They can buy all the 4K UHD cameras and expensive lighting in the world. They can attend New York Film Academy and learn the swivels and flourishes of movie making.
But as long as they refuse to pay for quality script writing, their movies will continue to be trash.
The only reason King Of Boys is a unicorn is Kemi Adetiba's individual writing genius.
If she did not take personal responsibility to think up a genuinely interesting storyline and spend years fleshing it out, it would have been just another bit of shiny neo-Nollywood nonsense.
In Hollywood, it is common to see screenwriters get paid 6-7 figure USD sums per movie. That's why Hollywood storylines are good - they pay for quality.
Nollywood INSISTS on treating writing as a cheap afterthought, so here we are. "Shebi it's just to write, what's there?" abi?
Instead of respecting talent and expertise, they spend all their time running around with their silly cliques and cabals. You'll see people whose only writing experience is a personal blog or scripting a podcast getting writing credits on these movies.
What else do you expect?
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I'm not sure where this narrative that "Nigeria does not promote other African music" is suddenly coming from, because I know FOR A FACT that this is NOT true.
A little thread with some facts and some anecdotes that I hope will provide some insight to cut through this myth.
I used to work for BHM, which was Viacom Africa's PR agency, so I had an inside view of much of Africa's contemporary industry.
This guy - the person who pitched MTV Base Africa to his bosses at Viacom USA, and built it from the ground up was Alex Okosi - a Nigerian.
If you're not aware about who Alex is and the central, foundational role he played in the post-2000 growth and development of contemporary African music, I recommend reading this: edition.cnn.com/2012/09/28/sho…
Always funny when a victim of injustice voices out, only to later reverse themselves, as if that apology will change anything with their oppressors.
Someone has stolen the streaming rights for what could be the only hit record you will ever make, and you're apologising lol🌚
People - Nigerians especially - seem not to understand that when you go to war, you must be prepared to sacrifice everything. You don't start a war on the side of justice, then pull out midway through. That makes you a joke.
Stand up for yourself or cower. You have to choose one
This is what 15 million streams is worth on each of these platforms. Maybe because it's Africa, you can divide these figures by 3 or 4, but for someone coming from the trenches of Ifo, imagine how life changing these amounts are.
A big takeaway from all this is that upcoming creative talents should lean more on the internet creative ecosystem and less on these parasitic middlemen.
There are artists like Chance The Rapper and Ahmir who have made millions of dollars without a record deal or a "helper."
Using just YouTube, Apple Music, Spotify, Deezer and social media, these guys built themselves into multimillion dollar brands without signing themselves into slavery in the name of "A&R" this and "record label" that.
The internet is coming for middlemen in the creative space!
Creatives (Painters, musicians, designers, writers etc) are the lifeblood of the creative industry, and nobody should tell you any different.
The job of these middlemen is to convince creatives that they need them. This is no longer true. The internet has changed the game.
If you're as big as you claim to be, you shouldn't need to rip off upcomers in the name of "helping" them. If you want to help, help and be reasonable about it. If you don't want to help, free them. Don't be an agbaya.
How I hate this Portable vs Poco Lee story.
Once you're in a creative space in Nigeria, everyone is just hovering around you like a tsetse fly hoping to take a bite out of you.
The concept of noblesse oblige is completely nonexistent. Just a bunch of agbayas sitting on people's heads. Disgusting and tiresome.
Start making a name as a musician and someone will try to sign you to a slavery contract and steal all your IP.
Start making a name as a writer and one "senior colleague" will steal your work and put their name on it in the name of "helping you" (I experienced this)
"The only reliable data on Omicron comes from South Africa and it shows that it is significantly less dangerous than prior variants, which doesn't suit the narrative we want.
What shall we do?
I know!
Let's revisit the idea from last year that Africans have natural immunity to this virus due to genetic and demographic factors. You know, the idea that we savagely shot down and dismissed as rubbish pseudoscience.
Now let's rebrand it as self evident fact. Job done."
A lot of modern Africans have this weird need to derive their self esteem from the alleged greatness of their ancestors instead of from their own achievements.
That's why anything that they feel presents said ancestors in an unflattering way feels like a personal attack on them.
That's why to date, even though Badagry literally exists and you can stroll in and observe the very well preserved relics of the trans Atlantic slave trade anytime, some people on this website are ready to detonate suicide belts if you tell them that our ancestors sold slaves.
The ones in the North who have mistaken Arabism (a cultural ideology) with Islam (a religion), and have subsequently had their own cultures displaced by Arabism, can stone you if you show them what their ancestors were doing just 250 years ago.