Friday Igweh, aka Baba Fryo, struggled for about five years to find his feet on the music scene. Fortunately he got the much desired break in 1996 when his debut album titled, Denge Pose, hit the scene with a loud bang.
At the time, it was reported that the album sold over a million copies nationwide.
After Denge Pose he released two other albums, including Notice Me.
But a few years later, the ghetto singer, who once described his kind of music as Afro Reggae Beat, suddenly faded off the scene.
Baba Fryo looked different without the trade-mark star patch on one eye. He had started nursing a pot belly, evidence that he was no longer performing regularly on stage.
The ghetto singer admitted that he had been off the music scene for a while. “I haven’t recorded an album in the last four years. But then, it is not as if I have left music entirely. I just want to cool off and re-organise myself. I will come back to music very soon and revive my career,” he told a punch correspondent.
He said piracy was one of the factors that frustrated him out of music.
“You probably have heard that I made a lot of money from my first album, Denge Pose. I can tell you that it was not true. The success of the album only brought me fame, not riches. I didn’t make even enough money to pay my bills from the sale of the album. To make ends meet, what I did was go on playing tours and perform at music shows. Pirates were the ones that benefitted from my sweat,” he said.
Fryo also blamed his former records labels for his woes.
“I was informed by reliable sources that royalties valued at $10,000 had been paid to me from London. But the collecting society that should have remitted the money to me connived with the records company and they shared it among themselves. I did my own investigation and found out that it was true I had been cheated out of the fruits of my labour.
“I felt so bad that I had to quit my relationship with the company. As I talk to you, I don’t belong to any collecting society and I am not interested in joining any. What they did to me shows how much corruption has eaten into the Nigerian society and the music industry. Everybody wants to get rich quickly at the expense of their neighbour. So they indulge in all kinds of criminal activity,” Fryo said.
Nowadays, Fryo manages to survive by doing business. Although he did not say exactly what he does for a living.
To those who imagined that he would not be able to cope with the competition from younger music artistes, he says, “I am not afraid of competition. Why should I be? I am going to come back in a different way. What I need to do is make a little adjustment and hope that my music will be accepted by the public.”
