1. How does it feel to be right and be able to say I told you so looking back at Burna’s career?
Answer: I’m not sure it’s about being right and being wrong. It’s about being shown to be competent and having labor and sacrifice that has paid off. BurnaBoy has put in hard work consistently and I don’t think “I told you so” is what you say to him.
2. Is/are there things that may have happened that looking back makes it full circle? (meaning back then it didn’t make sense but right now you understand. Why certain things need to happen the way they did.)
Answer: There are many instances and the first one that comes to mind will be that in 2008, BurnaBoy’s father and I sent him to the UK for his University education, and at the end of two years, 2010, it was a headache that he clearly wasn’t interested in school and we thought to ourselves that it was a waste of two years and a waste of resources but the minute he made it clear that music was what he wanted to do, I saw a lifeline and those two years have been very defining. There isn’t a certificate to show for the two years he spent at the university, but I don’t think he will be the same person that he is today if he didn’t do those two years in the university in the UK. Full circle, today I’m thankful that those school fees were paid and I see clearly that they were not wasted.
3. Why PH and not Lagos to raise the family?
Answer: I married a man who lives in PH, so I moved to PH. But in retrospect, it was a better place to raise my children because it was more peaceful and it was indeed the garden city at that time.
4. When you went to university did you ever think you will be doing what you are currently doing? And what did you study at the time?
Answer: Not really, I studied Foreign languages with French as my major (Bachelor of Arts), and then I studied translation French-English (Master of Arts).
5. Where did you grow up?
Answer: I grew up in Lagos.
6. Who is motivating or inspiring you currently and why?
Answer: GOD and my father, Benson Idonije. My father is the best parent I know and he has managed to live according to the values he taught and still believes in.
7. Did you ever try to influence the type of music Burna Boy made?
Answer: No.
8. What’s it like being the mother of three different creatives and sharing your time between each one’s career?
Answer: It is fulfilling, challenging, and constantly keeps me on my toes.
9. For you, does the grammy change things in terms of the international perspective about African music?
Answer: From the angle of the Grammys being the highest award body for music in the world, it will be foolhardy to say that the Grammys are not the most important awards to be given to a musician. However, in the instance of African music that has been tagged as world music, there are a lot of nuances, confusion, and we find that African music has been dropped in a potpourri of elements that are not alike, cannot be judged objectively in any way, shape or form. Within the category that African music is in, there is a bit of a mess. But, I think the Grammys are definitely the highest accolades that you can give a musician in the world.
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10. With Africa growing a more diverse palette of music, do you think we would ever be recognized internationally for more than Afrobeats?
Answer: African music has been recognized to a certain degree before this time. The international community knew about Miriam Makeba, Manu Dibango, and a few of the other old veterans and they were not playing Afrobeats in any way, shape, or form. Afrobeats was introduced by Fela Kuti and he did his rounds in the international circuit and brought it home to them. I believe that the international community is aware of more than Afrobeat as African music. However, in recent times the other types of African music seem to have taken the back burner for diverse reasons, and as such, the Afrobeats artists seem to be the ones at the forefront. I don’t think it means or suggests in any way that that is the only way African music will be perceived. It will be a tragedy if it is because African music is rich, diverse, and different. It is what unifies us. It is authentic and it is music for a purpose.
11. Burna has always tried to use his music as a form of protest against governance. How effectual is protest music in this day and time where the shelf life of a song is heavily reduced?
Answer: I think music like everything else has a longer shelf life if it is timeless; if it is something you can bring out and use or look at. In the case of music, when music is timeless and you can listen to it time and time again, then you do not have to worry about shelf life. Protest music is music with a message. I’m not sure that Burna set out to say “I want to write protest music”. I think it comes from you taking your music as an expression of your reality, environment, purpose, and it comes from having a sense of responsibility to expressing that purpose; sometimes only to relieve yourself of the burden. When that purpose aligns with people who are living the same reality, the music becomes useful. In this case, if it is protest music it becomes useful for a lot of reasons and because it is useful, the shelf life cannot be determined.
12. Personally, what are the metrics for measuring artists’ success?
Answer: In business terms, it will be in terms of streams, sales, how many plaques. Personally, I think it is about the impact the artist’s music makes on the people that listen to it. It is the ability to hear music and identify whose music it is. It is to have someone say what music he/she listens to when sad, happy, victorious, or when there’s a need to protest. When your name as an artist comes up again and again, on many people’s lips and your song appears on many people’s playlist; not as an accident, or because it is placed there but because they have consciously looked for it to serve a purpose in their lives, that for me is a measure of the artist’s success.
13. You manage one of the biggest artists out of Africa at the moment, what’s it like balancing this with your other personal interests?
Answer: Managing Burnaboy, at the moment, there’s very little balance. At the moment, it takes over my time and my life. The time that is left is used to manage Nissi and to run Spaceship Collective with the other artists and producers on it. My personal life is probably non-existent.
14. What the plan for Spaceship Records and what role signature will spaceship have on music and pop culture?
Answer: The plan for Spaceship Collective which is one body that covers the record side and publishing side is to grow it into signing more artists and producers. Our focus, honestly, will be on artists and producers of African descent but we will go outside that so that we can build a bridge to empower our own. Our real purpose for the publishing side is to see that a lot of African music catalog is owned by an African who will in turn at some point see to it that the catalog is kept within our continent. Doing that will preserve our music, history, and give us freedom of expression through our music while still keeping the authenticity of the sound. I hope that our role would be that we clearly have a knack for finding, identifying, and developing talents. We hope we will continue to do this. We have managed to set up machinery over the years that have become practiced and experienced in developing and taking good talents over the world; the idea is to continue to identify such talents and to put them on the machinery and see to it that they do get across the world on their own terms with their own flavors.
15. What songs are on your playlist apart from Burnaboy and Nissi?
Answer: On my playlist, I would probably have Kassav by a group from Guadeloupe, Fela Kuti, Anita Baker, Wizkid, Kiss Daniel, 2Baba, Buju, Fireboy, Niniola, Youssou N’Dour, Angélique Kidjo, Salifu Keita, in addition to 80s music.
16. How important is “relationship” In the music business?
Answer: Relationship is important in the music business as it is important in every business and in every aspect of social interaction.
