"Why I Was Kicked Out of School" - Singer, Davido Reveals In New Interview

 

In a recent interview with Ebro Darden on Hot 97 radio in New York, Davido revealed why he was kicked out from school, why he ran away from home and more.

Read excerpts from the interview below.

On how he was kicked out of school for poor grades

“First I went to Tennessee, then I went to Alabama, I didn’t get kicked out for being bad, I got kicked out because of my grades. I was focused on music. So I transferred to HBCU in Alabama, and that was where I found my music life. I learned everything.

There was a music school there, and everybody was just about music. Actually, it was a Christian school, it was just Gospel Music. There was this dude called J. Mo, he came to me to mix his first record.

I remember he had a space on his record. I did the demo for him to record it himself, and then he just released it with my voice on it. So it was like ‘featuring Davido’. That was the first time I saw something like ‘featuring Davido’. So I was like, it sounds kinda good. This was 2010 when I went home. I saw Don Jazzy, Tiwa (Savage) was out. I was just looking at all these like ‘These dudes are making money”.

I went there for Christmas and it was lit. It was crazy. I was hanging out with D’banj at the time, he had that Kanye deal. I now told my Dad that I was trying to stay, and he was like ‘What? My friend you better go back to school”. I called my roommate, and told him “Imma do this no more. If my Dad calls, tell him you don’t know where I’m at.’”

On why he ran away from home,

“When I left, my family was looking for me for like 6 months. They sent letter to D’banj house, they sent letter to Psquare house, they sent letters to everybody’s house. My Dad was calling school, and they were telling him; ‘He wasn’t even here for the past semester, he left..” It was like the whole Nigeria knew who I was before I even dropped a single.

Kamal that is my manager now, used to be Don Jazzy’s assistant. My Dad started calling him and said “if I see you guys with my son, all of you are getting arrested.” The first record I put out first was ‘Back When’. I was in London at the time, I dropped this record, I went home, and they were like ‘Yo, come on, it’s time. D’banj, Wande Coal and everybody was telling me that your record was good. I was 16, so I was the youngest at the time. I went back home fresh from America. I go into the club that night, and they were playing my song, I went crazy.”

His style of music,

“I don’t even call my music Afrobeat, I call mine Afrofusion. To me it’s just too different. I can’t tell you it’s Afrobeat, because it’s not. “You know the originator of the Afrobeats is Fela. Fela has a sound which I can say has heavy baseline, the Rhodes, brass instrument, [and] the percussion is different. If you ask me ‘Gobe’ is Caplyso, Afro mixed with Calypso. But I feel like the Afrobeats is catchy and has caught wave since time. Because I know some Afrobeats songs that I don’t want to call Afrobeats. I call them Afro-Pop or I call Afro Trap. Everything is just still African music.”