[Part 1] African Hip Hop Pioneer Comes Full Circle

“I began to realize that there had been a lot of other artists in Nigeria that had been suppressed because of the type of music they were doing which is kind of similar to our kind of hip hop. Raw, hardcore hip hop, straight rapping – not dance music – or Afro beat. Straight, grimy hip hop. Artists that had been suppressed for so long started making themselves aware to me and being happy that I was pushing it forward and not trying to blend into what was already there.”

African Hip Hop is similar to what we have here, only difference is while we infuse the music with street slang here, in Africa it’s either pidgin English or one of the dialects or languages.

Onunaku tells BlackEnterprise.com, “In Nigeria for you to actually break through to the masses you have to incorporate the language on a certain level. The more you incorporate it into your music the more you get a breakthrough.”

To make his music work, Onunaku tried a blend of both worlds. He also had a distinct advantage. He could speak pidgin English as well as his native tongue. After assessing the scene he dropped his first album, “Son of the Soil”, with the eponymously titled single “My Name is Ikechukwu.”

“Ikechukwu means power of God in my language. It allowed them to see that even though I had been in the states so long and “a Yankee Boy”, I was still a Nigerian. I kept screaming my name as a reminder and at the end of the song I speak my language. It just won them over.”

But as far as the music scene in Nigeria has come and despite the variety of foreign schooled artists it has attracted, when it comes to financing, the industry is pretty much still in the dark ages. It lacks structure.

“There is no way for checking publishing, there is no system for accrediting artists for their work, no way for monitoring rotation spins on radio or video plays on TV, no way of collecting royalties in any manner or form. Artists are forced to fund themselves. Up until recently no-one was really serious about investing in entertainment. It was the bottom of the barrel.”

So how do they earn?

Onunaku says by doing shows. And if you are one of the lucky few, brand synergy. That happens when a corporation taps an artist to help break into a target market they’ve been trying to reach.

“It could be an endorsement by a mobile network, a financial institution, a bank or food and beverage. Bottom line any corporation that feels you have a certain amount of reach and awareness. Up until recently those have been the only ways of acquiring financing or earnings as far as artists are concerned.”

But of late the mobile networks have taken the initiative. They have started to branch out with ring back tones, CRBTs and song downloads. It’s a new financial avenue for revenue for artists who spent the early years watching pirated copies of their intellectual property peddled on the streets or in traffic for pennies.