While on the road for his US Radio Tour, Davido called at the Hot 97 FM studio in New York where he talked to Oldman Ebro about his plans on breaking into the US market and a lot of other things that used to be anonymous to us.
Davido talked about his family background, his music career, how growing up was like and how his father came to disrupt his first ever music show with over fifty security personnel. He also talked other Nigerian music artistes and how they are helping in projecting the African sound to the world.
He also debunked the claims that the African sound is Afro-beat, he said the only person who did Afro-beat is the late Fela and that the only reason this new sound is termed Afro-beat is as a result of the UK’s perspective to it. He also revealed what he terms his own genre of music.
Answering questions on being the first mainstream success of the Afrobeats wave in America, Davido responded that ”it felt amazing”, especially as it is happening at a time when he wasn’t exactly chasing the attention.
He then narrated his deal with Sony Music and how he came made the decision to come back home after the release of his ”Son of Mercy” EP which wasn’t his type of music which led to him working with Tekno on the smash hit, ‘If.’
”For the eight months I was in America, I was really big but my records were not huge back home, it was not really what they wanted to hear.”
Davido also shared the experiences of meeting Wande Coal at the airport, selling his TV sets at home and how his father brought over 50 security officers to disrupt his first ever show.
On working with Casanavo on the single, ‘2AM’, Davido explained how the American rapper came over to Nigeria to shoot some scenes for the visuals.
”He called me up, told me he was coming over, next thing he sent me a picture of the flight, so I started making calls to make sure he was good.”
During the course of the interview which ran for close to 30 minutes, Davido further shared his thoughts on happenings in Africa, his upcoming album, selling out the O2 Arena, people hating him because of his father’s wealth and involvement in politics including supporting Banky W.
. ”Banky W did a great job, he surprised everybody” he stated.
On the dissonance concerning the term Afrobeat, Davido clarified, ”The originator of Afrobeat is Fela… When African music was getting big in the UK, they needed a name for it, so they called it Afrobeats but if you ask me the original Afrobeat is Fela.
Me I call my music Afro fusion but I feel like my Afrobeat is so big, so I go with it.”
Earlier in the year, Davido had successfully sold the O2 Arena, becoming the first African artist to achieve the feat by himself and he admitted that initially he had fears it might not be a success.
”I was scared though,” he says ”I had to get on stage by 8 and my boy comes to tell me that everybody is still walking around and I looked at the hall and It was half empty, so I paid the fine as I had to wait till the place was full.”
On his next album, ”I am working on the album now, just wrapping up the features.”
Davido concluded the interview talking about his BET Award and educating the listeners on the misconceptions that surrounds Africa especially in the United States.
Watch video of his interview below;
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