He became a nationwide success with the release of his soar-away song, Mr Fantastik in 1997. Many music lovers thought he would not surpass that feat musically. But he did. It came in 2003 with the release of the medley love and marriage song, Oruka. The song became a standard wedding song and ‘national anthem’ of sort. He followed with Face me, Ojoro and Abosede.
Now highlife hit-maker, Sunny Neji is back with musical cuts that will delight his fans and a sense of advocacy in a new album titled, Timeless. The album was produced with the exciting inputs from artistes like Samclef, Dapiano, Adebayo, Phat-E and Bright. It introduces exotic remixes, collaboration and Sunny Neji, famously called Mr. Fantastik, experiments with daring lyrics which are evident in the remix of some of the tracks.
Sunny Neji’s new classic work has 13 tracks, three remixes and collaboration inputs of four artistes; J’odie on Lovey Dovey, Jhibo on Awarawa, Fragrance on Bad as I Bad and Kiki on No be Oyinbo. In an audacious move, Sunny and his management company are selling the album for N1,000, a total departure from the N150 obtainable in the market. It is an initiative he called the advocacy move for the industry.. In his words: ‘I don’t think N1000 is too much, I think the music is worth more than a thousand naira. A thousand naira is not much for a CD you are going to have for a life time, if you consider how much you spend to buy things like recharge cards and the likes.
“Those who have been investing in music have not been making money. If I decide to invest in a young artiste now, the truth of the matter is that I’ll promote the young artiste but there will be no return on investment except if the person becomes very successful or get one endorsement or the other. That’s why it’s only the artistes who have been investing in the industry. “No businessman is coming to the industry to say this is a lucrative business, I want to invest in it; only the artistes are doing the investment and it’s not enough. All the major recording companies have pulled out of the country because of that, so, we need to create the atmosphere to encourage them to come back so that the business will be as big as it ought to be.”
The album which has been released is spreading across locations in Lagos and other states. Sunny Neji’s publicist Bigsam Media said: “We are selling the album at selected locations in Lagos and we are working on more locations outside Lagos. The response in the past weeks has been encouraging and we have no doubts we are going to go platinum”. A track from the album, Lovey Dovey which was released recently is already enjoying heavy rotation on air.
