SHOW DEM CAMP
Hip-Hop turns 50 this year so to celebrate we are meeting Nigerian Rap-Royalty, Show Dem Camp, is a Nigerian rap duo composed of Wale Davies (Tec) and Olumide Ayeni (Ghost). With over a decade in the game, the pioneers have not only galvanised a generation, catapulted culture and spearheaded a scene, they have actively promoted talent discovery all whilst making anthems of their own. Ahead of the fourth edition of Palm Wine Fest London, the dynamic duo sit down with Music Columnist, Gracey Mae, to unpack the state of Hip-Hop, their legacy in music and the rollercoaster of relationships.
Interview GRACEY MAE
Photography by NAOMIVDS & DEEDS
Welcome to Tirade World. How are you?
TEC: We're blessed. You know, it's been a remarkable year. We just feel blessed and happy about how it’s turned out to be honest. It's been special.
‘Palm Wine III’ turns one years old on 30 September. It’s 14 songs, three skits, 56 minutes of pure Show Dem Camp. Question, is this the last edition of the Palm Wine Music series?
T: Ghost can answer that.
GHOST: This is supposed to be the last volume of us doing music called Palm Wine Music [laughs] but I think - yes, in that series, this is gonna be the last episode
TEC: Yeah, at the end of the day, we're kind of shifting. In our career, we've always focused on themes when making albums. It could be a ‘Clone Wars’ album, which is more of our rap, socially conscious side, or it could be ‘Palm Wine Music’, which is more fun, grooves, chill music vibes. As a result, we've created along those themes. Now we're getting to the stage where we're creating and just creating! Whatever comes out of our creation is what it is. It could be vibey songs, it could be hard songs, it could be whatever. Rather than limit [ourselves], we've brought both of our worlds together, we brought the rap guys and we brought the vibes guys together, and now we can just paint freely.
If ‘Palm Wine III’ is the last in the trilogy, does this mean that the festivals are over too?
T: Not at all! We are actually holding the fourth edition in London this weekend. Live at Koko on Sunday with Boj, Ajebutter, Cavemen, Falana, Nesta, Lady Donli, Moelogo and more. Plus we just debuted the festival in North America at Summerstage. It was an incredible moment – over 3000 people turning up in Central Park, New York; it’s such an iconic place so it’s exciting to see the festival grow. The festival is getting bigger, and we love to see the community come together and celebrate the music and artist… What we've always tried to do is be heavy with different artists and not make it just about us. Up until now, we've actively released Palm Wine Music so there's a lot of our music, but we also want it to be about the artists that feature on the project. Not all of them are Palm Wine artists. Amaarae does different things, Tems does different things. So, inevitably, we want to try and grow the festival. We want to create a platform that can outlive us as artists, to really just be a platform to showcase new and amazing talent. More than the drink and more than even the music, it’s us exporting African culture to the world. For too long, we've just consumed and consumed everything from the West but our shit is cool as well. We are actually the blueprint, we’re actually the ones that teach people what style and culture and everything really is. So why do we always put our own stuff down? As much as possible, I try and wear Nigerian brands or supports Nigerian creatives. To me, it's really about how do we export our stuff to the rest of the world, and be proud about it and stand on it and say it with your chest, you know? It probably won’t be for us. We’re opening it up for the next generation of people that are coming through in 10-15 years time. I want young kids who are making whatever kind of sound they're making then to be excited to perform at the festival.
G: With Palm Wine Music and the Festival, what we want to do is establish something that you have a certain level of quality attached to. I think that's one of the selling points of our brand. In terms of creating platforms, right now, the money is not in Nigeria. That's why a lot of artists are gearing towards shows and festivals abroad because they're more legit streams and avenues of income. There's a machine behind it, a legit machine. In terms of Palm Wine Festival continuing after the music, what we're trying to do is leave a legacy.
I’ve been to Palm Wine Fest in London and in Lagos so I can’t wait for the show
The theme for your latest album is love and relationships. Do you know your love languages? And if you do, what is your primary love language?
G: I think mine is quality time and acts of service…
T: I think mine is acts of service to be honest with you. That's what I tend to value the most in relationships - I'm usually someone that does a lot of things for people so having someone do that for me is something I deeply appreciate, more than gifts, more than any others. What are the others again?
