Two years
after he got married to his baby mama, Lola Omotayo, in November, 2013, one
half of the music duo PSquare, Peter Okoye is poised to share his experience as
a married man. According to him, while marriage has made him to be more
responsible, it has not, as a matter of fact, restricted him from doing what he
knows how to do best on stage. He also bares his mind on a number of issues
bothering on his career, music and fame…
Are you working on any project at
the moment?
We just finished with recording our new album which is six
months now. We are still working on the videos. One of them with the title
“Collabo” and featuring Don Jazzy has already hit the market. We are also
preparing for our tour of US and Europe.
How is your newly signed artiste,
Classic P doing?
We are still doing everything to
promote him. We are not in a hurry to push his songs into the
market. So, his songs will soon dropped.
What would you say marriage has done
to you?
Marriage has made me to be more
responsible, in the sense that there are certain things which I am limited to do
as a married man. But I still remain who I am because marriage doesn’t restrict
me from doing what I know how to do best on stage. In a nutshell, I will say
marriage has changed me as Peter Okoye but not as Psquare.
What are the things you consider
before signing an artiste on your record label?
When you are setting up a record
label you don’t just sign on any artiste. We look at your background and other
essentials. We are careful in terms of selecting the kind of artiste that we
want to sign on. We are not influenced by whether the person is wealthy or not.
Any challenges in managing the
label?
I and my brother are managing the
label. So far, we have not encountered any challenge. But it’s going to be more
challenging to the artiste because we need to prepare them for what they are
about to face. What I mean is that a new artiste might have a song he or she is
working on, but before you know the rhythm will change. So that’s why we are so
careful before releasing any of our artiste’s song.
Being accessible and friendly
In this industry, we are still
learners and the truth is that people believe once they hit the top they are
not answerable to anybody. But you might be surprised that the next level of
our career might come from this interaction and that’s one thing most people
don’t know. I always tell people when they ask how we have remained on top of
our game for more than a decade.
I tell them that I always pay
special attention to people’s comments on every of our performances. What I do
is whenever I am off-the-stage, I try to listen to different comments from the
audience. some will commend our performance while many others will criticize
it. That’s where we measure our strength as musicians, learn of our mistakes
and correct them where need be.
You people are more of dancers than
musicians?
I’m used to people saying I love
Psquare because they know how to dance. But the fact is that I don’t like it
when people refer to us as dancers. They can describe us as entertainers and
musicians because it makes us more presentable. A fan once told me that Peter,
I love you guys because of your kind of love songs. But the question is , when
last did a love song sell or made a name in Nigeria, aside “Olufunmi” by Star
Plus and probably, “Beautiful Onyiye” by Psquare.
These days people are used to the
song they play in the club so even if you release a love song they won’t play
it in the club because it belongs to a different genre. I’m happy we have fans
who still believe in love songs and we are going to revive it.
About our challenges and failure?
Remember I said we are still
learners in this game, and that is our number one focus. As Psquare, we have
failed a lot, but there is a saying that it doesn’t matter how many times you
fall, it is about being able to get up after every fall. For instance, the Glo
CAF Awards was a horrible performance for Psquare. I remember how people said
we disappointed them. But this year people still talk about our performance
because we tried our best to adjust and fix many things that were not in order.
The secret is because we always follow what we hear from our fans after every
performance.
We’ve done worse performances
sometimes due to circumstances beyond our control. We could be on stage
performing and all of a sudden the microphone will stop working or there will
be power failure, which should not be Psquare’s fault. But at the end of the
day people will say Psqurare’s performance was trash.
So the thing is as an entertainer,
once we finish a performance either for a bank, or any other company, I will
always wait for a couple of months to see if they will call us back and if they
did during those period it means our last performance for them was good. If a
promoter calls Psquare for a show now and wait for another two years before calling
you it means the previous show was not good.
So there are several challenges. I
could remember last year when I fell off-stage it wasn’t my fault and we were
meant to perform for 1hr 30mins. After I fell off-stage we couldn’t even perform
up to 15mins because I was limping throughout and it took me like two and half
months for the injury to heal.
The craziest thing you have ever
done!
That was when we attended a night
party some years ago. Some desperate girls were all over us and before we knew
what was happening, they were kissing and romancing us openly. We had to run
for our dear lives.
Most embarrassing moment
It was when we were coming up. Some
of our kinsmen walked up to us and told us that it’s high time we join them in
the village and stop roaming about the streets as if we are not conversant with
the tradition of our people. We felt embarrassed. But unfortunately, we later
adhered to their advice.
How often do you rehearse before
going on stage?
Surprisingly, the only time we
rehearse is when we are planning something new. For instance, the last time we
rehearsed was in November, last year. And because we perform at shows all the
time, so every show is rehearsal for the next. I work with a 13-man band and I
don’t need to tell them what to do again because they already know that when we
go on stage we sing and dance, so they know the routine.
At times, we rehearse for two months
that’s if we have something new we want to do and after that the next time we
will rehearse will be after two years because rehearsing is very hectic and it
hasn’t been easy. That’s why we haven’t seen anybody that can sing and dance
even if you see them you will notice they are trying so hard because it
requires breath control. So for us rehearsal is like food because we do it
almost every day and we don’t joke with it because we give it our 100%.
What about fame?
The secret is that we prefer to
perform outside the shores of the country regardless of the monetary rewards.
Today, Psquare has many fans across the world. In fact, I will tell you that
Psquare is not popular in this country. Another thing is that people always
have this impression that we are intimidating on stage. But when you meet us in
person, we always humble ourselves.
Do you believe you have competitors
in the industry?
The only competitors we have are
ourselves. This is because when it comes to playing instrument, P-square is
very good at it and I don’t teach a learner how to play an instrument. We make
sure that the person knows one or two things about the instrument. For
instance, almost all our instrumentalists were trained by us. And that reminds
me about the P-square saga. Sometime ago, people said, I was quarreling with my
twin brother. We were not fighting each other or arguing for ourselves rather,
it was for our fans.
What exactly we wanted to do for our
fans was what was giving us problem. And another reason for the fight was that
we were trying to beat our previous project. For example, the song that brought
us out was “Last Night”.
But in “Danger” album, Psquare
failed and in every of our album in ten days we sell a million copies but that
album “Danger” took us one month to sell a million copies. After that, we
bounced back with “Invasion” which has a track like “Chop My Money”. But we
didn’t make it in the album that contained “Danger, Give me that, possibility”
E no easy.
