In this exclusive interview with HipHop World,
Don Jazzy reveals how he started making music with Mr Solek, how he met Kas, JJC ,and how he finally met D’banj and their relationship .He also revealed they almost sold Mo’Hits Records to Storm Records for 1 million naira.
D’Banj used to come to the studio in the JJC & 419 squad era. I just saw him as very funny character and he used to always bug us; I need a beat, in Nigeria things are popping off. I was like; okay dude, sing, you can’t sing. What can you do, can you rap, no you can’t rap.
But he could play the mouth organ, I liked the way he used to play the mouth organ and he was very funny, so he used to crack us up. So we
preferred to take him when we are going on shows on the road so that he would just be cracking us up. He used to make the road trips short for us; that was basically why we were taking me. If you watch some videos on Youtube, when we are performing you will see him at the back with his mouth organ, he will just be shouting “kilonshele!”, so that people would notice him.
That’s the kind of person D’Banj is, any position you put him, he will stay there but he will try and make sure that you must notice that someone is there. And when I was leaving JJC & 419 Squad to go set up my own stuff, he was the only one that was like; now that everybody was taking a break, since we are close in the studio, that should he follow me. I said “where are you following me to?
You are following someone that does not have money. I already know that I have talent, it would work for me at some point but for now I just need to settle my head”. He was like; no, you can do this thing, in the studio everyone knows that you are the one making the beats. I really liked his belief in me from them. I was like; for this guy to do this that you decided to follow me.
Since the UK market was petty dominated by JJC & 419 Squad, the Nigerian scene, let’s go to where they don’t know us and we can start from scratch and come up. Let’s go and do an album. So we went to a friend of mine’s studio, I begged him to use the studio. We didn’t have the time, so we rushed the first album in like two weeks and it was done.
As we had that copy like this, oya let’s go to Nigeria now and see what happens. That’s how D’Banj came into the picture. Well the confidence wouldn’t have been there if not that two weeks happened to be around the time they were doing Nigeria’s independence in London and for some reason we had to perform alone instead of with the group, JJC & 419 Squad, as we normally do. We never used to perform individually.