The five are acts of service, words of affirmation, physical touch, quality time and gifts.
G: I like physical touch too, you know! Let me make mine three; physical touch, quality time and acts of service
T: That doesn't just mean in the bedroom; that just means hugging, holding hands…all this type of PDA stuff
G: Anything physical bro
T: I don't really like PDA so acts of service for me.
You know your love language but do you know your fight language?
G: Fight language?
T: My what?
G: I'm about to learn that today. You can teach me.
Briefly, it's more about resolution; do you know when and how to say sorry? Are you someone that has to speak it out in the moment or do you give each other space?
G: It depends on the relationship or on the person you're having a fight with. I think the people you tend to be closer to, should know you better. With those kind of people, I'm definitely more outspoken and don't hold anything back. If it’s an acquaintance, I'm not really bothered to be honest. I can just sit back and let it resolve itself. It depends on how close I am to the person.
T: With me, I don't know how to hold things with people. If you do something to me, we need to talk now. We need to hash it out now, now, now, now, now. With couples in particular, I don't want to be lying next to you if you've annoyed me. No, no no, we have to discuss. I won’t be able to sleep. It'll be burning me inside so we'll have to discuss it at that moment.
G: At the end of the day, going to bed angry is what you try and avoid the most, but I can compartmentalise during the day.
Tec, I’ve been led to believe that in school, you had 4 girlfriends all at once?
G: That sounds accurate
T: [laughs] Basically, I'd been in an all boys’ school, called King’s College, for three years. My best friend at the time, his sister used to go to Queen’s College. Every day after school, we'll go and spend like one hour, 30 minutes picking up his sister. That would be the full interaction with girls that whole week. In high school, there was like 100 guys in the class so imagine sitting next to 100 brothers for years, every day, apart from holidays obviously. When I got to mixed school, Atlantico, when there were loads of beautiful girls – that school was known in Lagos as having the second finest babes - I was like a kid in a candy shop. I was just entering relationships left, right and centre. The girls were like “we have to date, I don’t do casual”. It wasn't anything crazy, it was kissing and petting.
So you lied to all these girls?
T: No, no, I didn’t. First off it wasn’t four girls, it was three. When they found out, they came to my classroom, like all three of them, and they asked me to choose and I was baffled, like, “Wow, I still get to choose? This is amazing”. I have to say, I was 14-15. I was a young and stupid teenage boy. I've learned a lot since then. I don't apply these principles to my current life.
On your project, the skits are dilemmas that listeners bring to the presenters of Palm Wine Radio. I hear this was inspired by the Instagram Live series you hosted during the pandemic. How did it start?
T: Obviously everybody was home during the pandemic so we started thinking, how do we connect with the fans? We realised we record a lot of music, and not all of it gets put out so we figured, how about we start religiously play songs that we may never release. Let's share some of the songs with the fans. Let's connect with them and give people the opportunity to ask us questions. That’s how we started Palm Wine Radio. We’re not guys who are very open in a social media setting. I don’t know if we've been on IG live since the pandemic. Our platform with Palm Wine Music has always been to shine the light on other artists so how do that through this IG live? We would always get like one or two or three artists to join us and talk about their songs. It just worked really well during the pandemic and we really had fun. So as we were working on this project, we were like, “okay, how do we flip it now?” So we created Palm Wine Radio on this project to explore certain themes on love and relationship and it was hilarious.
That's romantic love. Ghost, we know that you’re basketball fanatic, how did you fall in love with the sport?
G: I fell in love with basketball after my dad took me to a Hawks game a long time ago and sent me this videotape called ‘Superstars’. It had all these basketball stars on it and then I just started playing. I taught myself how to play basketball with a plastic football. I made a basketball hoop out of a flowerpot and we brought a local welder to mount it onto my mum's garage. I started playing basketball from there and I’ve loved it ever since. My first love…
Wow! What position do you play? G: I'm a Point Guard.
Let’s talk about my favourite tracks on the album, starting with ‘First Time Caller’. You mention phone passwords, is that something you would share with your partner?
