career has always been on fire at all times, [‘till then] there was never a time that I didn’t have a hit out, and that time I didn’t have a hit. So I called Sony up, and I told them look, you have to let me do what I want to do. That’s what inspired Back to Basics.”
Davido also answered questions concerning his relationship Wizkid whom he now describes as his ‘best friend’. Both artistes endured a beef which lasted almost four years and Davido revealed that to end their beef, both artistes at some point had to tell themselves that they were too old for all that.
He says: “It just got to a point where we just thought, this shit is getting old. I mean, it got physical between our camps. We just wanted to make the relationship mutual. He has three kids, I have two kids. I’ve travelled a lot, I have experienced so much more in life, I have two artists that are doing well. Like, this shit is old bro, we’re not getting any younger.”
The Popstar also touched on the issue payola in the Nigerian industry for which he suggests that it had become a necessary evil to achieve success in the music industry. He stated in his typically blunt manner, “Music is an investment. Anywhere in the world, if you want to blow you have to spend money” but promptly added: “But If you like have one billion dollars, if the music no sweet, e no go work.”
A huge factor that helped to rechart the singer’s career was the return of his former and 1st manager, Asa Asaka with whom they started the movement in 2011 when he released his first single ‘Back When’, which was followed by the smash hit, ‘Dami Duro’. Asa was 21 then and Davido was 19 but they conquered the music industry and after the successful release of the singer’s Album, perhaps their level of success was too overwhelming for them to comprehend and handle at their young age.
Shedding more light on what led to their first split, Asa had this to say:
“At the beginning of David’s career, we both knew where we wanted to go and what we wanted to do, we just didn’t quite know how to get there.” He went further to say: “Shit went down. I was 21 and he was 19. I don’t think there are many people who would have been able to handle the success we had at that age. It was a blessing in disguise that we split for those years – we both needed to grow.”
Asa is back and they have kicked off from where they stopped, but now with a more matured mindset and approach. The super young but talented manager is the co-founder of The Plug and with the team, they have been able to re-direct the singer’s career to the direction the singer wanted. Riding on the wave of his successful song releases, Davido took control of the African pop space with back to back hit IF, FALL and FIA. He also did a successful 43 city world tour with a soldout concert in Lagos last December. The work ethics of Davido Asa says is second to none.
With all the successes of the artiste last year also came the controversies especially with the mysterious death of two close associates of his, Tagbo and DJ Olu. Davido revealed that he was almost sent to jail for 10 years for allegedly being culpable for the death of Tagbo after footages showed that he have spent the last few hours before his death with the pop star.
“They were trying to put me in jail for ten years. Like it wasn’t a joke” Davido calmly tells me. “At the end of the day, the CP (Commissioner of Police) was doing his job, but I guess there were some things they could’ve handled more professionally. Because of who I was, I felt like they were trying to make a story out of nothing and to be honest, I did nothing.” The singer says he doesn’t blame the police for trying to investigate but rather the media who ran with the story with unfounded claims.
Another revelation the singer made was his intention to retire from music when he was 30. “I am 25 now, and I have a five-year plan.” before speaking further saying, “By the time I am 30, I don’t want to be actively doing music anymore”.
Davido shows no sign of slowing down this year and with the amount of music being released from the DMW camp, it is safe to say they OBO has a plan to dominate the music industry for the remaining 5years of his career, if he eventual keeps his word to retire at 30