Your take on the African youth culture currently manifesting?
Seun Badejo : I have to say it’s exciting and awesome; Everyone’s working hard to be above average, not just accepting what the society has seen them to be, the sound from the artists has matured from the regular ‘pangolo’ vibes, the new generation is more accepting of experimental sounds. I think we’re in the ‘fuck a 9–5′ age. I want to be my own boss, you want to be your own boss, everyone’s working on their stuff and it’s what we really need to spread Africa to the world. The youth don’t want to be bankers or lawyers anymore (of course we need them, and we probably have enough) but it’s the creatives that are gonna push us to a new era, ‘Content Is The New Crude’.
‘Content is the new crude’, explain this?
Seun Badejo : Well Nigeria exports crude oil to other countries and gains money and other benefits, well I believe nowadays African Content i.e the music, art, mainly all creative works can be exported out of Africa and be as useful as the crude oil itself. Content Is The New Crude!
How has content and media changed in our generation? Take us through the narrative, media companies like yours and others push for?
Seun Badejo : Over the last 4 years a lot has changed in Nigerian media. We started seeing original web series based only on the web, growing up there really wasn’t anything like that. Nowadays there’s more respect for intellectual property with the introduction of streaming platforms, unlike back then when there was little or no regard in the Nigerian market. Platforms like mine, Native Mag, CC (Culture Custodian) e.t.c, aim to put those new breeds of acts all up in your face so you can’t ignore them. What I really want is to make sure folks are heard; I mean, that was one of my motivations for starting this in the first place.
What does your platform mean?
Seun Badejo : TheSeunBadejo.com is a media platform or hub basically. My platform shows my interests/likes, hence why it’s self-named. I’m a music fan generally but seeing as we’re in Nigeria, I promote Nigerian songs and it’s mostly the ones I like, I’ll probably never upload a song I don’t like, I have an inbox full of those. Sometimes you see music from rising acts on my blog, I personally like listening to them because I feel their music is in its purest form, the form before the mainstream infection. You’ll never or rarely see me post about day to day activity in the society because it’s not really my interest, so you can say the blog is my personality basically.
What do you hope to contribute to the culture with your platform?
Seun Badejo : Help Push Good Music, good art generally not just music, but brilliant minds and expose the world to potentially great people.
Does a new age exist? What’s Africa’s future in your eyes?
Seun Badejo : Africa’s future lies with the youth; always has, but we’ve actually never stood up to take it but I feel we’re much bolder and up to it than our predecessors. There’s a new type of artist compared to the old one; a new vision from a director/photographer, there’s a new perspective to everything right now. So hey, New Age I guess.
Lessons to learn?
Seun Badejo : Rome wasn’t built in a day. You have to work hard everyday, been on the blog for almost 2 years now and I still treat it like the first day. Patience is key, the time will come eventually and when it does I still gotta put in the same work ethic, even more, I guess.
