by Temple Egemasi
Akomaye Praise, better known as AkPraise, has had a run worth talking about, particularly in the music industry. AkPraise was born in Calabar, Cross River State, to parents who hail from Obudu, one of the northern areas of Cross River State. He lived and got all of his education up to the tertiary level in Calabar before deciding to move to Lagos. In this interview, AkPraise gives a riveting account of his career and all the times he had to pivot, discovering and working with Asake, and what he would have done differently.
A little confession here; this article started as an informal research into Asake’s roots. Mr. Money came prepared in 2022, and the very mature tone of his debut album prompted me to go see what he had been up to in the preceding years. This little inquiry yielded two conclusions: firstly, there is hardly any smoke without fire. The second conclusion was that there was an equally interesting story of readiness and perseverance that had to be told – even before the Asake story.
Hello AK, wagwan my brother?
AkPraise: Nothing too serious my bro, we thank God.
Blessings then. Give us a little sketch of your origin story.
AkPraise: I was born in Calabar; I grew up there. I graduated from the Cross River State University of Technology, CRUTECH. I did Wood and Structural Engineering in school. Towards the end of my time at CRUTECH, my friends and I were just chilling at home and we decided to open Facebook accounts ‘cos we wanted to see what the craze was about. It was that period where everyone had a nice or cool way of writing out or spelling their name on Facebook and we were thinking of names for our accounts, then one of my friends was like “just put A-K Praise”. I thought it was cool too so I stuck with it. I just used my account as some sort of blog.
So, your blog started from your Facebook account?
AkPraise: Yes. I just used to post things that I thought were interesting or hilarious. I started getting a lot of followers, and I think I enjoyed the interactions I used to get whenever I posted something hilarious so I just kept on. I also got a Twitter account after a while and grew the followership there too. Meanwhile, I opened a blog, AkPraise.com, and I was using my Twitter audience to try to promote it. My blog became a hub for downloads and music promotion, especially for artists in Calabar, and artists who wanted to reach the Calabar audience.
Did the blog grow beyond Calabar?
AkPraise: Oh yes, it did. I mean, I bumped into Foluade – Folu of 49th street – recently, and when I introduced myself as AkPraise, he asked if I was the one behind “the popular akpraise blog back then.” I said yeah, and we laughed about it being the rave for music downloads for a bit. I operated the blog from the South-South where I’m from, Folu went to OAU, which is down here in the South West. So yes, the blog did grow beyond the city where I started it.
Generally, how well did the blog do?
AkPraise: It was crazy, we got to months where we would make 12k dollars in a month. You know how it was back then when Google Adsense was the thing! The blog was going well, I was running a lot of music promotion on it and things were going well. You can tell that twelve thousand dollars was some good money four, five years ago so we were doing okay – at least we thought so. Looking back, I think the way we measured our success was a tiny mistake that snowballed into a big one. We had enough money to pay the team and also reinvest in the business’s needs, but I don’t think we were planning or prepared for any change. So, to put it simply, we were doing very well for people at that stage.
What changed? What led you to realize that you were not very prepared for any sort of change?
AkPraise: I moved to Lagos, and that’s what changed. Okay so…after school, I wasn’t able to fully do my clearance till 2015 – even though I graduated in 2013. I opened the blog around the time I did my clearance and it was doing well. After my clearance, I had to do my NYSC in 2018. I also thought of my service year as a way to move to a new market and take advantage of any opportunities that might be new to me, ‘cos the blog was being used strictly for music promotion at the time. I wasn’t posting any actual news, happenings, or opinion articles, it was just for music. I believed that moving to Lagos would give me a bigger market of artists to work with, so I looked forward to it.
Was it what you expected?
AkPraise: A tiny yes and a big no, both at the same time. Yes, there was a bigger market of artists to work with. No, it was not a playing field I was equipped for. When I moved from Calabar to Lagos, it felt like I walked into a UFC cage with a table tennis paddle. To put it simply, it wasn’t what I expected, I was in for a shock, and it was really clear I wasn’t ready for change at the time.
What do you mean? What type of shock?
AkPraise: Well, people in Lagos streamed music – that’s it.
That’s it? How?
