My Honest Advice to Young Musicians - Basketmouth

Nigerian comedian and musician sat down with the AFRIMMA podcast, and after a long discussion about music, just before leaving the show, Basketmouth was asked to give advice to young musicians and creatives trying to make success like him. Here's what Basketmouth had to say.

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When asked to give advice to the young creatives trying to make success like him, Basketmouth said:

BASKETMOUTH: Give up! Give up! What are you doing? What do you want to do? What are your plans? Tell me. Let's paint a picture: you go to the studio, you make your album, your album is a perfect album. Do you have the money to push it? You don't have the money to push it. Give up! [laughs].

I'm just kidding. On the real, don't give up [laughs]. You need to work hard even if the dollar gets to 5,000, e go better [laughs].

I think for me, and I'm talking to myself right now, we all need to have a reason for why we're doing what we're doing. Now, if it's music, if it's comedy, whatever it is, why are you doing it? What's the purpose? 'I want to release this album', how do you want people to feel? What kind of message do you want them to get from this. You want to make a movie, what kind of message do you want people to get? We need to be intentional. Once we become intentional with everything we're doing, by default, we will get better at it.

So if you're releasing an album, what's the story? What's the album going to be about? What are we going to be saying? What are we selling? How is the beat going to sound like? Is everything going to be uniform, or am I going to be jumping all over the place? These are questions that we must ask ourselves. Be intentional. I'm talking to myself too.

My first album Yabasi was dope, my second Horoscope was dope. Because they were soundtrack albums, there was a story behind it. But when I did Uburu, I said it from the beginning that Uburu was not a soundtrack album, it's just a feel good album; and I saw the difference first hand when I moved from being intentional to just being random. And guess what, if two or three songs from that album had hit to the point where we got to like 2 billion streams, I would have thought that was the way. I wasn't loyal to the game and I made a mistake. And I'm going back to my drawing board to be intentional.

Just know why you're doing what you're doing and don't do things to trend.

At least the advice ended on a positive note! 😂

What do you think about what Basketmouth had to say? Let me know your thoughts by leaving a comment either below or on my Jide Okonjo Facebook post.

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