Ikechukwu Onunaku has come full circle. And so has his legacy.
Returning to the United States the summer of 2014 for his first extended visit since he went back to Nigeria to take the music industry by storm, the talented rapper, musician and actor knows he will forever be remembered in his homeland as an African hip-hop leader.
After spending 12 years in the United States as the CEO and president of WFA Media, Ikechukwu Onunaku, made the journey back to Africa in 2006.
“I’d been submerged in America for quite a while, and overwhelmed by the lockout from the entertainment industry in the states. I was always given all kinds of excuses. ‘You’re multi-talented, you got that international sound, you could do this, you could do that, but there was never any real breakthrough.”
He says he knew it in his bones that it was time to go home and bet it all on the fledgling industry.
He tells BlackEnterprise.com, “I was getting a lot of feedback from Nigeria and Africa as a whole, that the modernized music was starting to seep through so there might be an opportunity for breakthrough in Nigeria as far as music and entertainment on the whole. Circa 2005 I made my first trip back to Nigeria in over a decade and I was there for ten days and during that time I kind of analyzed the entire entertainment system with my focus on the music and realized there was a huge opportunity for myself so I came back to the states packed up all my stuff and the rest is history.”
When Onunaku arrived, the Nigerian hip-hop scene was just starting to grow. There were some already established early acts, but the industry hadn’t exploded into the juggernaut that it is today.
After Onunaku had spent six months on the ground, something changed.
“I wouldn’t say my being there was the catalyst that ignited the Hip Hop revolution, but we were both beneficial to each other. I learned from them and they learned from me.”
Onunaku and another Rap phenom, Naeto C (Naetochukwu Chikwe) began putting out singles, filling up mix tapes and attending all the large events to create a fan base and make their presence known. It wasn’t long before they and a couple of other new acts were starting to gain recognition as the new breed of Hip Hop.
Read more about his journey on the next page …
“I began to realize that there had been a lot of other artists in Nigeria that had been suppressed because of the type of music they were doing which is kind of similar to our kind of hip hop. Raw, hardcore hip hop, straight rapping – not dance music – or Afro beat. Straight, grimy hip hop. Artists that had been suppressed for so long started making themselves aware to me and being happy that I was pushing it forward and not trying to blend into what was already there.”
African Hip Hop is similar to what we have here, only difference is while we infuse the music with street slang here, in Africa it’s either pidgin English or one of the dialects or languages.
Onunaku tells BlackEnterprise.com, “In Nigeria for you to actually break through to the masses you have to incorporate the language on a certain level. The more you incorporate it into your music the more you get a breakthrough.”
To make his music work, Onunaku
tried a blend of both worlds. He also had a distinct advantage. He could speak pidgin English as well as his native tongue. After assessing the scene he dropped his first album, “Son of the Soil”, with the eponymously titled single “My Name is Ikechukwu.”“Ikechukwu means power of God in my language. It allowed them to see that even though I had been in the states so long and “a Yankee Boy”, I was still a Nigerian. I kept screaming my name as a reminder and at the end of the song I speak my language. It just won them over.”
But as far as the music scene in Nigeria has come and despite the variety of foreign schooled artists it has attracted, when it comes to financing, the industry is pretty much still in the dark ages. It lacks structure.
“There is no way for checking publishing, there is no system for accrediting artists for their work, no way for monitoring rotation spins on radio or video plays on TV, no way of collecting royalties in any manner or form. Artists are forced to fund themselves. Up until recently no-one was really serious about investing in entertainment. It was the bottom of the barrel.”
So how do they earn?
Onunaku says by doing shows. And if you are one of the lucky few, brand synergy. That happens when a corporation taps an artist to help break into a target market they’ve been trying to reach.
“It could be an endorsement by a mobile network, a financial institution, a bank or food and beverage. Bottom line any corporation that feels you have a certain amount of reach and awareness. Up until recently those have been the only ways of acquiring financing or earnings as far as artists are concerned.”
But of late the mobile networks have taken the initiative. They have started to branch out with ring back tones, CRBTs and song downloads. It’s a new financial avenue for revenue for artists who spent the early years watching pirated copies of their intellectual property peddled on the streets or in traffic for pennies.