Kemi Omololu-Olunloyo is an International Journalist, Anti-Violence Activist and Music Industry Executive named one of the Top 10 most Powerful People in Canada’s Entertainment industry in 2010. After 35 years in US and Canada, she now lives in Nigeria.
It’s a pleasure to partner my music brand HipHossip LLC with the Nigerian Tribune, a prestigious newspaper in our nation. HipHossip is North America’s most popular music blog and what makes it different from others is that I take music to another level. HipHossip.net serves the concert community; HipHossip.org is my global music foundation where I use music to empower society issues like gun violence around the globe. Keminications PR serves my music publicity arm and I have been a music publicist to several famous artistes in campaigns and even making them the big star they are today. In PR, I have also organized several award shows and also been the publicist for some prominent global award shows and red carpet events.
Finally as HipHossip’s CEO I have also served as a judge, co-host or presenter at many award shows including the Grammys and the 40th anniversary of the Juno awards in Canada, where I served as a judge in the top 10 televised categories in March 2011. In short, HipHossip defines music as being a phenomenon more than just pushing “play” on a CD and dancing thereafter. These days, music concerts are used not just for dancing and pleasure but sometimes to raise funds and awareness for causes. Take for example, America’s devastating Hurricane Sandy, which took so many lives and caused severe damage. Concert causes go as far back as USA for Africa during the famine in East Africa in the 80’s.
Global music awareness foundations like mine raise awareness of several issues in the music fan world. Things like bullying, suicide, gun violence, abortion and more have become prevalent issues that global music channel MTV created MTV Act and MTV Voices. HipHossip Voices has spoken out on gun violence for five years while I lived in Canada after I fled Nigeria in 2007 when gun violence consumed media houses here in Ibadan during the 2007 election period. I was moonlighting at Premier FM that day when stations were hit.
In this special weekly column, I shall empower Nigerian musicians, offering them my services and giving advice on how to set themselves apart and going global. Be the next Justin Bieber or Lady Gaga and getting known globally is my idea of an international music star. Even D’Banj, TuFace, Darey, WeirdMC and more big Nigerian stars have not cut past a few red carpet events like the BET and MTV Europe or Channel O awards.
I want Nigerian artistes on the Grammy red carpet and more of our rappers on the BET hip-hop awards cypher and shows. The death of the autotune has arrived. Nigerian artistes have abused the vocoder and even in the words of Don Jazzy when I interviewed him, “anyone using autotune at least tried their voice at singing.” Some critics say it’s needed, some like me say it does not show true talent. Why are P-Square, Wiz Kid and D’Banj not on the Grammy nominations, the red carpet or even have to branch out with a bigger artiste signing them to their rosters? Do Nigerian artistes always need that big extra arm? Why are the Nigerian female rappers and singers like Weird MC, Sasha P, Bouqi, Mo Cheddar, Mavin’s Tiwa Savage, 0907’s Shulydee and even new young faces like Tesh Carter and Chidinma not on the international BET/Grammy/Juno/AMA award nomination rosters?
Next week, I will discuss artiste development in detail and how you can benefit from my services in the HipHossip Tribunal. I will dice up the answers the way you need to know.
Artiste development is what Nigerian artistes need and I’m an expert on that. Watch how I can help you conquer the global music industry. Buy the Nigerian Tribune weekly and get a copy for your pals.
The article was read read 42166 times which was a record for The Tribune online. My column was called HipHossip Tribunal and was a partnership between the oldest newspaper and me. It was a pleasure after almost a year. I resigned last month to focus more on my own news product #HNNAfrica.
