By Bianca Iboma-Emefu
Rising music star Olayinka Ekundayo better known as Don Corleone or DjWhoshotit is making waves with his infectious beats and magnetic charisma.
Hailing from Southwest Nigeria, Ekundayo’s journey from a local rapper to a global sensation is capturing headlines and winning hearts worldwide.
His debut EP (extended play), titled “Long Time Coming,” features five tracks and is already generating significant buzz.
Ekundayo’s love for music began at a young age. He started his career in the bustling streets of Nigeria, quickly garnering attention for his raw talent and undeniable stage presence.
Reflecting on his musical journey, Ekundayo said, “I feel like my journey into music is similar to every other average musician. At a very early age, I grew up in the church. The church is the basic influence behind my music. I play the drums and I sing a lot. A lot of people believe that real music comes from the church. From there, I realized that my passion was making songs.”
Ekundayo added that he draws inspiration from his surroundings, transforming everyday sounds into music. “I get inspiration from anything around me. Sometimes what I see or perceive. It all depends on the inspiration perceived. I am big on melody and I tend to get melody from things happening around. Every sound I hear, I can turn into music,” he explained.
Currently, Ekundayo is working on several projects, showcasing his versatility as an artist. “I don’t count myself as being one-dimensional. I know I can do Afrobeats, Afro Pop, RnB, Rap, name it, just the creative aspect as a musician. I’m working on an amapiano type of album, and I also have an RnB album,” he shared.
“The most important thing for me to do for my music is creating a song with a melody, because the song has to aroused interest,catchy and draw attention.Once I get the melody, another important part for the song is the lyrics. I trry to be very intentional about my lyrics. I like to talk about stories or I find a scenario, or an incident that happened to me and make a song about it.
‘Honestly, I can’t really say when I discovered my talent. I come from a music family, my parents can actually sing. The both of them usually have a duet performance at home.
My mum takes the lead and dad harmonizing. Furthermore, I grew up with that and then I started learning music in church as well. I have also been opportune to have great music directors who take their time to teach me music, this equally helped me understand music. I learnt it from home and picked it up from around me, that’s how I just started developing on my own.
” I will not undermine the effort I put in personally. I watched tones of videos, listened to different types of artists. Every artist have their unique sound. I listened to them and I can actually tell how they sing. And that gives me a lot of arsenal in my artillery to use when it is time for me to sing.
Ekundayo added that this is why I can switch and do so many different styles. It is all about understanding the genres of music and how to attempt the song.
“I think circular artists get more recognition than gospel artists. It is just the world we live in. it is like demand and supply. A lot of the artists who do circular music can also do gospel music. Personally, I think doing gospel music is easier because I can relate to it. I can thank God and pray to him, those are the things I do basically. But, not everybody is that conscious. And a lot of people are not willing to pay money to come listen to a gospel music.
“I think circular music is the demand, and artists are supplying the demand. At the end of the day, to some people music is income. For me, I obviously want to get paid out of music but luckily I have a 9-5 that I do now and I’m basically funding my music so I can do the genre that I like. I have the opportunity to do gospel, I’m just appealing to the fans by giving them what they want and that is circular music.
‘When I am not singing, I play the drums. I think those two is working perfectly together.
I support it because music is a feeling and the most important thing is to convey the feeling.
‘Also, you can tune your lyrics to match the feeling you want the people to feel. There is absolutely nothing wrong with combining the circular and gospel music works as long as the message is clear. You can be positive, conscious and still make music for everybody. I don’t consider myself a gospel artist but my music should appeal to everybody because it doesn’t contain vulgar words.
It doesn’t necessarily have to have a spiritual meaning behind it. It should have a human feeling so that people can be able to relate with it.
‘I am not going to lie, the music industry is very complicated. There’s the business side of it that a lot of people don’t understand and there’s the streaming part of it. Getting your songs out there on radio and all th different avenues.
Additionally,the music industry is almost like a class where you have to study the different subjects to understand the industry as a whole. I do think the music industry is very saturated. We do have a lot of talented artists but to actually be in the music industry, it takes determination, knowledge and understanding the game, and also finding your niche so you can appeal to your fans.
Meanwhile, at the end of the day you need your fans to support your music and promote you. It is about being intentional about who you are appealing to. I have to try my best using the resources I have, which is why my music has gone from making any kind of song to songs with meaning.
” In that way, I can appeal to the sense of some set of people. The finance and the artistic element is what can make any artist successful. The music industry is partial, it is not fair, you have to give what you have to get what you want which involves basically networking and having those who can help push your music in your corner.
Continuous improvement is my model. As long as you can look at yourself in two years or three years from now, I feel like you’re making progress. As an artist, that is the goal that I’m keeping for myself. I want to be able to look back and see the improvement in myself and in my songs-the lyrics, production, engineering and all that. It is just about making great music that appeals to fans, conscious music that have messages behind them. I want my music to be like a comforter for people. I want my music to invoke a type of feeling. My goal is to be able to supply the demand which is to be in tune with the environment, change in technology. Leveraging on AI, I think at one point I have used AI to write music. Actually, one of my songs on Spotify titled Time waster. Despite leveraging on this technology, you will always have to keep this artistic element in your songs. You don’t want to let technology replace the originality of your sound because you don’t want to sound like a robot. I am old school/new school; I am right there in the middle. I am trying to find a balance between technology and the analogue system. I still believe in the power of humanity and our uniqueness but technology is definitely there to be leveraged upon. Just use what is out there to help in terms of content.
Moreso, marketing strategy, a lot of artists get famous on social media first. You should be able to understand how it works and used that for your good. Technology is not meant to take you away from reality but help augment reality.
As long as I’m able to still use technology make my music better while I still keep my human element and artistic element I am cool with it. I like to keep my impression on every song. Every of my song you hear, you’ll hear my impression.
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