Flavour N'abania Shares His Rise To The Top Story: “From Enugu To Lagos”

Chinedu Okoli, better known by his stage name as Flavour N'abania, is a prolific Nigerian recording artist, dancer, songwriter, and performer.  Flavour is now a music superstar, but a few years before she shot into limelight, it wasn’t rosy.

In an interview with Hip Hop World Magazine, the “Ada Ada” crooner speaks on leaving Enugu for Lagos.

“In Enugu at that time, I was coming out big, and Enugu is a small city where everyone knows each other. So everyone knew the guy Flavour, and it was so nice and cozy, but the money was not coming. It was all about the girls because there are many universities here in Enugu so there were many babes (laughs) and wherever you went, you would see them.

And they liked me so much so I was feeling myself, feeling what I was doing. I felt that with the love I got from ladies here I could do anything – go to any club. Things were just so easy for me and I began to feel like a star, but I noticed that I wasn’t making money, and I wasn’t pushing myself. I had no competition so I forgot about my dream to push myself across borders due to the distraction I got mostly from women and then life in Enugu.

Enugu is so chill, and the people want everything easy. Even if you don’t have money to spend, as long as you dress cool, act like a fine boy and up your swag, girls will follow you. Then once in a while, you travel and come back, people will say that this guy has not been in town and he just came back. Those are the kinds of things people want to hear but it wasn’t working for me.

I had too many distractions, and was just misbehaving. And then I decided to help myself. No one could talk to me; everyone was just saying, “you’re doing good”, because they were only seeing the small Enugu town. One day, I said to myself, ‘is this how I’m going to become that musician, that ambassador for music, that icon? The answer was ‘No’. So I decided to push myself higher.

I had (heard of) Obaino music in Alaba. He was interested in me, and when he called about marketing my album, I came to Lagos to see him and that’s how I began to get used to Lagos life. It was kind of difficult because back then, I always travelled by night buses in order to avoid the hassles of the day.

I didn’t care about the risks involved and even when I got to Lagos, I had no place to stay. I had a friend but he would always demand that I give him money to fuel generator but after he collected money, he would switch off the generator after sometime I would wake up at night due to the heat, so it was very difficult. But finally, we’re here.”