By Olufunke Cole
There has been an impulsive urge to write on one particular musician whose shriling voice, street lyrics and rhythmic sounds gave him away as one of my favourites in those days. Those were the days I was probably learning to fall in love with music. Although, prior to the time, I had been a music buff, not necessarily because of words coined within its lyrical phrases but because of its sound beats and waves. The first of Showkey’s kind, and, as much as his story-telling attitudinal proportion within the sound of his songs helped project his identity as one whose familiarity with his environment is reckoning.
There was a particular night, when I incidentally had a conversation with a young woman who sat glued to her television set and I somewhat, joined in watching the episode with her. All of a sudden, she excused me to change the channel and then we ended up watching Prime Time Africa. Then, it was Daddy Showkey who happened to be a guest on the show. ‘Wow” I shouted in admiration of the singer who I believed had changed not just in physical composition, but in his accent and exposure. Please, pardon my usage of the word, “exposure”, because I saw in him more of a potential political ideologue than a musician because of the ideology he expoused and the manner in which he related with political uprisings in our country.
I was moved by how much exposure could change a man’s mentality or probably unveil a man’s ideological sense of reasoning. I hadn’t thought far than he started dishing out logically some salient thought provoking aberration of our political paternity. Instantly, my love was rekindled for a man I had once fallen in love with his brand of style of musical ideology
I was seeing him in another phase of life. Not forgetting that his humble beginning is still oozing tellingly because he kept reminding of how his road to stardom began with bumps.
As a man who knows his onions in the entertainment industry, I am cocksure that Showkey will definitely do well in his much-talked-about drama academy that promises to include men and women of different classes and categories as participants and members. Whichever way it seems, Daddy Showkey is still on the wave length of greatness and his songs remain eternally awesome.
-Olufunke Cole is a Doctoral student, Department of History, University of Lagos