M.I Abaga has spoken out about the expectation of certain people to always collect money from him.
Celebrities in Nigeria are generally regarded as a reservoir of wealth in many quarters, and have to put up with incessant demands for cash, but the Chocolate City rapper has revealed that sometimes, the celebrities are in dire need of money too.
In an interview with My Africa Podcast, M.I opened up to host, Andre Blaze.
“People always put pressure on you.” M.I said. “They always believe that, you know, especially Nigeria where the culture of ‘give me something, dash me something, give me some money, is beginning to become rooted more and more into our everyday life.
“People expect you to always have money to give them, to always have something for them, and sometimes you’re just trying to get that paycheque too.”
The rapper was talked about this in his song, ‘Human Being’, off his ‘Chairman’ album. He also revealed his reasons for not contributing to OJB’s well-documented struggle with kidney complications, blaming it on the threat of embarrassment, and the media circus surrounding the movement.
“Everybody was confused, every artiste was confused, so one or two things started happening. A certain artiste told me that he went and contributed the little money that he had, and by the time he got home, it was put in the broadcast, ‘this is how much you gave’.” And it was embarrassing because somebody else is giving N5 million, and you have your little N100,000.
“Already, everybody was in that N100,000 category, of which there was maybe 20, 30 people. Automatically it’s like ‘Yo, I’m gonna keep my N100,000, I’m not trying to be embarrassed. On the second hand, you have artistes, like myself, who were just confused, if we were to go, what would have happened, what would we see, because it had become a media thing.”
M.I Abaga is currently gearing up for the release of the video of hit songf, ‘Bullion Van’, off the ‘Chairman’ album.
