But the big breakthrough that made him a household name? In 2020, the BBC reported that he was the first sub-Saharan African singer to get one billion views on his YouTube channel.Library of Congress Control Number: 2012906575Īll rights reserved. Furthermore, he is reportedly the most awarded artist in East Africa and the fifth most-awarded artist in sub-Saharan Africa after WizKid, Sarkodie, Davido, and 2face Idibia. According to BET, the now 32-year-old has earned over five dozen awards and nominations including one for Best International Artist. His breakthrough came in 2010 when he released the award-winning song Kamwambie. The Dar es Salaam native would sell second-hand clothing and pump gas to try to save up money, according to The Citizen. At just 17 years old, after dropping out of school, Issack had to work odd jobs to be able to afford booking recording sessions. However, not everything that glitters is gold, as the start of his career proved. The rise to fame for Tanzanian-born Nasibu Abdul Juma Issack, popularly known by his stage name Diamond Platnumz, began exactly 12 years ago. Now here’s a name that makes you immediately think glitz, glamor and a lot of ‘drip’. Because when you come from Africa, it’s a double tragedy, because they expect you to be late, they expect you to do a job that isn’t good, everything goes against you. And they have to learn that to last, they need discipline: when you say you have got to deliver, you have to deliver.
#Im academy forbes free#
They want to be free in their own right and they are right to be free. They sat back and learned from my experience, and the experiences of Youssou N’Dour, and Salif Keita. , I had to sign a contract for 10 years… These kids have the right to do whatever they want. I had waited for this day… And on top of being artists, these are entrepreneurs, they understand they have to be free. Every music that had been sent was spotless.
What I learned from them is their professionalism – it’s mind-blowing. On young people and artists, your album Mother Nature also featured Africa’s young superstars, such as Mr Eazi, Yemi Alade, Burna Boy… what was that experience like?Ī. All the way, it’s proving to people that everything I do is to build cultural bridges for people to see not only through music that we have one music, but also we are one humanity, we are all unique. And I went back, the awe was still there… And I’ve been booed, been bullied, and asked ‘is this classical music, you can’t say this’, and I say ‘I will prove to you one day’. Because I have to come back, after all this, I said to myself, ‘I have got to figure out if I am dreaming, if I am fantasizing, I am romanticizing the power of my drums and the music of my continent and my country’. I wrote a song called The Sound of the Drums. And for me, in that journey, looking back at my culture was something that empowered me the most. Because we are all from Africa – homo sapiens came from Africa. That fact is it’s never going to disappear. We live in Africa not knowing and realizing the power of our culture, how we have ruled the music on the planet.
The magnificent thing I learned from my musical journey doing my trilogy album tracing back the roots of slavery through music, is that there’s not one music in which I don’t find Africa, it does not exist. My permanent influence in my music until now is always the culture and tradition of my country. How did you connect with African music? What were you influences at the time?Ī. It was Paris in the 1980s and you were at the prestigious jazz school, CIM. But you had to quietly flee your home for Paris at 23, because of the regime that took over in Benin. At age 21, you became a star in Benin, with the album Pretty.
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