After it was revealed that veteran rapper Lord of Ajasa was ill and needed funds, a couple of his industry friends rallied round to help raise the money needed and an update given a few days back confirmed he is feeling much better.
Ajasa according to reports is back home now and is being placed on observation by his doctor ahead of his surgery. Ajasa was diagnosed with peptic ulcer.
Speaking with Punch, he said;
“I would have had the surgery done, but the doctor said we should delay it to enable me rest for a while. I have lost weight and I need to regain my strength,” he said.
On his friends donating funds to him, he said;
“I am very happy that they did this for me. In fact, I am still shocked at their quick response to my condition. I pray that God will remember them in their time of need,” he said.
The veteran rapper also spoke about a few other acts who abandoned him in his time of need.
“I am surprised that they changed their attitudes toward me. I don’t want to mention names now. They know themselves. Some of them are well known to members of the public. Although I have done a lot for these people, when I needed help from them, they were nowhere to be found. Some of them even avoided contact with me. I am very disappointed in them. All I can say is that in this music business, some people are ingrates.”
On shunning the entertainment industry, he said;
“That is not true. I did not withdraw into my shell. I have been busy working on a new album and attending shows. Before I fell ill, I was spending a lot of time in the studio working. I have a new album in progress. I was planning to shoot the video when this illness came.”
On his journey into the music world; “Eventually I went into music out of sheer passion, not love of money. Many of the artistes I knew at that time didn’t care much about getting rich. Wealth wasn’t the motivating factor for us, unlike today’s artiste’s who go into music because they want to get rich.”
“The rap music that we are listening to today, especially in Nigeria, is quite different from what we had in the past. It is no longer as exciting as it used to be,” he said.
On the quality of rap being released now, he said; “In the past, rap artistes virtually struggled to survive. The first time I was paid N10, 000 to perform in a show, I was very excited and happy. I think it was sometime around 2000 or 2001. At that time, N10,000 was a lot of money for somebody who was used to struggling through thick and thin to earn a living. There was no record label in those days. We were doing it on our own. Nobody believed that music would ever be a money spinner.”
