It was like the whole Nigeria knew who I was before I even dropped a single - Davido

HKN artist Davido has revealed his rough road to stardom despite being the son of a billionaire.

The Omo Baba Olowo singer revealed how he had to go against his father’s wish to be who he is today. It was as bad as his dad Deji Adeleke threatening to his now manager Kamal Ajiboye.

In a new interview with Ebro Darden of Hot 97 in New York few days after his performance at One Africa Music Festival Davido shared his initial challenges in pursuing his music career.

“I was hanging out with D’banj at the time, he had that Kanye deal. I now told my Dad that I was trying to stay, and he was like ‘What? My friend you better go back to school. I called my roommate, and told him ‘Imma do this no more. If my Dad calls, tell him you don’t know where I’m at. When I left, my family was looking for me for like six months.

They sent a letter to D’banj’s house, they sent letter to Psquare’s house, they sent letters to everybody’s house. My Dad was calling the school, and they were telling him; ‘He wasn’t even here for the past semester, he left…’ It was like the whole Nigeria knew who I was before I even dropped a single.

Kamal that is my manager now, used to be Don Jazzy’s assistant. My Dad started calling him and said ‘if I see you guys with my son, all of you are getting arrested.”

He also revealed he has three songs in the works with American rapper Young Thug. He also defined his genre of music.

“I don’t even call my music Afrobeat, I call mine Afrofusion. To me it’s just too different. I can’t tell you it’s Afrobeat, because it’s not. ‘You know the originator of the Afrobeat is Fela.

Fela has a sound which I can say has heavy baseline, brass instrument, and the percussion is different. If you ask me ‘Gobe’ is Calypso, Afro mixed with Calypso. But I feel like the Afrobeat is catchy and has caught the wave since time. Because I know some Afrobeat songs that I don’t want to call Afrobeat. I call them Afro-Pop or I call Afro Trap. Everything is just still African music.”

Meanwhile, Davido has decided to be giving back to the society by sending less privileged students to school through a scholarship he named after his late mother Veronica Adeleke. In 2016, he said he will send four indigent students to school.