Talented Senegalese-American singer, Aliaune Damala Badara professionally known as Akon has revealed why he signed Wizkid and P Square in the year 2008.
The ‘Locked Up’ crooner who opened up in a recent interview said that he signed them both in conjunction with Sony Music when they came to Africa in a bid to take Afrobeat to the global stage.
He said; “I signed Wizkid back in 2008. So what happened was, when I went to Africa after the world cup, we were looking for ways that we could take the local music and branch it off.”
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“So at that time, the local music was so traditional musically that it wouldn’t break outside of Nigeria, Ghana, anywhere.”
“So, we started adding commercialized music, like instruments around it. So we commercialized a lot of it. So we went from Afrobeat to Afropop basically.”
“So it was then, we signed Wizkid first and after that, there was another group called P Square. P Square was two twins that came out of Nigeria,” Akon added.