Ring the alarm!

Hello all! How was the weekend? Smooth? Rough? Kind? Sweet?

Whatever it was, a new week is here and we can make it a whole lot better than last week.

I got into a lot of soul searching during the weekend. And I have come to one conclusion:

Do. You.

I have given more than a decade to an industry that I love with all my heart. To be fair, the industry has shown me love and has accepted me and made me part of it. But there comes a time where you want more because you believe you deserve more, so what is stopping you?

There are many things that might hinder progress. But I’m sure we all have the head-knowledge of what they are. As someone in the limelight, I would like to speak about one key and very useful ingredient.

Publicity.

You see, for many years I didn’t think it was such a big deal. I believed your talent was enough publicity on its own. If you are good, they will find you out. Right? Wrong!

The best brands in the world have been splashed all over our faces, on our corridors, roads for us to take notice and admit they are good.

In a technologically driven society where you need to consistently update your presence like facebook updates its ‘look and feel’ then you need more than your talent to speak for you. You need to put a mechanism in place that runs your business like it’s going out of fashion!

I have come to realise that is the only way to stay fresh.

My publicist, Joy, and I went CD and books shopping this weekend, when I heard her scream “What???” at the CD shelf and rushed to know what could alarm her so bad. She was staring at someone’s CD – it was Vector’s and she said, “Vector has an album?”

And I shrugged cos I didn’t know that either. And she was truly pained by this, just as she was pained by Timi Dakolo’s.

All these great talents with no gong to sing their arrival.

Vector is a good rapper, he could be great if only there’s a proper mechanism to keep getting us to want more of him. And so is Timi Dakolo; ah! The magic of his voice!

And I also accept, even as I have spent so long in an industry, I could be bigger. But like a lot of people, I believed solely on my talent and didn’t pay enough attention to the other side that would quench the thirst of the fans. They want to see you in a certain light, even if it is humanly impossible to be perfect always, they want to see you try and play god.

It’s called perception, and it sells bigger than talent.

Rihanna doesn’t have the biggest voice. P.Diddy isn’t even an average rapper – talentwise. And on and on and on…

Perception is truly reality! So get on that train and build yourself.

Only you, through your decisions, can make you bigger

-          Adaora