By Efe Omorogbe
I came to Lagos in 1991, got into the university shortly afterwards and spent a great deal of my time shuttling between my Akoka campus and Klink Studios in Surulere. I met and mixed with the creme de la creme of a music industry that was on a steady decline.
A good number of the biggest acts of the preceding years: Mandators, Majek Fashek, Mike Okri, Ras Kimono, Alex O, Alex Zitto, Daniel Wilson, Evi Edna Ogoli and Oritz Williki, were either checking out or fading off. The major record labels that supported most of the top acts of the previous decade — Premier, Sony, Ivory etc — were struggling terribly and the gloom discouraged established names and frightened interested new players.
The growth in popularity of the cassette technology was not matched by adequate piracy control measures. Cassettes were considerably easier to duplicate than vinyl, so as the nefarious activities of cassette pirates increased, sales figures of the legal products hit a dangerous low. The downturn in the economy and tension created by the military dictatorship hit the concert scene hard and if an artiste wasn’t well established in the owambe-type, praise-singing, money-spraying circuit, dude was steady starving.
Hard times inspired protest music and with the disappearance of a vibrant concert/club circuit at a time of dwindling income from record sales and zero royalty earnings from collective management, artists, particularly ‘conscious protest musicians’ had to run for cover. Abi na the ‘bumbum clot’ (sic) Babylonian oppressor wey you dey chant down naim wan spray you money for party?
Working with my homies Sammy Odins-Odihirin and Fredrick Ayalogu (RIP), easily the coolest guy on the planet as far as we were concerned, we had made an attempt at floating a label called Now Muzik in ’93 and got our fingers badly burnt. As a second year student at Unilag, I walked into a lawyer’s chambers in Ojuelegba and paid a hefty sum (by my school boy standard back then) to have our label/management company properly registered, and set out to chase the dream of becoming successful players in the fascinating entertainment industry. About a decade later I discovered that the business registration was a fraud. The CAC didn’t have any record of Now Muzik’s existence!
We signed a kid called Slick and went on to produce what we were convinced was the dopest Rap EP out of Naija back then. We took long and sometimes dangerous bus rides from Benin to Digital Sound Lab in Isolo, Lagos. Working with the likes of Gary Nwobu and Frank Erabor. Sammy and I laid the tracks while Slick locked the flow. He had a cast of support vocalists like Esh TV, Emma Hays, Lemmy Curtis and later, Da Slug, B-Nyz and Smuv. Together, we became known as MEGAMOB. We were Def Jam Nigeria — For our mind!
We knew how to write catchy songs. We were sure we knew how to make a cool beat. Slick oozed swag and had the lyrics to boot. We had boundless energy and infectious enthusiasm but we had absolutely no money, no juice and didn’t have the foggiest idea of what it took to break a record and work it from ground up. We were basically talent. All talent. No legal, marketing, A&R or media know-how. So the attempt failed.
The final strike that halted that brave, albeit simple minded, attempt at making an impact with the ‘Slick like dat‘ EP was delivered by two top shot OAPs at an influential media outfit. That, is a story for another day.
I failed. Was I significantly fazed? Nah. It was late December 1994. I put the label on ice, disbanded the crew and returned to focus on my studies. At least, long enough to wrap up my demanding combined honours degree programme and bag a certificate.
By December ’96 I was back in business like EPMD. Straight out of Unilag, right into the belly of the beast I plunged. Right back into the studio to continue where we left off.
Mine was a story of pure passion. I lived for the music, loved it to an extreme and wanted to bring my dreams to life so badly that business considerations and financial reward were secondary. Years after, when I looked back, I realised that I never quite made much progress with getting my ideas out until I started working on the business framework. Every tangible step of progress I made on the creative end was tied directly or indirectly to a business move on the other side of the spectrum. I quickly realized that the show depended on the business and since I had made the unshakeable decision to stay committed to music, my first love, I knew the rest of my work life would be split between drilling the creative oil well and building the business support structure.
The early 90’s was a calamitous time to be in the business and an impossible time to make one’s entry into the industry. Like a lot of guys with a passion for music — which I considered a gift and a curse — I plunged in at a time when there were no structures. My type would have been blessed to do some kind of internship at a major like Sony and garner experience working at companies like that but the most visible players of my entry era were the likes of Ultima Records and Felin Music, popular but pretty small outfits compared to the big guns of the 70’s and 80’s. Even that unsatisfactory scenario was soon to give way to years of the indie artist. Kennis Music dominated the space for a spell afterwards and if an artist wasn’t on Kennis, he or she was independent, somewhat. No diss to the likes of Bayowa Music, Sol Records and others who did what they could to push artistes and their music but their set up and muscle were never really major league. Almost everything was indie: Plantashun Bois/Dove, Trybesmen/Trybe Records, SWATROOT/Payback Tyme, Sunny Neji/O’Jez, Maintain, Baba Dee, Sound Sultan, Def O Clan, Black Reverends, Lagbaja, Weird MC, Funke, Styl Plus and many more. It was strictly indie all the way.
The music business didn’t deliver enough returns to fund and maintain material and human capital investment required to run strong, so the guys who stuck by it were the ones who were largely driven by passion. For the small labels, the execs basically floated them as trophy investments for the love of the game and the feel good factor around entertainment industry. Consequently, no big boy ran a label as full time or primary hustle. It was a side thing for the ‘serious’ businessman: Obi Asika/Tola Odunsi at Storm Records, Kelvin Gabriel at Q-Mark, Keke Ogungbe/D1 at Kennis, Teju Kareem at Zmirage Music, name them.
For the talent/entrepreneur, we made the music because our sanity depended on it and did almost everything on our own to reduce operational cost to the barest minimum. We took our chances with pretty much everything else, including packaging/branding, promotion, marketing, A&R direction, legal, accounting, management and investment.
No one comes adequately armed with enough knowledge and skill to handle all of these successfully, and score on consecutive projects time and time again so for most of us, it was largely hit or miss and of course, the litany of one-hit-wonders, has-beens, nearly men and impoverished former high rollers present clear evidence of far more misses than hits.
So we grew into the ‘strictly indie’ mindset due largely to circumstances we were ill-equipped to control. We trudged on and birthed 100 CEOs running 135 companies that, combined, probably weren’t strong enough to be 2. We made a name running outfits that were so small and weak that they couldn’t afford a lawyer to draw up a simple agreement between artiste and label, talent and management, producer and performer, writer and co-writer, main and featured performers on a collaboration and so on. We operated companies that were so small that they lost the respect and loyalty of the artiste the minute he scored a mild hit and started earning 500k per gig.
We have battled great odds, showed laughable naiveté and lack of understanding of the business in Showbiz but we, like Nollywood, have shown resilience and established our ‘bankability’ beyond doubt. We have been there, done that and should move it all up to the next level. To survive and progress, the music industry MUST embrace structure and consolidation. The ‘strictly indie’ mindset has taken us as far as it can. It’s time to flip the script and get set for the big league.
