Solomon Oyeniyi popularly known as K-Solo
Popular music producer, Solomon Oyeniyi, aka K-Solo, shares his views on the music industry with Punch
Following the breakup of his marriage in 2012, music producer, Solomon Oyeniyi, aka K-Solo, travelled out of the country to “cool his head” from the effects of the negative publicity that the event generated.
“I had so much bad press that I needed to go away to somewhere else where I could reorganise my life,” he says, in an interview with Punch.
For him, the vacation was a necessary escape from his critics and others who had taken sides in the matter without listening to his side of the story.
Explaining why he was away for a longer spell than necessary, Oyeniyi says he needed some time to think and to evolve a strategy that would help push his music career, which had suffered a great deal from the ‘bad press’, to the next level, especially in an industry that had become progressively competitive.
He says, “During that period, I took a close look at the Nigerian music industry. I found that many artistes were not doing anything new, in terms of content. Instead of working on new idioms, they were busy recycling old songs – mostly highlife songs that were very popular between the 1960s and 1980s – and repacking them as new hits.
“Also, I have noticed that many so-called musicians are not paying attention to songs. Nowadays, everybody seems to be concentrating on beats and getting their fans to dance, instead of composing good songs. The result is that contemporary Nigerian music has lost a great deal of content. And this is not good for us.”
Interestingly, the gifted producer is also a recording artiste in his own right. Although he has helped to discover and mentor some of the most popular musicians and singers in the country, none of his personal albums has been striking enough to make an impact on any respectable music chart.
Blaming this imbalance on his tight production schedule, he says, “The problem is that the production part of me demands more of my time and commitment than the artist in me. Now I have decided to slow down a bit on general production and concentrate on my own works. I want to pay more attention to my works.”
Just as promised, Oyeniyi recently released a new single titled Jafunmi. It is an upbeat reggae spiritual featuring rapper Ruggedman, which has so far attracted a positive response from music fans.
The soft-spoken producer attributes part of his success to a special chemistry that existed between him and the artistes he has worked with in the past. “Many people don’t understand that my music is spiritual. If I am working with an artiste on a song and there is no chemistry between us, that song won’t be successful. It is something to do with attraction. There must be something about the artiste that will make me want to do my best for him. In the absence of this, the chances that we will turn out a hit song are usually very slim.
“If you check Don Jazzy’s profile, for example, you will find that he has worked with a lot of people whose songs have never made a hit in the market. It is not that those songs are not good; I think it is because there was no chemistry between Don Jazzy and those people,” he says.
Oyeniyi wants fellow producers and artistes to bring back the rich content of Nigerian music and to do away with the current craze for commercial music. Noting that the attention enjoyed by the latter lasts for only a short time, he says, “We need the kind of music that will stand the test of time –which we can also export to other countries or continents.”
Despite his misgivings about the quality of popular music produced in the country, he thinks that Nigeria has its fair share of versatile artistes. “Nigeria is blessed with talented and versatile artistes. They include people like Sunny Neji, Paul Dairo, Asa, Sound Sultan and Timaya. The problem is that the new generation of musicians are missing it. Most of them are not talented. The reason why they are into music is because they want to be seen as ‘artistes’. That is why they are losing content daily,” he says.
Oyeniyi notes that charlatans, whose only real motive is to be ‘worshipped’ by music fans, are doing a lot of harm to the music industry. “They think it is all about money. So they have come with a lot of money and expect it to make them popular overnight,” he says.
Without declaring his assets, he admits that his career has been rewarding enough to place him among the richest music producers and singers in Nigeria at the moment. “If you mention the five most successful and richest musicians in Nigeria, I think that I am one of them. I actually bought a house and some state-of-the-art cars with my earnings from music. I have no other means of livelihood,” he says.