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FROM OKPOKWU WITH LOVE: The untold story of Innocent Ujah Idibia

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8 years ago

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IN HIS LIFE, three is a recurring decimal: he was three years old when his family moved to the United States; before he hit musical stardom, he passed through three music groups; his career kicked-started significantly in a band of three members; three times he’s had a brush with death; he used to be a man of three baby mamas. 




ALSO READ: Meet the seven tribes of 2face Idibia (PHOTOS)  
 
What’s more, he is in a season of three-fold blessings – new wife, new baby, new album.

Nevertheless, he is not a three-star person. Innocent Ujah Idibia, the musician popularly known as Tuface or 2baba, is a five-star artiste.

 Call him an R&B maestro or a hip hop poster boy – each label fits him like a second skin. Watching him perform at the last AMAA or at his Buckwyld and Breathless album concert, gives a pretty good idea why the Tufacemania is irresistible.
 

Since he cast off the toga of the defunct Plantashun Boyz group to pursue a solo career, he has been trailed by spectacular success. Today, Tuface enjoys a cult following that is second to none. A folk favourite, his persona gets more endearing by the year; his songs, like good wines that taste better with years, are vintage tunes. 
10 years is a “long” duration for many a Nigerian musician – a period during which they sung their way to fame, sang their swan songs and surreptitiously faded away. But for 15 years, the Tuface’s meteor continues to travel. From “African Queen” to “True Love” to “Implication”, he has been dishing a smorgasbord of quality music. 

Not many believed that he’d come this far. The roaring success of “African Queen”, the chart-bursting song from his Face 2 Face (2004) debut solo album, was attributed by many to Kennis Music’s turbo-driven promotion.

 After breaking the sophomore jinx with his Grass to Grace (2006) album, he left the safety of the behemoth label and set up Hypertek Entertainment. So far, he’s still a high flyer, a homegrown talent, who has found the Golden Fleece of music time and again – MTV, BET, Channel O, AMEN, MOBO, KORA, WMA – he won it all. Since 2004, there was hardly a year that passed without him gaining recognition home and abroad.

The Tuface phenomenon was even once accorded a quasi-national recognition when then Vice President Atiku Abubakar wrote him a letter after robbers broke into his house and injured him. Blue-chip corporate entities such as Guinness and telecom giant Airtel, consider him a brand to associate with.

But fame and fortune did not come his way on a platter of gold. His rise to stardom portrays a relentless chase after the proverbial pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. His musical odyssey took him to Makurdi (where he was a member of Black Universe) and Jos (where he formed the Bad Manners group). 

ALSO READ: The genealogy of Tuface Idibia  

When he went to Institute of Management Technology, (IMT) Enugu, he juggled music with his academics, performing at campus shows and parties, and doing jingles for GB Fans Club at Enugu Broadcasting Service. Eventually, he would not graduate. 
But mercifully, the inordinate attention he devoted to music paid off. Teaming with rapper Blackface, the duo turned their eyes on Lagos, a port of call that turned out to be a Promise land. With a third member, Faze, their group Plantashun Boyz took the music scene by storm. 
Their successive efforts, Body and Soul and Sold Out became genre-defining albums for the budding Nigerian hip hop movement. Tuface’s vocal power was difficult to ignore. A solo career under the tutelage of Kennis Music, was where he struck gold with his Face to Face debut. The rest is history.

In “Stylee”, a hip hop song off Jimmy Jatt’s The Definition album, he rhapsodizes about the rough road he travelled to stardom:

I remember well/ The beginning of this struggle…That explains all the hustle and the bustle/ Like when we enter bus, we can’t stop cuz we no get money/ Trekking to Ikeja, it was not very funny.

UP CLOSE AND personal, he is not your typical music star. In July 2011, at a birthday party that held at Golden Tulip Hotel, Festac, Lagos, Tuface put up an appearance that Sunday evening at about 7 p.m. A security personnel, who didn’t recognized him jibed at him.

 “Hey that your car…go comot your moto, people dey pass o!” Customers in the hotel and invited guests were peeved at the security man’s shoddy treatment towards the star. The uniform guard, duly chastised, was also ordered by some angry fans to kneel down and apologise to him. 

But Tuface, who had been quiet through the tirade, would not have any of that. He firmly asserted that such was needless. He simply re-parked his car. He had no hard feeling towards the disrespectful guard. In the course of the evening, his personality unfurled. Jovial, playful, down-to-earth, respectful.

It is a common knowledge among his circle of friends that Tubaba, as he is fondly called by his teeming fans, doesn’t expect you to thank him for anything whatsoever. “Go thank God”, he would tell you. Simple but sophisticated. He appears insulated from the fetid celebrity subculture of the nouveau riches and the glitterati.

 He’s not given to bling or binge. He doesn’t even speak English with a false accent in the name of sophistication. His Pidgin rocks! He leaves you with a lingering charm that makes it difficult to hate or to beef him, even if you are the type with distaste for celebrities. Instead of making him becoming, fame and fortune rather humanized him.. Humble. Nice guy. He still has the guy-next-door mien and mentality.

