By Benjamin Njoku

Fast-rising singer, Nwodo Chinonso Victor, known as Kolaboy, recently released his five-track EP titled ‘Kola from the East’ with classic highlife featuring Flavour among other big names in the music industry.

The Enugu-born act revealed that he started singing while he was in secondary school.

“I was the social prefect of my school then. That was when I began my journey into the world of music before I started recording independently in Onitsha,” talented artiste said.

On his style of music, Kolaboy said he’s not limited to a particular sound. “When I started music, I wanted to be peculiar and do something different from what others have been doing. I came out with the storytelling brand, where you make songs out of sharing your story.

“The first song I made was a storytelling one, ‘Hello Mummy.’ It was basically a fictional and non-fictional story about myself, and that was before I started exploring other aspects of music, including the highlife genre. What I was trying to do with my brand was like a bridge between our ancestral sound and the modern sound. It is much like a mashup.”

The artist stated that one of his favourite songs, “Hello Mummy”, was a conversation between mother and child: “It was more like a letter to my mother trying to explain youthful exuberance. There is a particular way all parents see entertainers. I come from a religious background, there is this perception they have about all entertainers. I was writing to tell her and explain the reason I am doing music. I am not going astray because I am following my dreams.”

Asked which of his songs brought him into prominence, he replied: “The first song that gave me my break in the industry wasn’t really an original song on the cover of Olamide’s song ‘Motigbana.”