M.I Revived Phyno’s Music Career As An Upcoming Artiste
M.i Abaga isn’t heralded as the saviour of the Nigerian hiphop game for nothing.
Over the years, he has helped a lot of rappers in different ways.
Either by giving them a guest spot on his projects or being on the songs and projects of other rappers.
A Twitter user by the name @UFOMMA recently shared how M.I helped Phyno at the beginning of his career. Read the full story below.
“… during the Nigerian Breweries sponsored Star Trek musical tour that I worked on as project manager.
MI was billed to perform in the Awka leg of the Trek,
along with PSquare, Timaya and flavour I think and he was to perform just before Psquare, the headliners.
The rule to Star Trek is that each Artist gets allotted performance time,
a call time to be backstage and are dutybound to come for soundcheck.
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M.I came an hour earlier than he was supposed to and he came with one lanky fair guy to asked if the guy could perform?
I said it was too late because the upcoming artistes were done performing.
M.I tried convincing me that the guy was very good but every upcoming artist on the trek is usually good because they go through very rigorous screening before they are allowed onto the Trek stage.
So I told him that it was impossible to plug him in because the show had already started and we were on a strict clock.
He then shocked me by saying he will sacrifice 10 minutes from his 40 minutes set to allow the fair lanky guy to perform.
I was surprised but needed approval from the brand manager Biyi Fagade and senior brand manager named odukpani
since it was going to significantly alter the structure of the show that was being recorded for broadcast.
They both expressed reservations since the lanky guy wasn’t known but I reassured them that if MI said he was good,
then i am willing to gamble. They gave their blessing and I gave the lanky guy’s name to @gbengaadeyinka1stgcon who was the MC for star trek.
As soon as he announced the lanky guy’s name, the crowd lost it, as they apparently knew the guy and his songs.
He went on to give arguably the best performance of night and that, ladies and gentlemen, was the birth of Phyno.
A few months later he released Ghost Mode featuring Olamide and the rest as they say, is history.”