Darey Art Alade Interview

Dare Art Alade

Considered as the king of R&B in Nigeria, Darey Art Alade has successfully earned the title with his numerous achievements after just three albums in the bag. Darey, in a chat with Factory 78’s Adesope Olajide lets us in on his rise to fame, plans for a U.K album and why he proudly supports Charity events.

How are you doing sir?

I’m good.

We’re very happy to see you at events. You just went to Charity Bowl Bar, Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys. How was that event?
Ah, it was great. Just hanging around, supporting the charity which is really important. You know the charity is all about immunizing children in Africa and in India. And as a Nigerian just doing my PR tour, I thought ‘let me just support this charity because it makes sense’. It sounds genuine. And the event was really interesting; it was fun meeting people, seeing some old faces I haven’t seen in a while, and enjoying the performances from different artists. Big surprises, like Boy George, I have never seen perform live. It was great seeing him perform live. It was interesting.

You’re talking about performances, having your own tour. I was very lucky to be at performances by yourself, at KC’s bar. First of all the performances, how do you think you were received here in London?

It was great. Yeah, Steam Bar, gave a performance, just a few songs. Just trying to get people to see what we’re doing. Obviously they know some of the songs. From ‘Somebody’ to ‘The way you are’ which is the one we’re trying to promote.

I saw your performance, absolutely smashing. It was well-received especially by the ladies. Even though you kept them in mind when you were making that song; ‘Bani ki di’, ‘Style na style’, let’s talk about this album that you’re promoting. But before we get there, I just want us to give a little introduction. Yes, you’ve come from a blood line of greats; your father was a legend in the game, and we still talk about him this day. And you’ve come up in that family, just following your father’s footsteps. Let’s talk about your upbringing and how music kind of became the norm for you.

Probably for me music started from as young as eight, singing here and there, joining a school choir in secondary school at C.M.S Grammar School. I ended up joining the choir; from there I started doing performances outside school. I joined different groups, started singing with different bands. Then I started radio. I did radio for five years. I did some years on T.V at the same, getting a degree in the University at the same time, performing at shows. So there was a lot of music and entertainment going on at a stretch at the time, including school. And then 2004 came, the reality show in South Africa; Project Fame. It was a great launching pad, just to get me in the consciousness of Nigerians and Africans in general. After that, I released my first album in 2006, ‘From Me 2 U’; quite a mix of songs, a mix of genres in the album. But quite a few songs, like two or three songs made it big. That was a good start, it was exciting. It was actually a critical success in the sense of the word because people tore it down, they ripped it apart, and people loved it too. It got people talking, and it was a great beginning. And the second album, ‘Un-DAREY-Tated’ dropped in 2009, and some hits like; ‘Not The Girl’, ‘No Stars’, ‘Carry Dey Go’ with 2Face, ‘Style Na Style’ with 9ice, I did the original with just him and myself, and quite a few other songs. Did ‘More’, ‘let You Know’; so many songs!

So it was even a bigger hit than the first one, we were on the roll. It took another two years to finish the third album which is the double album, ‘Double Dare’, this is all for Naija by the way. And of course, ‘Double Dare’ has great songs like ‘The Way You Are’, ‘Bani ki di’, ‘Style Na Style’ remix with like Jesse Jags and 9ice. I have people like Timaya on the album, Psquare on the album, Mo’Cheddah and Chamillionaire all the way from the U.S. On the success of that, and from all the hype over the years, people have been like ‘you know what? let’s share this music with the rest of the world. Let’s go international’. And we’ve wanted to; we’ve been working underground for this, for the longest time. And it’s about time we start rolling out the plan little by little. Do some PR, Come out here to do a week-long PR campaign, attending events, performing, mixing and mingling, doing press interviews and all that stuff. So now after obviously I’ve dropped an album in Nigeria, I have to do a U.K album, some of the songs in the third album in naija will make it to the UK album. Recording fresh stuff that will work with our oyinbo friends and our western friends just so that they won’t feel left out. We’ve got a mix of African-Euro pop kind of sound.

