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Thursday 11 August 2011

Going gaga with Boy Gaga



By Odilu Richard



I caught up with our own Mr. Gaga at The Future Awards after party at the MicComm Golf Resort and Hotel in Osun State, and he takes me into his sanctuary where anything can be expected – as a lover, an eighty year old man, a porn artist and a serial killer.





Q – In the bus yesterday, on our way to Ada, Osun State, and someone was talking about Lady Gaga, and I asked, sarcastically, who she was. Of course I did get a lecture for that but in the midst of the lecture another person came to my rescue asking if she is doing anything extraordinary that Denrele had not already done.



A – Ah! That is very complimentary, that is high praise, eh!



Q – And yet another said Denrele is Boy Gaga



A – Ha-ha! It started on twitter, you know when people put a ash, I think it’s called trending. There was a time I was trending and people started saying oh, Denrele is Nigerian Lady Gaga, me I really don’t send all of these things so I just kept laughing, I will put a funny comeback or retort and just send it, and somebody, a very smart person then said what is all this comparing Denrele with Lady Gaga, that before she came into existence Denrele has started building his brand, and this smart person was Funmi Iyanda. Walahi! I had never known who Lady Gaga was, funny enough, I don’t tell people this but I will say it, I have met Lady Gaga even before her first video.



Q – Are you for real?



A – Yes, her name is Stephano Gemahota or something. I had met her in South Africa in a club, I think they were doing a tour and they were testing new singles, and it was Akon, her manager that was with her then. She wasn’t so dressed, she just wore this outlandish short and long blonde hair and they were playing her songs and I was grooving to it at Monoco night club in Johannesburg and she walked up to me and said ‘I love the way you dance to my song and I am gonna shoot my video soon …’, and I just thought she was one South African chick, I didn’t know, and I don’t want to start hitting my head and saying, hey! If I had known, I don’t like to regret things, I just didn’t know who she was because she looked very tarty (laughs), you know she was wearing something very revealing at that point in time and she hadn’t even done the video. So it was until we got on that Sound City Campus gig, myself with P Square in Enugu when we saw her video and I went like ‘eh, I know this girl’ and they went are you serious. I think I like the compliments, but I am not into the whole comparison thing, though I can’t stop it. People will always say what they have to say and I’ll just take it in good faith. Boy gaga habi? Ehn! So be it. When someone new comes on the scene they will find another name for me.





Q – I see and hear you are everywhere and your phones are always ringing by the seconds –



A – (Laughs) my batteries are low –



Q – Does this translate to more money?



A – Let me put it this way. You know we already spoke about happy people, people like to be around happy people, people just feel Denrele will add that extra spice to my event, bla bla bla, I have done so much charity for people, my goodness, but when I call in for favor people answer me without even bathing an eyelid (his friend’s phone rings for the umpteenth time) oh! You and this phone, I think you should live it there (rings again) just carry it with you to the other room. Okay back to, there is something I want to say before this distraction (thinks) okay, now the thing is I am an all rounder, I have noticed. The kind of shows I get you’d be surprised. A lot of people think that I am tilted towards the student crowd. That is a lie. I have noticed that it’s even the older people who know me even more, of course the students know me as well, I like Denrele’s gut, I like that he is eccentric, I like his confidence, and they are always excited when they see me and I am always making noise, that is by the way. Then the older crowd thinks I am hilarious, they just don’t understand me, and I am always very respectful being a Yoruba. I get all kinds of shows, you won’t believe it. I do kiddies parties (clears throat), the ones that will drop oh, then the school shows, then the corporate events. Today is Saturday. On Tuesday, I did BAT (British American Tobacco) Shows, Trade Management and Distribution Division. I did the red carpet and hosted the show. So nobody can say I am not getting the deals.



For me, I don’t think if I should say this, it’s not healthy for business, I am not money inclined, and it’s not about the money. I started Sound City



Q – Which aptly describes you – Denrele, a bunch of characters, or Denrele, the talented guy?