That does not mean that he is not without any weakness, however. He used to have a cardinal sin; women, his Achilles’ heel. What with six children from three women that were not married to him at the time, he cut an image of a certified playboy, a lothario sowing his wild oats all over the place. 
His women are of different class and caliber: Vien Tetsola, former Miss Nigeria, Pero Adeniyi, divorced mother and daughter of a Lagos Prince, Sumbo Ajaba, a Goldman Sachs Scholar and former banker-turned entrepreneur and Nollywood actress Annie Macaulay.  While Vien was but a passing shadow in his life, others bore him children, with Pero leading the pack with three kids, while Sumbo and Annie bore him two and one respectively.

Hear him before you judge him, and Tuface will give you a God-knows-it-wasn’t-my-fault defense for his playboy profile. “Some people perceived me as a womanizer and I wonder: me a womanizer? I don’t even know that I womanise” he declares in an Entertainment Express interview. 
He also adds, “I didn’t plan to have more than one woman in my life. I didn’t plan my life to be the way it is now.” Disenchantment with the polygamous empire he’d unwittingly built around himself may have forced him to reflect thus: “The truth is marriage is not in my plan. I don’t want to marry.”

Commendably, he’d taken steps to bring order to his life and restore respectability to his image by eventually marrying from his harem of baby mamas on May 2, 2012. While his fans may not be privy to the politics behind his choice of Annie Macaulay as his “Cinderella”, it is known that their romance dated back to 13 years ago when he was still a down-at-the-heel singer and Macaulay was a mere 17-year-old teenager who dared to fall in love with a dreamer.

TUFACE IS ABOUT music; therefore his music is the best microscope to view his life. His colleagues revered him. His musical potential is prodigious: Acapella, is his forte. He has a mastery of freestyle. 
He is a maestro of live play. Of his recipe for success, he tells Entertainment Express: “My emphasis is more on my lyrics and my voice. All I care about is making good music.” He theorizes further: “what makes a good song is a combination of creativity in the lyrics and the melody; the melody is what makes the music a hit. The lyrics might be trash but if the melody is tight, it would be a hit. The melody is the key.”

Melody, the magic potion that propels songs into instant hit, he says, “is a gift that comes from the Almighty. It comes by inspiration.” Still making good music, in his opinion is no rocket science. “How do I get ideas for my music? Everything I see around me inspires me!” he enthuses.

Much of his appeal arises from his originality. “Of all the musicians in the world, I don’t want my voice to sound like anybody’s” he asserts, “I don’t follow trends. I don’t follow reigning style of music. I just do what comes to me naturally.”

To feed his muse, however, he maintains an emotional attachment with the music of Jamaica. “I still listen to my reggae. I listen to a lot of reggae music. I also listen to jazz. My all-time favourite is Kenny G. for reggae I listen to Morgan Heritage, Luciano, Movado. Reggae is still very rich” he affirms.

He has gained some recognition too in the Rastafarian country. Once invited to Jamaica, by Damien Marley, during a Bob Marley birthday concert in Kingston, his rendition of “African Queen” left the Jamaicans gobsmacked so much so that “they thought I was a Jamaican because they believe only a Jamaican can do such music”. Till date, “African Queen” remains a household song in Bob Marley’s country.

Having reached many milestones, there are still more mileages for him to go. And indeed he is still rearing to go further and far. “My music is relevant,” he asserts “and that is why I am still relevant”.

Relevant he is. But that means the 36-year-old Idoma native will have to continue to live with the pain that comes with his fame. “[I] don’t have privacy. [I] don’t have freedom again. I miss not being able to walk down the road like every normal person without drawing attention to myself,” thus goes his lamentation.

With a new marital status, his life has gained some stability. New baby, endless euphoria. By his new album, which he says “is for the mature mind”, his career has been hoisted to another level. 
So the Tufacemania goes on. An exhilarated fan at his album concert breathlessly asked: “Is there a magic for making good music that this guy has discovered? Only the man himself could answer that question. But his response is predictable, even if vague: Nothing dey happen!
He is a spirit –DJ HUMILTY
Tuface is a dynamic performer and a musician who seamlessly blends all kinds of sound to create a sound of his own. His unique style reflects his honest talent and earned him a devoted fan following, critical acclaim, and the genuine respect and admiration of his musical peers.

I know many people see him as a music god now; that’s not far from the truth. He is the dream of that African music that came to pass. Tuface is a music living legend of our time, a show stopper.
 I am so happy for his achievements. I have been privileged to work with him for some time and I must confess that he is a huge talent. He has some things in him that I can’t really place. He just comes into the studio and turns things around.