AkPraise: My business model for music promotions was simple. I had the reach, so I’d put your music on my platforms, and people who wanted it could get it from there. I also had goodwill, which meant that when people saw your song on my blog, they’d believe it was legit to some extent, you know. But I moved to Lagos at a time when artists were beginning to hop on DSPs like Apple Music, and the Lagos artists were fully on this wave so their marketing teams acted accordingly. Their teams were working with promotion guys that already had the structure to use their platforms to bring streams to the artiste. I did not have that, and I wasn’t prepared for that. Since I had shifted my focus from the Calabar market to the Lagos market which was unresponsive, the revenue started dwindling. Another thing I remember was that I wasn’t used to the huge difference in the cost of living between Calabar and Lagos, so being here and having to adjust my standard of living while my income wasn’t growing anymore wasn’t nice. It stopped being funny at some point. Yes, before I forget, my website that was already getting low traffic, then crashed haha.
In periods like this, there are things and people in your life that must have helped you while you were at this point in your life, what were you grateful for the most?
AkPraise: Friends. I made some of the best friends anyone could possibly make. I can say that because when I moved here, I met many people but I was very intentional about the people I remained friends with. A very good example of this is when I was looking for pointers – for what to do next yunno. I met some guys who were already in the distribution space and asked for some advice, as someone who wanted to start. One of them blatantly told me to bring money, money I did not have at the time. Then a week after, that same guy’s cousin or friend, I do not really know, called me and asked me what my challenges were, and I just told him I needed to learn how to distribute music. He just said “oya come make I show you where you go start” and that was it.
Who was your first distribution client?
AkPraise: Asake.
Tell us about it.
AkPraise: I met Asake almost immediately after I came to Lagos. I was in Lagos for my National Service remember? One day I was leaving my CDS venue in Igbo-Efon and I decided to go to my friend, Endujack’s place to chill before going home. I don’t know if you know Endujack but he used to work with a lot of artists back then, especially in the area of career direction in the crucial early stages. He had a studio close to his place where he used to go record, and different artists came around the day I went there after CDS; Asake came around too. I had not listened to his work before that day. In fact, the first time I heard Asake was when he was recording at this studio around Endujack’s house. As soon as I heard him, I knew I wanted to be involved in his career one way or another. Remember that business wasn’t going so well at the time so unavoidably, some days were good, and some days were sh!t (sic) but we kept cool. I listened to some more of his work after the first day we met, and I saw a lot of promise, and I resolved to work with him. I started helping out with a lot of the digital aspects of his career. He was very talented, but he had zero to no digital footprint. So I started doing music promo and PR activities for him with the flailing structure I had. I also linked with Victor (Victor Nja) in Lagos and we became quite close, of course, everyone knows the extent of work Victor did for us.
Why did you choose to get involved in his career?
AkPraise: To be very honest, I got involved cos I was very curious. Let me explain. When I listened to his record for the first time, I was genuinely amazed. It wasn’t just me saying “oh the guy is okay.” It was more of “holy sh-t! this guy is mental.” I was curious to know why a musician with so much talent didn’t have his music blasting from every speaker and why his face wasn’t on any billboard yet. Since then, I have been helping him out with his music and everything. I was involved because I wanted to know what he was not doing right, and what he had to do to get to where he deserved to be. That’s how we started working together. He was there at the beginning of my career in the music industry, just as I was at the beginning of his.
I have gone through your old posts on social media, and I have met you multiple times. One thing I noticed is you and Asake seem to always be in the same place. Were you guys always joined at the hip like you are now?
AkPraise: Urmm, I’ll say yes. With every interpersonal relationship, there will be times when the bond is tight, and there’ll be other times when you’ll both need to retract a bit, and that’s normal. So yes, we’ve been in constant contact. Right from when we started working together, down to when he got signed, to when he went independent again, yunno, it has been my job.
When and why did that change?
AkPraise: I said he signed a record deal right? Well, after doing a number of records, the label shot some videos for the records too, but never published the records or the music videos. They gave no concrete reasons why they didn’t. If I remember well the deal was a four-year deal and he never put out anything meaningful in that period despite working tirelessly on his craft the entire time. To be clear, he did his part, the record label just didn’t put in enough vim in putting his work out there. I had an assessment of our progress and decided to take another look at his contract, and it was glaring that the label wasn’t doing what they were supposed to do; making it a one-sided contract – so I told him we could further his career without adhering to a one-sided contract. We did some work on a track he had recorded, scraped around for money and shot a music video, and put it out without any credit to the record label. With the way things went after we did that, it was apparent that we needed to move on and that’s what we did. And by we, I mean Asake and I.