A – I think Denrele is a bunch of characters with lots of talents. If I am a talented person, then I will just be good with a specification but I am a bunch of characters as I have realized over time and I am still going over that sense of actualization. There are some things about me that just come to play. Most times when I host shows, its not just talking and making people laugh, I do all kinds of stuffs, theatrics I call them. I am a very good dancer, and I dance wearing my horrendous shoes. It’s a very funny sight seeing someone, seriously pulling off serious dancing on shoes like this, and then I dance proper and I know how to connect with the crowd and drag them out. At the end of the day, for me, it’s always about social networking. I know what to say to the right people and know how to get them to listen to me. I know how to entertain, when I want to, and how to listen when I want to. I know how to appreciate, celebrate and crack people up. I think it’s a bunch of characters. The thing is you could be good at your job but your delivery might not be on point and you might not have good references at the end of the day but I think everything just plays. Then I discovered that I could write, also that I could design my own clothes, and recently I started styling a couple of videos just for the fun of it, all of Goldie’s videos I styled and Ashley Stephanie’s. I think a bunch of characters would do



Q – Have you pictured Denrele when he’s eighty years old?



A – Ah! I will be fun loving, no doubt. Of course, my grand-children and great grand-children will relate with me on every angle



Q – I am bothered more about your physical appearance than I am about your relationships



A – I know, that’s like an aside. For them to be able to relate with me that mean I am not going to loose the essence of whom I actually am, this is not an attempt to gain attention, this is who I am. I will still be the same, dress the same way, still wear my huge shoes, except something else catches my fancy.



Q – You are seriously saying you can pull it with shoes like these at that age?



A – Hmm, age might tell but it depends, I go with the flow, something else might catch my fancy but I think we should let time tell but at that point I know at eighty people will climb podiums and say the things I have done for them. I want to be part of people’s success stories. At that age I will like to read stuffs and see that I am quoted everywhere. I think that is enough.





Q – Denrele alone under lock and key, what is he like?



A – Ah! Funny enough I like my solitude but I hardly get it, and when I travel I pray that I a foreigner sits next to me so that I run things through my mind while listening to music. If I get that opportunity to be alone without my phones, I will walk naked around the house, I will dance naked, I like to watch TV, I like to read a lot, I will be doing all these things simultaneously while eating my food, from morning till whenever, and I will have my own mock fashion show, and will have the time to brood on stuff because I never have the time for it, I am always surrounded by people.



Q – Do you think you would have been a successful porn actor if given the chance?



A – I don’t know oh, not with this kind of body oh, may be if I reincarnate myself and I am well buffed up. I am as skinny as God knows what. If I take off my shirts now, you will count my ribs. But may be a rock star, I would have been a successful one because I have this thing for stage, I never get tired.



Q – Has anyone even thought of offering you such a job?



A – Yeah, there was one time they were shooting one and I was called upon and I said eh! I can’t even imagine myself doing something like that. Well people like porn but I am not porn oriented. I can’t watch it till the end, even when I did I got tired, well, I have friends who are addicted to it but I can’t watch it, and I can’t even imagine myself as porn star, what will I be doing there and me I am too gra-gra-gra, I will just be jumping up and down. I will be too excited; I don’t think I can pull that off. That is not something I think I can do.

 

Q – Denrele the serial killer, who will be your first target?



A – hmm, I don’t have any enemies but there are people who will not like one, but there are some people that have said terrible things about me (hiss) and I can’t retaliate and when I let these things go some of my friends are like , ‘what?’ You bring someone to your house and the person gets so closed, then the person goes out and start saying everything that went on in your house and starts talking trash about your family, that’s really frustrating, and I am now wondering kini mose funwo tiwo lo so ro be (what did I do to them that they had to say such things). Well I am not one for confrontation so I really don’t bother. I almost embarrassed someone on stage because he had done something like that to me but everybody begged. I wanted to really embarrass him and I will get away with it but the person will never climb the stage again, but I just let it go. Then there was an artiste, who was nasty to me, but he was drunk anyways and he’s been begging ever since, but I think he realized after. I don’t want to call names so that you won’t publish it and they don’t come and shoot me in the ass at night but it will be about those who really said hurtful things about me. I am human, I really am. However hard I try to act, they get to me.



Q – Do you ever shed a tear?



