Peter Okoye of the music duo PSquare got married to his baby mama, Lola Omotayo, in November, 2013. In a recent interview published by Vanguard, Peter talks about the how marriage has changed him without it restricting him from doing what he knows how to do best on stage.
He also talked about his career, music and fame. Read excerpts from the interview below:
On how marriage has changed him:
“Marriage has made me to be more responsible, in the sense that there are certain things which I am limited to do as a married man. But I still remain who I am because marriage doesn’t restrict me from doing what I know how to do best on stage. In a nutshell, I will say marriage has changed me as Peter Okoye but not as Psquare.”
On being accessible and friendly to fans:
“In this industry, we are still learners and the truth is that people believe once they hit the top they are not answerable to anybody. But you might be surprised that the next level of our career might come from this interaction and that’s one thing most people don’t know. I always tell people when they ask how we have remained on top of our game for more than a decade.
I tell them that I always pay special attention to people’s comments on every of our performances. What I do is whenever I am off-the-stage, I try to listen to different comments from the audience. some will commend our performance while many others will criticize it. That’s where we measure our strength as musicians, learn of our mistakes and correct them where need be.”
On the craziest thing he has ever done:
“That was when we attended a night party some years ago. Some desperate girls were all over us and before we knew what was happening, they were kissing and romancing us openly. We had to run for our dear lives.”
On his most embarrassing moment:
“It was when we were coming up. Some of our kinsmen walked up to us and told us that it’s high time we join them in the village and stop roaming about the streets as if we are not conversant with the tradition of our people. We felt embarrassed. But unfortunately, we later adhered to their advice.”
On People saying the PSquare duo are more of a dancer than a musician:
“I’m used to people saying I love Psquare because they know how to dance. But the fact is that I don’t like it when people refer to us as dancers. They can describe us as entertainers and musicians because it makes us more presentable. A fan once told me that Peter, I love you guys because of your kind of love songs. But the question is , when last did a love song sell or made a name in Nigeria, aside “Olufunmi” by Star Plus and probably, “Beautiful Onyiye” by Psquare.
These days people are used to the song they play in the club so even if you release a love song they won’t play it in the club because it belongs to a different genre. I’m happy we have fans who still believe in love songs and we are going to revive it.”
On Challenges and Failures:
“Remember I said we are still learners in this game, and that is our number one focus. As Psquare, we have failed a lot, but there is a saying that it doesn’t matter how many times you fall, it is about being able to get up after every fall. For instance, the Glo CAF Awards was a horrible performance for Psquare. I remember how people said we disappointed them. But this year people still talk about our performance because we tried our best to adjust and fix many things that were not in order. The secret is because we always follow what we hear from our fans after every performance.
We’ve done worse performances sometimes due to circumstances beyond our control. We could be on stage performing and all of a sudden the microphone will stop working or there will be power failure, which should not be Psquare’s fault. But at the end of the day people will say Psqurare’s performance was trash.
So the thing is as an entertainer, once we finish a performance either for a bank, or any other company, I will always wait for a couple of months to see if they will call us back and if they did during those period it means our last performance for them was good. If a promoter calls Psquare for a show now and wait for another two years before calling you it means the previous show was not good.Peter-Okoye–and-Lola
So there are several challenges. I could remember last year when I fell off-stage it wasn’t my fault and we were meant to perform for 1hr 30mins. After I fell off-stage we couldn’t even perform up to 15mins because I was limping throughout and it took me like two and half months for the injury to heal.”
On projects he is currently working on:
“We just finished with recording our new album which is six months now. We are still working on the videos. One of them with the title “Collabo” and featuring Don Jazzy has already hit the market. We are also preparing for our tour of US and Europe.”
You can read the rest of the interview HERE!
