Two years after he got married to his baby mama,
Lola Omotayo, in November, 2013, one half of the
music duo PSquare, Peter Okoye is poised to share
his experience as a married man. According to him,
while marriage has made him to be more responsible,
it has not, as a matter of fact, restricted him from
doing what he knows how to do best on stage. He
also bares his mind on a number of issues bothering
on his career, music and fame…
Are you working on any project at the moment?
We just finished with recording our new album which
is six months now. We are still working on the videos.
One of them with the title “Collabo” and featuring Don
Jazzy has already hit the market. We are also
preparing for our tour of US and Europe.
How is your newly signed artiste, Classic P doing?
We are still doing everything to promote him. We are
not in a hurry to push his songs into the market. So,
his songs will soon dropped.
What would you say marriage has done to you?
Marriage has made me to be more responsible, in the
sense that there are certain things which I am limited
to do as a married man. But I still remain who I am
because marriage doesn’t restrict me from doing
what I know how to do best on stage. In a nutshell, I
will say marriage has changed me as Peter Okoye
but not as Psquare.
What are the things you consider before signing an
artiste on your record label?
When you are setting up a record label you don’t just
sign on any artiste. We look at your background and
other essentials. We are careful in terms of selecting
the kind of artiste that we want to sign on. We are not
influenced by whether the person is wealthy or not.
Any challenges in managing the label?
I and my brother are managing the label. So far, we
have not encountered any challenge. But it’s going to
be more challenging to the artiste because we need
to prepare them for what they are about to face. What
I mean is that a new artiste might have a song he or
she is working on, but before you know the rhythm
will change. So that’s why we are so careful before
releasing any of our artiste’s song.
Being accessible and friendly
In this industry, we are still learners and the truth is
that people believe once they hit the top they are not
answerable to anybody. But you might be surprised
that the next level of our career might come from this
interaction and that’s one thing most people don’t
know. I always tell people when they ask how we
have remained on top of our game for more than a
decade.
I tell them that I always pay special attention to
people’s comments on every of our performances.
What I do is whenever I am off-the-stage, I try to
listen to different comments from the audience. some
will commend our performance while many others
will criticize it. That’s where we measure our
strength as musicians, learn of our mistakes and
correct them where need be.
You people are more of dancers than musicians?
I’m used to people saying I love Psquare because
they know how to dance. But the fact is that I don’t
like it when people refer to us as dancers. They can
describe us as entertainers and musicians because it
makes us more presentable. A fan once told me that
Peter, I love you guys because of your kind of love
songs. But the question is , when last did a love song
sell or made a name in Nigeria, aside “Olufunmi” by
Star Plus and probably, “Beautiful Onyiye” by
Psquare.
These days people are used to the song they play in
the club so even if you release a love song they won’t
play it in the club because it belongs to a different
genre. I’m happy we have fans who still believe in
love songs and we are going to revive it.
About our challenges and failure?
Remember I said we are still learners in this game,
and that is our number one focus. As Psquare, we
have failed a lot, but there is a saying that it doesn’t
matter how many times you fall, it is about being able
to get up after every fall. For instance, the Glo CAF
Awards was a horrible performance for Psquare. I
remember how people said we disappointed them.
But this year people still talk about our performance
because we tried our best to adjust and fix many
things that were not in order. The secret is because
we always follow what we hear from our fans after
every performance.
We’ve done worse performances sometimes due to
circumstances beyond our control. We could be on
stage performing and all of a sudden the microphone
will stop working or there will be power failure, which
should not be Psquare’s fault. But at the end of the
day people will say Psqurare’s performance was
trash.
So the thing is as an entertainer, once we finish a
performance either for a bank, or any other company,
I will always wait for a couple of months to see if they
will call us back and if they did during those period it
means our last performance for them was good. If a
promoter calls Psquare for a show now and wait for
another two years before calling you it means the
previous show was not good.
So there are several challenges. I could remember
last year when I fell off-stage it wasn’t my fault and
we were meant to perform for 1hr 30mins. After I fell
off-stage we couldn’t even perform up to 15mins
because I was limping throughout and it took me like
two and half months for the injury to heal.
The craziest thing you have ever done!
That was when we attended a night party some years
ago. Some desperate girls were all over us and
before we knew what was happening, they were
kissing and romancing us openly. We had to run for
our dear lives.
Most embarrassing moment
It was when we were coming up. Some of our
kinsmen walked up to us and told us that it’s high
time we join them in the village and stop roaming
about the streets as if we are not conversant with the
tradition of our people. We felt embarrassed. But
unfortunately, we later adhered to their advice.
How often do you rehearse before going on stage?
Surprisingly, the only time we rehearse is when we
are planning something new. For instance, the last
time we rehearsed was in November, last year. And
because we perform at shows all the time, so every
show is rehearsal for the next. I work with a 13-man
band and I don’t need to tell them what to do again
because they already know that when we go on stage
we sing and dance, so they know the routine.
At times, we rehearse for two months that’s if we
have something new we want to do and after that the
next time we will rehearse will be after two years
because rehearsing is very hectic and it hasn’t been
easy. That’s why we haven’t seen anybody that can
sing and dance even if you see them you will notice
they are trying so hard because it requires breath
control. So for us rehearsal is like food because we
do it almost every day and we don’t joke with it
because we give it our 100%.
What about fame?
The secret is that we prefer to perform outside the
shores of the country regardless of the monetary
rewards. Today, Psquare has many fans across the
world. In fact, I will tell you that Psquare is not
popular in this country. Another thing is that people
always have this impression that we are intimidating
on stage. But when you meet us in person, we
always humble ourselves.
Do you believe you have competitors in the industry?
The only competitors we have are ourselves. This is
because when it comes to playing instrument, P-
square is very good at it and I don’t teach a learner
how to play an instrument. We make sure that the
person knows one or two things about the
instrument. For instance, almost all our
instrumentalists were trained by us. And that reminds
me about the P-square saga. Sometime ago, people
said, I was quarreling with my twin brother. We were
not fighting each other or arguing for ourselves
rather, it was for our fans.
What exactly we wanted to do for our fans was what
was giving us problem. And another reason for the
fight was that we were trying to beat our previous
project. For example, the song that brought us out
was “Last Night”.
But in “Danger” album, Psquare failed and in every of
our album in ten days we sell a million copies but that
album “Danger” took us one month to sell a million
copies. After that, we bounced back with “Invasion”
which has a track like “Chop My Money”. But we
didn’t make it in the album that contained “Danger,
Give me that, possibility” E no easy.