Nigerian veteran rapper, Michael Ugochukwu Stephens, better known as Ruggedman, has declared that the current crop of Nigerian singers are just cruise; they don’t have evergreen songs, and all they care about is just cruise.
Ruggedman revealed this during a chat on the Channels Television morning show, where he discussed extensively the current music industry, his plans, and how he and the oldies shaped the future of Afrobeat. Ruggedman said, while speaking about the current generation of Afrobeats singers: “Unfortunately, this is the generation of cruise. They just wanna cruise, and cruise is selling. I call them the ‘whatever generation.’ Most times you are trying to tell them something, and the last thing you will hear is ‘whatever,’ and they go back to whatever they were doing.
You can’t blame them too much. At least I am happy for the likes of myself, Tu-baba, Blackface, Sunny Neji, and people who have evergreen songs. We are not going to have evergreen songs from this generation because most of the new songs don’t last two to three months.”He also said he got a bit bored with everything at some stage before the industry became what it is now.
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He said: “There was piracy; you weren’t getting what you were supposed to be getting as a creative, so I got a bit bored. So, I switched to doing more movies. I haven’t done a lot, but I am happy with the ones I have done”. Speaking about his profession, he also said he loves what he does since it is a mixture of different things: activism, NGO, music, and podcasting. “I love what I do. (Referring to a picture displayed on the screen) This is called the Michael Stephens experiment. If you see what I am holding, there is rap there, fuji, juju, and there is Zanku also.”The rapper concluded by revealing his latest “EP,” which is a combination of all genres of music, as earlier emphasised.
