While appearing on The Bridge alongside Real Madrid French midfielder Aurelian Thouameni, Cindy Bruna, and François-Henry Bennahmias, Davido gave credit to the early generation of stars for their sacrifice.
Davido while speaking on his early days with Sony Music after getting signed in 2016 described it as a difficult period where he had to prove himself to an international market who weren’t familiar with his African exploits.
“When we come to sign record deals overseas, they don’t know we are superstars back home. When I signed my first deal, I just did a 60,000-capacity stadium in Mali. So when you signed a new deal, they’re asking you ‘What’s your name? What type of music do you make?’,”
Davido further stated that while seemingly having to start afresh was difficult, he understood that he and his generation were benefitting from the sacrifices of Afrobeats pacesetters like 2Baba, D’banj, and P-Sqaure. And whatever sacrifices he had to make would also benefit the future generation.
“What them 2Face, D’banj, and P-Square sacrificed for us is what we are enjoying now. What we are sacrificing now is for the next generation to come and be bigger because the music is only going to grow bigger.”
There have recently been conversations on the history of Afrobeats and whether the early stars paved the way for the current crop of stars.
Grammy-nominated superstar Davido is among the superstars who continue to acknowledge the impact of the early generation of Afrobeats stars whose efforts contributed to the commercialization of Nigerian mainstream music.
In the interview, Davido talked about the difficulties of his early days with Sony Music. He called his first project under Sony Music ‘Son of Mercy’ EP a failure and shared how he went back to Nigeria to get his career back on track.