G: Never ever, When I started dating, I didn't have a password on my phone and I gave it to the person I was dating at the time, and I regretted it ever since.
T: Nope. - Basically what Ghost is saying is that he’s too Yoruba to be doing those kind of stuff
On ‘Kele’ you say “when you bet on yourself, it's an act of faith”. When was the last time you betted on yourself and what was the outcome?
Tec: I think we bet on ourselves all the time. We bet on ourselves when we decided to take our own path in music, we bet on ourselves to make a whole genre of music – Palmwine Music (not “make” because there was an old school version). I'll put it on record and say a lot of Nigerian artists, prominent artists, have started going more into live instrumentation since we started doing that. Check a lot of your faves, they never used to do that before. For us, we bet on ourselves in starting up a festival and putting our own money down. We bet on ourselves when funding our own tours, we bet on ourselves when working with other artists. If there was a picture of betting on yourself, put Show Dem Camp there for Nigeria.
GHOST: I think every day. More for entrepreneurial people, but even for people who work [a 9-5], when you're grinding, you're betting on yourself.
‘WYW’ sings “I hope she cheats on you”. “I hope she gets bele for your friend”. “I don't wish you well”.
G: How did I know you will choose this one?
[laughs] Am I woman scorned? Who can tell?
Let me flip it, have you ever left a relationship and wished your ex well? T: All the time
G: Yeah, I wish them well...Hmm! Actually, I don’t wish them worse. Wait, recently I think, I did wish somebody worse but generally…[laughs]
T: Wow! Me, I always wish them the best. I think that song really resonated with me because I feel the best time to get into a relationship is when you've found yourself; you figured out who you are. But we're human beings so we begin relationships as we're still figuring out ourselves. Still morphing, changing. You may think you like one thing at a particular time, and you get in close proximity of that thing, and you realise that actually liking this thing is as a result of some of your own issues that you’re still dealing with. E.g. maybe I want the prettiest girl in the world so that it makes me feel good about myself. There’s different things you learn through your relationships and so for me, I find that when you realise that this relationship is not working, or we're not suited for each other, I'm one of those people that I don't know how to hold things in. I need to be instantaneous with it so if I end the relationship, no matter how good I end it, no matter how nice I end it, no matter how I tell you this is for our benefit, no matter how much time proves (five years down the line) that we were never really suited for each other and it was good we ended, I still feel that they always wish me worse because I ended it in the first place.
G: Because you are a Yoruba demo
I love the guitar on ‘Rolling’. There's a line that says “you are what you eat”. What's your favourite meal?
G: Anybody who knows me will know that I like any form of rice: basmati rice, Jollof rice, fried rice with any type of stew or chicken, I'm there… I'm game
If you are what you eat and your favourite food is rice, what does that make you?
G: I’m a carb [laughs]
T: Me, I try and eat knowledge
G: Ha! This boy you have problem [laughs]
T: On the real, I always want to learn, I want to learn something new, whether it's business, whether it is method, systems or structures. I feel like a lot of that reflects in like me. A lot of people ask me, “How are you doing this?” It’s because I’m constantly on a thirst or a quest for more knowledge, more wisdom.
“So your favourite meal is knowledge?”
I asked the pair what We're moving on to ‘Bad Design’, lyrics “thought you were designed for me”. Question, do you believe in soulmates?
T: I believe in soulmates, but I also believe that you can meet people at the wrong time. I don't believe that because you’re the one we are never going to have problems. You're on your journey. You've had your trauma, your experiences, your everything, and equally, I have my baggage as well. I feel like I've met a few soulmates in my lifetime but we were not equipped enough to handle that intensity. It crashed and burned spectacularly but I still love them. I still care deeply about them. Even if we're separated for many, many years. I still cherish that time in my life
G: I think you can have different kinds of soulmates. I don't necessarily think that a soulmate has to ascertain to a relationship
T: Are you trying to say that I’m your soulmate?
G: I wouldn't quite say that bro
T: Aight. Good. Cool
G: I’m your mentor. It’s a kind of mentorship [laughs] You have some people in your life who feed your soul along your journey. Those kind of people are soulmates to me, regardless of what happens within the relationship, if you’ve fed my soul on a regular basis, I think you deserve to be a soulmate.
