Omotola Jalade-Ekeinde, a Nigerian actress, says she feels upset that she abandoned a thriving career in music to focus more on Nollywood, despite being signed by an international label.
The 42-year-old former model and vocalist spoke to TheNews about her career strides in the entertainment industry, shortly after she had celebrated 25 years of being a movie star.
Omotola said she had been signed to Bungalow Universal while undergoing international tours and making radio appearances at a time when lots of artistes were not signed internationally.
According to her, other priorities coupled with what she termed negative voices would later cause her to ditch music, despite the gradual increase she witnessed in terms of her foreign fanbase.
“The only thing that I look back and I feel I should not have done or should have done more is my music career. Sometimes I feel a little bit upset myself that I allowed my music career to die down to the point where it did,” Omotola said.
“Because, you know, you are coming from a place in the film career where I was on top of my game. I came out with my music and I got a lot of criticism at first. To some extent, I allowed it to get into my head even though it did not rock my call.
“I kind of allowed myself to just let it go and face other things. And, in hindsight I can’t understand why I allowed it to go. You know time just passes. When you’re supposed to do something you don’t do it. When you are supposed to make a decision and you don’t take it.
“And as time just go, you say, ‘abeg, time has gone’. Now I look back I am very angry with myself because, in hindsight, I just allowed myself to listen more to the negative voices than to the positive ones.
“If I had listened more to the positive voices and not allowed the negative get into my head at the time, I would have realized that I had a lot of music fans. So many people loved my music. The numbers actually showed it. My music sold out.”
Also known as OmoSexy, Omotola launched her music career in 2005 with the release of ‘Gba’, her debut album, which produced singles like ‘Naija Lowa’ and ‘The Things You Do To Me’.
“Not only did my music sell out, at the time when music was not that big everywhere, but it was also signed to Universal. When lots of artistes were not even signed internationally, my music was signed to Bungalow Universal. I did some international tours to radio stations,” Omotola added.
“These are people that don’t know me that much as an actor. So they don’t have that thing in their head that oh you are an actor. Why are you singing? They listened to my music fresh as an artiste, and they all told me that I was good.”
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OmoSexy, who has not put out any music for up to 13 years, recently announced her comeback to the music scene.
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