Helping female artists is so difficult -Azeezat

Azeezat

Azeezat is one female singer who’s been there done that. She started singing professionally when Nigerian music was yet to really become accepted and she made a success of it, despite the great odds.

She knows all about the music industry so her opinion carries a lot of weight.

And one of the thorny issues in the industry presently is that female singers don’t support each other, something Yemi Alade decried recently.

So OSEYIZA OOGBODO BLOG asked Azeezat her opinion on it and her answer came promptly.

“The truth is this, there’s a general belief that women generally don’t support each other, you know. And every time we have the opportunity, we try as much as possible to correct that belief. The truth is this, even when you’re trying to be, I don’t want to be a naysayer, but the truth must be told. I’ve spent close to twenty years in this industry so if I’m saying something, you should know that I know what I’m talking about. Even when you’re trying to correct that belief, the person you’re trying to support feels that there’s something behind it.

“Why’re you supporting me? It’s because her career is not good again. Oh, if her career is good, why will she be supporting me? Or, look at her, this advice that she’s giving to me, what has she used it to do for herself? There was a time I put my own career on hold to help other female artists.

“I mean, at the end of the day, I had to give up, you know, because you’re trying to do good, and your good is being interpreted as something, having, that it’s either opportunistic or … you know, it’s just not being interpreted for what it is, and you just … one of the things my people taught me then was that, look, you cannot be a queen without having subjects, because you’ll remember that there was a point in time in this industry that it was just Azeezat. So I wanted a situation where we could have more females. It wasn’t sweet being the only one. But, you know, I just had to give up.”