The latest about X- Project , the R&B and Dance hall stars is about their new album that will hit the market very soon. Due to this development in their musical carrier the trio that comprises Majeed a Nigerian, Slez and Saal, Sierra Leoneans pay courtesy visit to your number one marketing & management. They disclose the brand of their music to Tijani Adegbola.The versatile musicians reveal how their coming album will rule the showbiz market. Excerpts:
Give us more information about X-Project?
I’m Majeed. We are three in the group called X-Project. There is Saal. The last person is Slex. We came about the name in the year 2000.I met Saal and Slex at Lekki Beach when I was a solo artiste. The show we met was DTD. We decided to come together. In 2001, we formed X-Project. The full meaning is extreme project. The thought was to have a project we can take to the extreme. I’m not saying negatively but positively. So, that we can affect people’s life positively with our music. We are not targeting only Nigeria alone but other countries. My colleagues are from Sierra Leone. So, that is basically the idea of coming together as a group. It has been helping us.
Why do you have to cross the boarder of Nigeria to
find partners?
Really, we’re Africans. If I tell you they are not Nigerians you hardly know. When I’m in there country, people there also think that I’m a Sierra Leonean. There is no different in our physical appearance. They are black, I’m black as well. We operate with one blood and one love.
You suppose to have edge above any other musical group in Nigeria at the moment due to your multicultural advantages. How have you been able to explore this as a brand in reaching out to your target market?
We are progressing. This is Nigeria .We are Sierra Leonean. If you listen to our first album, which has Ayemi me as one of the famous tracks. Tumba Dance was Yoruba version. Though, Ayemi was subtitled in English language. But it was a concept we got in Gambia. It is a pidgin language there. They called Kere. When we did the song, we took it to people like Eddy Lawani and others. The sound was very unique because they have not heard that kind of language before. It sounds foreign. They admire it a lot. So, we started leveraging on that. It helped our brand to easily gain attention from Nigeria and Sierra Leone market respectively. Therefore, we usually explore this opportunity in our songs .What this simply mean is that when you buy our songs, you would have access to know more about Sierra Leone languages form Nigerian market and vice versa. Our brand is very big in Sierra Leone, perhaps due to the population. Unlike Nigeria that has 140 million as population. There would be more competitions. That is why you need to be consistent in the industry. It would aid your brand to be widely known. So, we need to do our best in Nigeria in order to be more relevant. If out of 140 million people get attention of X-Project, it would really help our brand .10 million as figure is not a small figure at all. But in Sierra Leone, it is almost entire population of the people living there .Anywhere you go to in Sierra Leone, ask little kids , old man about X-Project. The brand is popular. Just sing our song, everybody loves it. You don’t need to see us to know X-Project. But in Nigeria, it is another story entirely. So, that is why we have been working on our brand in order to dominate market in Nigeria.
You are wearing different thing, why?
It is a blend of different cultures. Slex loves fashion very well. We are from Sierra Leone and Nigeria as a group. The colour of our wears represent Africa in one way or the other. South Africa is there.
Nigeria as green white is there as well. Sierra Leone, Somalia is there and others like that. We represent Africa in any where we go.
Does it mean that you are looking for other people into the group?
That is not really the issue. Naturally, what we are preaching is peace musically. If I wear the colour of Guinea, that doesn’t mean I’m from the country.
You have been together for seven years without any rumor that you guys want to split. It is very rare in Nigeria. Plantazun Boiz split, Remedies and others
like that did the same thing. What is your secret of still being together
It is brotherhood. As far as X-Project is concerned. We are groups. But what we considered first is friendship. Then we would be talking about X-Project. What is keeping us together is that friendship. This has been able to sustain X-Project. More so, we came from tough backgrounds individually. Majeed came from disciple like wise, Saal and me-Slex. So, this plays major role in what we do. So, it has been our secret for being together.
What is in vogue currently is rather good instrumental, but the lyrics are not usually to write home about. Is this a challenge for X-Project or what should we expect?
If you have been listening to our songs, you would virtually observe that there is clarity in what we sing. There’s no challenge at all. We also make sure that we are audible when we are recording. We as well make sure that anything we say makes sense and meaningful to everybody listening to the songs. We don’t need to sound like an American to impress anybody. We don’t want to be a musician that would reach certain people but not everybody. We always make sure that our song can be listened to by everybody. The only aspect you might find difficult is, perhaps when I sing in my local language. We always make sure that our level of composition is meaningful and unique.
What is the motivation this music?
Most of our songs |we do is to make people happy. Some people sing about politics, women. X-Project sings about love, women and things happening around us socially. Those are the areas we always go to when we write most our songs .We talk about social life too while writing our songs.
Who else did you guys do the songs with or you do it alone?
We do it with the likes of Ruggedman , Konga, and Ani Rank. One of the tracks on our coming album is on the air currently. The reason we featured Konga is as a result of Majeed suggestion. When he launch his album last year, we found out that he has the kind of uniqueness we want .We invited him to the studio. He listened to the instrumental. We later gave him the chorus. He came back into the studio, then we did it together .For Ruggedman, we took three instrumentals to him, he listened to it .He accepted one but rejected others .He promised to visit the studio when he came we had done the other beat .We played some of the beats for him.He suddenly liked one and vowed to feature in that one.Ani Rank is the same story .their involvement in the album has really boost our moral of X-Project .We are very sure that our album will do well in the market. Artistes’ generally don’t usually find it very easy to deal with record label in Africa, most especially in Nigeria.
Borrowing a reference from Ruggedman when he was at little Fish records .they had some management misconceptions which resulted to his split with the label. Like wise marvelous Benji, Azadus, Asa and others had the same story.
What is your relationship with your record label?
Our relationship with Sam Karbo Productions (S.K.P.) is cordial .It is more like father and children relationship. He is the person who made us to do any song at all. He made us to have professional recording. We have been going to studios but we have not had any professional recording. He came to our rescue when we are doing things on our own as X-Project. We don’t see Sam Kagbo as a label but as a family.Though it is a label but we work as brother and father. He is more like a father and uncle to us .He has been there for us.He will still be working with other artistes in the future .We believe he wants to achieve were he wants us to be.X-Project will not be the only product SKP would be handling other products are on the way.
Is there any management deal you guys sign with anybody aside Sam Kagbo Productions to work for you secretly?
Definitely we are working with people for our management .We had worked with someone before but the thing is that we are not doing things are not going right .The person we are working with currently we don’t want to mention his name. We are working with someone that appreciates us and knows what it takes to be done from an artiste to manager vice versa. We are free to work with anybody.
Producers play major role in music production. Tell us the producer X-Project work with.
We work with Puffy T .He did Yaoozee with Olu Maintain. We worked with Nelson Brown and Chris Okoro. They are among talented musical producers in the country at the moment. So, we are not leaving any vacuum in the album.