A – You must think I am snow queen or an ice, of course I do. It’s the minute things that really hits me and has to do with family. I am human and I have to cry

 

Q – Do you believe in love at first sight?

                        

A – No, I don’t, I think love is a progression. I have been in situations where I see some persons for the first time and I think I might be in love and then when I see them repeatedly much later and I am like, ah, I don’t like this person at all.





Q – How will you like to die?



A – I will wear a very nice outfit with my sexy shoes and I want a glass coffin so that even the witches cannot penetrate it, and of course with a very fantastic hair do, then we would have a pamphlet with all of my crazy pictures. We will make it like a wedding ceremony, more like a carnival because for me I like the noise.



Q – Thanks for your time; it’s been pleasant talking with you



A – it’s my pleasure


Monday 8 August 2011

The Mercy Johnson I know


By Richard Odilu

When I first knew the alleged dreaded seductress was so many years back, during my undergraduate years, when I watched on video her brilliant performance as a possessed maid in the Kenneth Nnebue (NEK Video Links) movie ‘The Maid’, and I have followed the success of her screen career ever since. My friends and I talked about her non-stop: forty percent was about her acting prowess and the other sixty was devoted to her voluptuous image. Over the years I have gotten to know that she is a home wrecker, a bitch, harlot, witch, she has a fast finger, and destroyer of pleasant relationships. All these are allegations I read in some soft-sell magazines but I never lost sight of her talent, she really is an amazing talent. Like the biblical Nicodemus, I took in what I read with a pinch of salt. That is she is innocent until proven guilty. But sometimes I am nudged by the over-used adage ‘that there is no smoke without fire’.

Are the write-ups and gossips about her mere rumor - the devices of haters and spoilers of anything beautiful – or are they true portrayal of what she has always been?

The opportunity to confirm or disprove these rumors presented itself when I booked an appointment with her for my column ‘What were you thinking?’ in Y! Magazines second edition. Oh boy! Like most superstars would I was played like a football left-right-center until it dawned on her I wasn’t letting go until I achieved my aim, and the interview finally happened in a very private guest house tucked in Omole Phase One. Had I know she would have come by almost seven pm then I would have gone there by six-thirty pm disregarding the three o’clock appointment she gave me. My patience almost ran out as I kept checking in with her publicist, as I did not have her direct contact at the time, to be sure the interview would hold still. But when she showed up, I eased up easily, forgetting that I had sat waiting for her royal highness for almost three hours.

Her arrival was without pomp and pageantry, like I expected, and she wasn’t dressed like a harlot either, like some of my friends whom I already hinted about the proposed interview anticipated. Then when she walked up to me to inquire if I was the journalist she was supposed to meet with – how did she know I was a journalist, is it written on the face – with an apology I’d assure you wasn’t pre-rehearsed, my opinion about her changed, as I did a mental re-arrangement of the questions to ask.

Yes! The questions changed but they got harder and she did not dodge any of them, neither was she in haste to leave. From her scandalous dressing, to seduction, to bed hopping, to marriage, to witch-craft, she answered everything. There were moments we shared some laughter and moments when I thought I saw tears at the corner of her eyes. I saw the human behind the alleged Dracula. It appeared I was doing a show on TV as her companion, a very lively lady, listened with rapt attention and an elderly man nearby puts in a word or two unsolicited. Even when I stopped, having quizzed her for almost an hour, she still wanted me to go on, and commented that she did not feel like she was been interviewed. To her we were two friends just having a tête-à-tête. She got me asking why people labeled her everything bad if she was this homely, and yes! She reads everything written about her, and some of the reports, she alleged were unconfirmed made her cry. When I asked her about her relationship with Genevieve, the glow that radiated from her will make you think that was the person who gave her life.

Finally I told her I had to leave and she insisted on dropping me at the nearest bus-stop where I may board a vehicle, and gave me her private number with the promise that I text or flash her when I get home, that way she would know I arrived safely. I texted her by almost 11pm and her response was swift. I slept thinking if that was her real person or if she was putting up a show for good publicity, but whatever that was about I believed it, and until she does otherwise she remains the proverbial dog whom people call names just so they could hang it.