Some days ago, former P-Square manager, Jude Okoye, revealed that his first nights in Lagos were spent under a bridge.
Giving further details to Sunday Scoop, Okoye said,
“I had my first album done in Jos in 1995 and all the friends around me told me that it was good and record labels would pay me good money for it. As a result of that, I took a flight of N2000 from Jos to Lagos in search of a record label that would pay me for the album. I went with two empty Ghana-must-go bags because I expected that they would pay me a lot of money.
Even though I didn’t know anybody there, I went to Ivory Music to see the talent manager. But when I got to the company, they told me that he was on leave and I would have to come back the next week.
That’s when reality dawned on me because I hadn’t planned on how I was going to get back to Jos. From there, I went to the Ijora motor park hoping to take a bus back to Jos. On getting there, I found out that the bus fare was N600. I didn’t have that money so I ended up sleeping under the bridge. Being that my mother was a prophetess in Jos; once in a while, I ran into people who knew her and they gave me some money.
From there, I was able to get an attachment bus ticket, which meant I had to stand all through the trip from Lagos to Jos. After that experience, I still went back to Ivory Music two months after. It was then I met Zaaki Azzay and he shared his experience with me. The songs on my album were purely hip hop and he advised me to infuse some Nigerian flavour into it to make it more marketable.