‘Marriage has changed me as Peter Okoye, but not as Psquare’

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.