How I spent my Project Fame money – Olawale

By Reliable Click

He was just 25 years when he was declared the winner of N5million. He won this after coming out top at the Project Fame reality show.  The instant fame saw the young university student move from an artisan phone repairer to a music star overnight. Olawale Ojo visited Sunday Independent recently and in a chat with Senior Correspondent, HAZEEZ BALOGUN, he talks about his life prior to his recent success and where he sees his musical career heading.

Olawale

The noise and the cameras that followed your win had died down a little bit. How are you settling into your new life?

Easy. I am taking every day as it comes. I am working very hard not to disappoint the fans who put me where I am today. I have been working on numerous songs; I have been in various studios working with numerous producers, making sure that I have good songs to put out there.

You have a single right now. Would tell us about ‘Is Notin’? 

I recorded it the first time I entered a recording studio. BeforeProject Fame, I was only writing songs, but never had the chance to go into a studio to record any. So, I was in the studio listening to a beat by DJ Klem and what just came to my mind was ‘Is Notin’ and that was how the first few lines of the song came about.

How has the reception been so far? 

It has been encouraging.  A lot of people like it and I have been getting positive feedbacks.

It is usually difficult for artiste who emerged from reality shows to make it in real life, only a few has done it, does that scare you?

I am not scared because there have been a lot of successful stories of music acts from talent hunt shows. I believe I can be one of these successful people. What I just have to do is work hard and do my part. I have carried myself to this level, so, I don’t see why I can’t go further.

Any video yet?

Before I think about releasing another song, I have to first shoot a video for this new single. Any other project has to be after I release the video of this new single.

How was your life before Project Fame? 

I grew up in Ibadan and I am the first of four children. I was just a normal guy that loved singing. It was during the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) strike last year that a friend advised me to go for any of these talent hunt shows. Initially, I told him I can’t go for such because I don’t like competitions, but after a while I thought about it and decided to go for Project Fame. My friend Segun actually got me the Project Fame form, before I was invited for the auditions in Ilorin.

Is it true that you auditioned like three times before you were picked? 

Yes, I wasn’t even picked at the Ilorin auditions though I got to the second stage. It was a guy I met there that advised me to go for another audition in Ibadan. At first, I was skeptical about it, telling myself that maybe it wasn’t my time. When I got to the Ibadan audition, my number was 600. I got to the judge and he just said, ‘No, come back next year.’  I got outside and got another number and tried making my way to another set of judges, but the bouncers directed me back to the same judge that gave me a ‘no’. ‘I thought I told you no the other time, why are you here again?’ the judge asked me. I told him I came back because I believed in myself. I sang my lines and he said ‘yes’ to me. The second day of auditioning, I got three straight ‘yes’, and that was how I found myself in Project Fame.

Was music something you had always done? 

I started music as a hobby because I never thought I was going to do anything with it. It just started from me being interested in music and then when I joined The Redeemed Christian Church of God when I got to the Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, Ogbomosho. I learnt how to play the keyboard and drum. I joined the choir also and that was when I started singing very well and people started noticing my talent. The passion grew stronger, but I didn’t think I would take music as a career.  I had a shop in school where I was selling and repairing laptop computers and phones and I thought I would probably be some sort of big computer store owner when I graduated from school.

What were your experiences in Project Fame? 

Project Fame has actually helped me a lot. When I was singing in the church, I was doing it for God and was not particularly bothered about the response of the audience. Project Fame taught me how to be an entertainer and how to get my response from the audience when I am performing. It was not easy for me during my first performances; the first five weeks were very difficult for me because I had never had such experience before.

Who were your early music influences?

I listened to the likes of Ginuwine, Marie, Neyo, and 2Face. It was mainly more of the international artistes because most of Nigerian artistes were not doing R&B.

How has life in the music industry been since Project Fame? 

I am at the experimental stage of my career now and I am still getting to discover my style as an artiste. I have been working with different producers to discover who I really am as an artiste. Music is what I love doing and the experiences so far have been awesome. It is a blessing from God that I am where I am now. The passion I have for music was so strong and I knew something was going to come out from it, but I didn’t just know how it was going to happen.

You did a blend of R&B and Fuji, is that the style you want to continue with? 

What actually made me popular in Project Fame was a Fuji song and performance I did. I discovered that people liked it a lot. So I would love to have a blend of Fuji sound and the R&B sound in my songs. But to be a successful artiste, I can’t just do that alone, I have to blend it with other styles.

It is not as if you have been in the industry for long, you just become famous all of a sudden. How do you cope with such a twist in your life?

Not much has changed; I have to remain who I was. People have been calling me and asking if I remembered them and I wonder why they ask such questions because Project Fame has not wiped out my memory. People actually expect me to be proud, but I see myself as someone who has not achieved anything yet.

What do you hope to achieve in the music industry? 

I hope to first of all make my name popular in Nigeria. I want a situation where people will hear me sing and they will know it is Olawale. There is nobody that will hear a Wizkid song and not know it is Wizkid because he has his sound.

Tell us about the prizes you won in Project Fame and how you spent it?

My family supported me in a lot of ways during Project Fame and I had to drop something for them. I had friends who also went the extra mile to help me, so I had to settle them also. The first thing I bought with the money was a keyboard and I gave my former keyboard to my younger brother.