Custodian Interview: Ajebutter & Headphones on Anytime Soon. One Year On

A year ago, Ajebutter and Studio Magic released their debut album, Anytime Soon. An independently backed record, it introduced the Nigerian audience to these debutantes who had made waves in foreign circles and over the Internet. The most apt indicator of this schism was the album’s success on iTunes topping the Worldwide genre charts whilst failing to make the type of traction it should have in Nigeria. To reflect on all this, I spoke to Ajebutter and Headphones, one half of the Production team Studio Magic.
This will be the first part of what should be a two parter on Ajebutter. One on ‘Anytime Soon‘, the other on his act and sense or artistry.

How did you guys meet?
Headphones : You know me, I always find.. I listen to a lot of shit. There was this song called ‘Super Fantastic‘ and it had this Butter verse. There were a bunch of guys and he was on the last verse. I remember just listening to it and then I heard his verse and it actually blew my mind. I heard it and I was like “I need to work with this guy.” I hit him up and we started talking like that. We did ‘The Realest’, the first song with Senavoe. Started working back and forth that way. Then brought Toxx in obviously. He and Toxx now developed their own relationship. They started doing all these Naij jams. Things just progressed and at the same time, he actually became friends with us. So it was a logical progression in that sense. It just happened. No one sat down and was like “Oh! Let’s make an album or do something together.” This guy’s great. Let’s work with him. This guy’s actually a cool guy. Let’s keep working with him.

With regard to the album, who were the key players in making that happen besides you, the artist and the producers.

My former manager, Segun who runs Born Kings which was something we started together. Obviously, he had a part to play with sort of like planning recording sessions and just being there when we had to make songs.

Headphones: He deserves credit for all that necessary groundwork.

Let’s talk about the album rollout. I felt like it came too late. The buzz from the main singles had kinda fizzled out and the one leading up to it didn’t do it justice. That said, I thought the listening session video was really cool so how did that come about?

When we were rolling out Anytime Soon we had like 4 release dates. Something kept going wrong. We had this group on What’s App and a lot of people were talking. I even remember Jimi who was you guys manager who now manages Seyi Shay who was part of the team then. Another thing, we were working in Nigeria and none of us are Naija guys like that. Trying to work in this space is really difficult and people are always trying to frustrate your efforts. This guy, Nifemi Bello who’s one of the founders of Wafflesncrm. Lanre. Coker Goods (sic). We were the ones in Nigeria so we came up with the idea to do that listening video. The school tour. We made the February 22 shirts. I just tried to do things that would help people see the album for the way it is.

After we did that, the next step was pushing blown music videos and stuff. Pushing the jams to radio and all those type of things which in my opinion. The radio stations got the jams but in this economy there are some things people want you to do that you don’t want to do. Some things just don’t happen the way you want them to. I know I’m speaking very vaguely but I don’t want to talk about some people that didn’t do certain things. I’ll just say as a combined effort, we didn’t do some things right.

It was our job to make the music. I feel like making the music, those singles, those jams we did some things that were out of the ordinary. We weren’t in the country and they blew which is very difficult. If you’re doing that as a music team, then your management team must do extraordinary things too. Especially, if you haven’t been working in this space that long. If all those things don’t go together precisely, it just can’t click as it’s supposed to.

What were your favourite songs on the album?

At different times. The thing about making an album is that the newest one you just made is your favourite at that time. I’ll definitely say like Okafor’s Law. What Are We was one of my favourites but I made that since. Church Mind. Humble Guy and Alangba were like the last ones.

Headphones: Humble Guy. Alangba. Okafor’s Law. Between those three.

When you guys dropped the album, it did very well on iTunes. Did that translate to success here?

It did translate to success here but then we had problems with distribution, Alaba which is how Nigerians get music. It’s a very weird thing. Around the world, it’s iTunes which is what I know. That was the one that was within my own, Kitoye Balogun’s control.

The Alaba part. I’ve never been to Alaba in my life. The person that went to Alaba I can’t talk about that cos I didn’t go there with him. After the album came out, I went to do my UK tour. When I got back, people were saying we haven’t seen it on the streets. Or we’re seeing one or two copies. The people that are selling it would be like ” Yo! It has finished”. There was that distribution problem initially and that is very key in Naij.