Don’t Get Hooked: What Do You Want?

Don’t get hooked on what they want. What do you want?

Every upcoming musician wants to be the next Davido or Wizkid. They believe if you don’t get to that height, they haven’t achieved success in the Nigeria music.

Who sold them this lie? The make believe narrative that every rapper who wants be known has to do some afro music or else, he wouldn’t “blow”

They defend such mediocrity with, “This is what the people want, let’s give it to them”

But, here is the challenge with that. You are no longer in control. The people are. They control your art and when you no longer meet their taste, because this will surely happen or someone better than you comes their way, you are doomed.

It is a zero sum race. A race to the bottom!

A better alternative is to do what you want. What you enjoy. What you are comfortable with. Here, you dictate the tune. You are in charge. You are not hooked trying to please people who do not matter.

You might not have the audience like Wizkid or Davido and that is fine. But you have people who are ready to fly down just to listen to you sing.

You have people who will stream your music.

Buy your album. Engage in your community.

People that will miss you when you are no more. These are the people that matter.

A classic example is Brymo. Nobody can deny his genius. He doesn’t have the fanbase like the others and that is because he is doing his thing and he enjoys it. He calls the shot and he dictates the tune.

His true fans are comfortable with it and they will do anything to listen to him. Same with Asa, Jonny Drille, Qdot, MI and every of those folks that have refused to be hooked.

The people that listen to these guys don’t love a song of theirs. They love the people themselves. Their true fans don’t say I love that Brymo song. They say, I love Brymo so much.

It doesn’t have to be Music. This cuts across all creative endeavours. Don’t get hooked trying to be a people pleaser. It is easy but it doesn’t last. People pleasing is giving people control over your art. You don’t want that. You have the power to choose who your audience is. You have the power to evict anyone who doesn’t fit into who your audience is.

At the Smart Academy, we ensure not to bait people into joining us. We don’t make claims like increase in income, large following, more engagement. While these things are not wrong, it is just not what we want.

We want you to join us because it is what you want to do. We want you to join our writing community because you want to write and not because we are promising an incentive. Most of the people that joined us and are not writing anymore are mainly those that joined for the wrong reasons.

Our method is slow. The turn out rate is low but the results are massive. See people passionate about becoming better writers put in the work. We don’t have to force them. We don’t have to coarse them. They do it naturally.

Same on the community page. We have people engage without being triggered. People who haven’t met each other before are relating like they’ve known each other for years!

That’s what we want – a family!

Getting hooked to make promises people want keeps us in a cage. We want to make our promises. If you are not comfortable, there are numerous other online academies and communities that are making the promise you seek. That’s fine! We are good with it.

So, be careful of falling into the trap of pleasing people. It is an infinite hole. One thing mathematics has taught us is that infinite holes can never be filled.

Create your art on your terms. Tell your story and people that resonates with it will come around. If they don’t, tell a better story or create something better.

But never get hooked by what people want at the expense of what you want.


To be continued…