What Kenyans Must Learn From Nigerians About Entertainment!

The Nigerian music industry is way ahead of the pack and even the closest rivals SA have been blown out of the water.

And here we are strictly speaking matters financial. But even on the musical front, we are superior to the rest but i digress.
How is it that Nigerians whose music has such humble beginnings have artists earning more than just a living from their talents? Nigerian acts of reknown aren’t eking out a living like their Kenyan contemporaries and only one word aptly captures the reason for this schism: maturity.
The Kenyan entertainment industry is awash with talent but no real professional direction ergo most artists end up having to take on a 9 to 5. And why is this the case given that there actually is money in the entertainment industry with Safaricom and Airtel pumping in shillings?
Well after a careful annalysis of the situation, Uncle Chim Tuna has come up with a short but incisive list of parallels of where Kenya falls short of the maturity that Nigerians have when it comes to anything entertainment oriented.

Camaraderie
For starters, Nigerians work as a unit. The crab in a basket mentality doesn’t come into play.
When the have issues, they resolve them amongst themselves and very few acrimonious disagreements occur. D’Banj and Don Jazzy’s is a prominent example of the more unfortunate.
However, more often than not, when a nigerian rises, he lifts up another. Are you hearing me Kriss Darling?

Professionalism
The second thing is that in Nigeria, there is a structure that rivals America’s. From the artist to A&Rs to the Record stations these guys have there game on lock. In Kenya, i dare say that save for Prezzo no one else has a stylist. And while some celebrities have good taste and music, they lack musical direction so they end up doing music for 10yrs but never break out into the rest of Africa?
D’Banj hassled then made it and a company was built around him.

Embrace new artists and ideas
Nigerians embrace new music aslong as it’s that fire. Kenyans do the exact opposites. Care to challenge me on that? Have you heard of Coola Gang? HypePack? Kanja? Teflon Crew? Khaligraph Jones? Or how about DORA? Of course you haven’t because mainstream media keeps these guys buried rather than uplift them. Camp Mulla by far Kenya’s most prolific act at the moment had to circumvent the old media to get heard now everyone wants a piece.

Young people should run entertainment
In Kenya, right from the top, the Minister in charge of youth affairs is old. his advisers are old. Radio owners are old and they hire old people to run the stations. Radio presenters save for afew have an old mentality.
The record execs in Kenya are old and yet they are meant to be relevant in a dynamic and fast-paced young industry? How? They can’t even keep up with their own thoughts! They don’t even engage something known as “trend spotters”. Who? Of course you don’t know who they are!
A trend spotter is a guy tasked with identifying emerging trends.

Think about it  my good people! Then again, this is just my humble opinion.