Sorry to cut you short there. I didn’t want you to leave that Euro pop thing going. Speaking of the different type of sounds you’ve brought into the game this time. The first I saw of it was like a viral video. I just kept on playing it. I was like is this funky house, what exactly was it and how did that come about?

I can’t exactly tell you really what it is. I mean it’s experimental; you just do what you’re feeling. But if you want to dissect it, the lyrics are in Hausa, the beat is like House. So you can call it ‘Housa’. (Laughs). You know it’s fun, it’s high tempo, it’s high energy. The synth is very grimy, you hear that at high volume and all you want to do is dance, you don’t really care what they’re talking about. I think that’s the dissection of that.

You went from ‘The Way You Are’ which is a brilliant video. Everybody has seen it. You’ve been crowned the king of RnB in Nigeria, people appreciate your voice. People are trying to put you with some of the greats we’ve listened to. We appreciate good music in Nigeria. We’ve listened to the Joes, the R. Kelly’s and you’ve had a chance to perform with some of these guys on stage. How does that feel for you?

I remember opening for R. Kelly in Cape Town a few years ago, for the This Day Music Festival. That was fun. Meeting him afterwards, just chatting, and taking pictures and all that stuff. And I was the only person that opened for that stuff and it was lovely. Performing for South African audience that really didn’t know the music, and they were so supportive, and they had a great time. So that was definitely great. There’s been other openings and sharing stages with so many other big names and that really is very humbling and something worth being happy about.

There’s one part I’ve always wanted to talk to you about, and that’s your video making; the video that you guys come up with. I don’t know who you work with, who directs those videos but you have completely taken African music videos to a whole new level.  You’ve been recognized for those videos in the past. You’ve dropped ‘Bani Ki di’ and ‘The Way You Are’. You have to expect big nominations even if you’ve only given it to the fans. People should recognize the hard work you’ve put into it. Tell us more about who people you’ve worked with in those videos, and those beautiful pictures came about.

I don’t know if we’re going to get nominations and all that but we do these things as promotional tools, and really for people to enjoy. When nominations come, it is by the way. It is exciting, don’t get me wrong, it’s not like we don’t feel good about it but the real reason why it’s done is for people to enjoy, and when you do get nominations that mean people are really enjoying it. Making the videos is very interesting, my team at Soul Muzik, and the normal directors that we work with. So ourselves and Mark Hofmeyr, our video director, he’s South African. Sometimes we shoot in South Africa. ‘The Way You Are’ for example was shot in the U.K. I was just trying to look for many exotic places. We’ve shot at home many a time. It’s all about variety at the end of the day so we came out here, we shot the video. The trick to it is really taking our time. And it will take about one, two or three months to just vibe with ideas back and forth. The music is ready, so you keep listening, you keep developing on the idea, you write some scripts down. Do some illustrations, and eventually you pick a date to shoot, and you try to make sure everything is there. And when you’re editing every little aspect is very important, from the costuming to the shots, the quality of the camera, the lights, and the location. It takes a long time. Some people try to do it over night, and you can see from the end result.

When are we going to be expecting a tour by Darey in the U.K?

A tour is in the works, obviously if the album is released, there’s definitely going to be a tour after that. Building up to that, I’m going to be back in a month or so, the carnival is around the corner. We’re going to come back heavy on that one and do some performances. And we’re going to take it to a few other Nigerian clubs. Make some appearances in Calabar, different places. Possible just do Jazz Café one day and invite a lot of people, from there we could try the Indigo, the O2 Arena, and just trying to fill more spaces. For now, we need the fans, we need you guys to join the train, and we need all the support we can get.

Before you go, where can people follow you; Twitter, Facebook?

Check out my website. Brand new tear rubber, you know that kain’ thing. www.darey.com. From there you can link me up on Facebook, Twitter. Everything is there. So just check my website. Videos, everything is on there.