What happened after that?
AkPraise: Asake and I had to go back to basics, and you know we had to bootstrap, especially because I didn’t have much at the time. I think all we had was the belief – I believed in his talent and the future that could come out of it, and he believed in the future I envisioned. I don’t know if that makes sense.
At the time you were making this decision, what future did you envision for yourself?
AkPraise: At the time I was making this decision, the picture of what I wanted was clear. I resolved that if I chose to do this, I’d be acting in an advisory role to one or more of Nigeria’s biggest exports – while having a platform that will create that pipeline for repetitive success. It was that simple. Five years after when I made that decision, I wanted to have used the tools I had access to, to create a platform that would contribute to Asake’s success and afterward, recreate that success again and again. I think the evidence of one part of that vision coming to fruition is clear, the other part is in the works.
How were you able to work towards his vision while working towards your own vision?
AkPraise: To be very honest, it wasn’t hard. I mean at all. Our visions worked very seamlessly together. I had – and still have – big plans for myself. He had big plans for himself too – and we can see them coming to life already. When I was making the decision to work with him, the most important question was: how well do our plans interact? And how well will our plans be interacting in about five years, ten years, you know? My vision was always going to work because I believed in my work. His vision was always going to work because he is as hardworking, if not more hardworking. Finally, I didn’t see any point where his vision would come in the way of my own aspirations, so the decision was quite easy.
You mentioned something about a second part being in the works; how is this being done and what rocket are you launching this dream with?
AkPraise: When I started distributing, I set up Divizzion Music. Divizzion Music started out with music distribution as its primary service and has now expanded to offering management and music marketing services too.
Seeing that Project Divizzion Music is running concurrently with Project Asake, which has already taken off the launchpad, where do you think you are with Divizzion Music right now and what do you want it to look like in the foreseeable future?
AkPraise: Divizzion Entertainment is still a baby; my baby and is also a business. Building a business is not as easy as building an artist’s profile. It is even harder when the job of that business is building an artist’s profile, if you understand what I mean. So while I recognize that they are running on separate timelines, Divizzion is doing work I am extremely proud of. Our catalog boasts of Kayode, Asake, Ashidapo, Bithohan, Yhemo Lee, Shaddy Racks, and a crazy roster of talented artists you’ll be hearing more about this year and next year, of course. We are already doing a lot as it stands, and I want us to move to be as big as brokering and/or offering deals to artists as part of giving them a platform for their music. I just want to ensure that the initial problems we had on the come up never recur.
You seem to have a proactive approach to solutions – which is something that has been lacking in the music industry for a while. What are the other issues you think we need to look into if we are really eager to groom world-class talents from Nigeria?
AkPraise: I think we should be more realistic with young guys who are trying to make a name for themselves. We should try as much as possible to refrain from selling them dreams that won’t come to pass within very short timeframes. It is so easy to hear stories of artists who fall out with their labels or management and when you look closely, the artist was either promised a number of things and these promises influenced their decision to sign with that outfit or the capacity of the said platform was overexaggerated and they can’t deliver on things as simple as playlists on the first day of release.
With the ever-changing scope of the music industry, music companies of every kind have had to always evolve with the times to ensure they stay in the game. Are there any facets you believe you need to incorporate in your practice to ensure this?
AkPraise: Yes. I plan to look into two aspects actually. The first aspect is quality personnel in the field of Artiste & Repertoire. The Nigerian market is catching up here, and you can see the results firsthand, but, there is still a massive gap to be filled and I am already working on that. The second part is the proactive use of data in making music decisions. I think there’s currently only one music label that does that and that’s not enough. We currently use data to see how well a project or an artist has done and if we are keeping it a buck, there’s so much more we could be doing with data – especially real-time data. We could be using it to make a lot more decisions in real-time by just analyzing how people consume music, and what attracts them in the first place.
This conversation has been very insightful so far. Before we call it a day, what is a non-intrinsic quality that has helped you in the music business and that you think everyone should have?
AkPraise: Partnership.
Thank you very much, it was a pleasure talking to you.
AkPraise: Blessings bro.
AK, who is known to be a shy, no-talk-all-action, music exec has very lofty plans that may well be in play till the end of the decade. Will we see all of them come to fruition? Will he land way higher than he planned? There is only one way to find out.
