Veteran vertiginous rapper, Mr Raw during an exclusive chat with Hiphop World Magazine revealed that he is not a new generation artiste and gave us a little insight on how the struggle started with him. Read excerpts from the conversation below.
Is there any meaning to your name? Why nigga raw?
The name popped up when I was in secondary school. I used to be very vulgar and blunt. My friends used to say I’m too raw. At some point, I used to enjoy American movies, so people started choosing different nicknames for themselves. So since people used to call me a nigga that is raw, I felt it won’t be bad to call myself Nigga Raw. Then, I was not even planning to go into music. Everybody just wanted a name that was going to stand out. Basically, my name came as a result of my love for wordplay. It is an acronym I coined out. The ‘NIG’ means Nigeria, the second ‘G’ means Guy, while ‘A’ means ‘Anakpo’ which means ‘called’. Together, it means That Nigerian guy called Raw. People accepted the name, that was how it stuck.
How did you start?
Back then, I used to listen to radio a lot, I listed to medium wave, before the frequency modulation era. I listened to different foreign songs; the Casanova, Gerald Levert and all. Then it wasn’t really rap. When we started getting the big cassettes, the ones that showed American movies, it started affecting the way I was thinking and dressing. Most times, we wore Lumberjacks; we wore shirts with only the first button fixed. We had just two big record studios in Enugu back then; KC records and Rap City. We were getting rap songs from then. From there, we started picking our styles. We had different guys picking different styles. Some picked Fresh Prince, some picked 2pac, some even picked aggressive rap like MWA. I remember writing my first lyrics in 1992 and I used Naughty by Nature’s everything is gonna be alright. I saw the instrumental, and then I decided to use it to write a song. My friends came around and they recognized the instrumentals, but they loved it. At that point, I was not even particular about rhyming. The flows were just good for me. Then we all started competing amongst ourselves and inspiring one another.
You took a long break. Why?
When I was much younger, I had lesser responsibilities. Growing up opened my eyes to a lot of things. I had to get married and I needed to spend time with my family. I could not stay out late as I used to. There were different things that just took my attention away from music for a while. I also had other businesses I was taking care of. I was into landed properties at some point which made me lose some properties. I also dealt with importing cars. Then, when I went for my tours, I used to buy cars and send them back. These are the things I tried and they all had their ups and downs.
What are the major projects you have been up to?
I just dropped a song I’m trying to do a media tour for. Late last year, I dropped a song featuring Zoro titled Caterpillar. This year, I just recorded a song and coincidentally, it blends with the ails and situation of the country considering the fact that election is around the corner. I shot the video and dropped it and since then, people have been dropping positive responses. It feels good that I can still do something for my fans that have not heard from me in a very long time.
What is your inspiration for your kind of songs.
I draw my inspiration from anything around me. In a situation when I see two people fighting, I can decide to sing about Domestic violence or about fighting for your right. It all depends on my mood at that point. It also depends on perspective.
The entertainment industry is really messed up. Everybody now sings about drugs and other immoralities. What is your take?
It all lies in this generation. Personally, I don’t belong to this generation. We all had different upbringings. Some people were raised to believe that there is no harm in smoking. I wasn’t born in the era of mobile phones. Now, small children can operate smartphones efficiently and I never had this opportunity. Their ideas and knowledge of things will be different from mine. These kids can go on the internet and watch all sorts and they are exposed to these things. There are things that I can’t watch because I grew up believing they are wrong. When people post different immoral things on social media, like smoking and all, I ask myself if they have parents or relatives. With the way I was raised, before I post these things, I ask myself, what if a distant relative sees it. I remember reading a review of a movie online. The reviewer complained that kids that watch the movie will grow up to think life is all about shooting up someone. Sometimes, these children don’t even know the storyline. It’s all about the generation. There were some things we did and songs we listened to that my father was not in support of. Even now, I don’t understand what people enjoy in mumble rap.
As at the time you started, all we had was English rap, how did you get people to accept pidgin and ibo rap?
I actually tried it in the east. I tested it on my ibo brothers and sisters. When I did English rap, people accepted it because they thought I was doing other peoples songs. I was only using their instrumentals, but the lyrics were mine. Later, when Junior and Pretty did ‘Bolanle and Monica don kill me’, I felt like it was cool. Then I tried pidgin flow. People liked it because they felt I wrote it. That pushed me to add ibo, then they loved it because they knew it was their own. They now started seeing me as better than other rappers that were rapping in ibo
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