You are rap royalty. Two Septembers ago marked 10 years since your first body of work: ‘The Dreamer Project’. What's been the biggest learning in the last decade?
GHOST: When we started rapping, we were young, some people had four girlfriends, other guys who just like rapping, hardcore Hip Hop. We were really toxic but we had to find our way. When we started growing and evolving as human beings, we started to balance that out with commercial viability because we also have that side to us. I think the learning curve for us from ‘The Dreamer Project’ to now was balancing out our thoughts with the sound that we put out, and I think we achieved that.
TEC: What I've learned from last 10 years is that nobody gives you anything, you have to take it, especially in Nigeria. What I mean by that is, consistently for the last 10 years, I would say that we've been some of the best rappers over the 10 year stretch. We've been the most consistent rappers over the 10 year stretch. We've released the most projects over that 10 year stretch, at least in our part of the world. And we've put on more people than anybody else in that 10 year stretch as well. But nobody's going to give you these accolades. So in the end, you have to build your own platform, build your festival, build your own tour, build your own everything, and eventually they will come. If you didn't go out and take it, nobody would have given you anything. You can't wait for an industry, you have to bet on yourself.
With the mainstream pop acts using more and more dialect, do you think that the foreign influence/accent in rap in Africa has negatively impacted the growth of the genre, or are there other more prominent things like lack investment?
G: I think it's a combination of all those things. First of all, I grew up on Hip Hop from the States. When I went to school in London, I gravitated to Hip Hop that originated in London because I was trying to absorb my surroundings. So moving back to Nigeria, when I started rapping, I just based my cadences and flows on that. I think that within Nigeria, because people tend to gravitate to authenticity, if you don't have a way of expressing yourself in the language that people can readily absorb, it makes it more difficult for you to catch them. Simplicity is supposed to be the highest form of sophistication. The easiest way to connect with people is often through simple dialects and simple language that people understand. Separately, royalties and income in this industry, also affects the flow of the business in itself.
T: I think it’s a number of things. You have a few people who are focused on entering the music space, because they are artists and they want to express their art. You have a number of people who their objective is to figure out a way out of their current situation. If you look at what is the surest way out of your current situation, it’s really been singing. Look at the number of success stories in that field. I'll say someone like Blaqbonez, the talented rapper, would very easily excel in the pop world as well, because he's trying to figure out a way to change his situation. I feel like most of his biggest songs that have gotten him from where he started, to where he is, are mainly songs where he may have sang a little bit. So that sets an example that if you really want to find the financial success through music, there's particular genres that are a harder challenge. It's not just rap, look at R’n’B in Nigeria, or Reggae, they don't necessarily work to well here. There’s Patoranking but there's not that many. There's not that many R’n’B artists who are successful. There's not that many Soul artists that are successful. There aren’t that many Indigenous artists as well. You don't have too many big Fuji artists that are in the mainstream. It's not just hip hop. Every once in a while you have a unicorn, like a Tems but it's not the norm.
I’m glad you shouted out Blaqbonez. There are quite a few new gen artists holding the mantle including PsychoYP and OdumudoBlvck. When can we expect more new music from you?
Both: We are cooking and it is coming…we shared on tour that we have a special project on the way. We can’t say too much but just know it’s about to be back to back.
Oh! Exciting. Final message to your friends, your family, your following?
G: I’ll say one thing, bet on your yourself, love hard and keep it moving
T: For me, more than anything, it’s thank you. I feel everything we've been doing is great but it wouldn't work if it didn't resonate with people and if people didn't come and show their love and support in different ways. When I say stuff like “people don't recognise how dope and consistent we are”, the fans do and that's what's important. When I say “those people”, I'm talking about the industry; they see it, they know what it is, but they're not going to accept it. I think the fans have always respected it, the fans have always shown up, the fans have always come to everything we've done. Every festival we've done has been sold out, every show we've done has been sold out, in America and England and Nigeria. That's something I never take for granted. Hopefully the same way they've invested their time and energy and efforts in us, I pray people invest in their lives as well.
G: That’s real man. I'll go with that one.