He has a magic of sort in his voice. Give Tuface any kind of song, I am sure he would do justice to it. 
Even when I was still playing as an in-house DJ at a club on the island, I had many people who fought me for now repeating Tuface’s songs for more than three times. This is just to show you how much he is loved. Just like you can be sure, if you have Tuface on the cover of your magazine or newspaper, you can be sure you will sell that edition well. I think Tuface is a spirit. 
Tuface is a gift to the world –DJ SPIN’ALL
To be economical with the truth, Tuface has always been on top of this game. I am more like his official Dee Jay and everywhere I go, his fans keep calling and asking me to play his songs. Have you seen him on stage?
 His stage performance is perfect and he is very energetic on stage. He has a good stage presence and he often wows the audience and even me. I listened to his new album; it’s about 16 tracks and my conclusion is that the album is out of this world, trust me.
 The production and the lyrics are quite unusual from what you get from every other music artiste. The songs in the album is made up of R&B, reggae, dance hall but majorly R&B, produced by top music producers and mastered by Adrian Morgan for Timeless Mastering, NY.

For those who don’t know, Tuface is a gift to the world; I admire his music talent, his expertise and creativity. In short, no adjective to qualify him. His songs are evergreen. He has got an immense talent that can match any standard around the world.
He is Nigeria’s king of pop music –ICE PRINCE, Rapper
I see Tuface as king of Nigerian pop music.  Tuface is our daddy.  Even D’Banj, when he sees Tuface, he calls him daddy.  Tuface has been here longer than any of us.  He has been the most consistent than any other person, and his music is just too good.

He is hard-working, he does his homework, he is exposed and he knows what is new, he knows how to stay relevant.  A lot of people who were around when he started, have all faded.  I don’t want to start calling names but Tuface still remains from the Plantashun Boyz of 1998 to 2011.
Tuface inspires me -Cohbam Asuquo, Producer
I have worked with Tuface from the days of the Plantashun Boyz, while I also went on to handle some others artistes like Asa. For me, Asa, is an amazing artiste. I have always known she would make it big in the industry.
 But you see, Tuface has always been in a different class. There is something about Tuface, the magic is not just in his voice but in his spirit. Every time he sings, something would light up inside of me; the sincerity, the purity of his sound and his spirit. I just knew he was heading for the top and nowhere else. I didn’t discover Tuface.

We both met each other in the same place. He had his part, which was going quite well for him, and I had my part, which was going quite well for me too. It was a strong musical synergy that brought us together and it pretty much began happening from there. 
Now, I have my own record label called Cobhams Asuquo Record Music Production, CAMP, but the record is not riding on the success called Tuface, Plantation Boys or Asa, rather it is riding on people out there to meet a need, which is providing Nigerians with good music.

Talking about good music, a number of things make good music – the message, inspiration and groove makes a good music. Joyful memorable melody also makes good music, great performance, personality, spirit, and soul makes good music. 
And you need inspiration from God to make good music and it could be anywhere. Like me, I get my inspiration from my bathroom, because that is where I get to be anything, I could be an astronaut, a pilot, a physicists, a musician. I am simply inspired in the bathroom. 
I also like to get inspiration from a long train ride when I am abroad. I also get inspirations in long drive, when I wake up early in the morning. Sometimes, I am inspired by pressure, having to deliver on time inspires me.

A number of artistes also inspire me. Tuface is one of them. The guy is one of the most talented Nigerian musicians I have ever met. He has a great personality. He is humble and relates with people very well. Tuface’s music is healthy; it has content and character. Dagrin is also another good one. 
I love him as well. In fact, the day I received the shocking news of his death, I was in my office having dinner and I heard over the radio, I stopped eating immediately.  I practically lost appetite and I called my workers to share in what I was experiencing. I was almost moved to tears, because he was a rising star with so much potential.
Plantashun Boyz breakup was a blessing in disguise –FAZE, Musician
The whole thing is just like yesterday. Each time I remember how it all started, I just can’t stop laughing. Ironically, we didn’t know this is how things would later be. We had different plans and dreams. But fate would always have it way.

Some years ago when we broke up, we thought it was a disaster but now when we all look back, we thank God because the split has made us men of our own.

Talking about his talent, I am not shy to say Tuface is a huge talent. He has the best voice so far and he knows how to render his music well. 
He is vast and he is a success as far as I am concerned. He is just a wonderful singer that is favoured by God. I have listened to his new album Away & Beyond and I must say it’s excellent. To me, Tuface has gotten to the peak of his career in music. He is an achiever, resilient man and self motivated. His new album is just a present to all his fans.
 
Insider’s account: secret of Tuface’s success
The key to survival in this business is humility. You have to be humble, you have to be hardworking, you have to be wise, you have to save more than you spend.  Always make sure you save more than you spend. 

The Top 4 artistes in Nigeria today is as follows: Tuface is No.1, D’Banj is No.2, P Square is No.3 and M.I. is No.4.  If you go to any agency, these are the names you will see first.  Check out all these people and you will find they are humble to a fault.  That is the key to success.  Humility, wisdom and hard work.

All these people work hard.  If it takes Tuface spending a lot of money to go and record an artist in China, he would do it.  If it takes D’Banj no matter how much to go and record with Snoop Dog, he would do it.
He is a musician with magic –DJ JIMMY JATT
Tuface is many things to me. The man is my brother and friend. We have worked together here in the country and oversea. We have also done some songs together. If you remember, he was featured in my song, ‘Stylee’ and he killed that song.
 
He also supported in the videos as well. 
He did beautifully well. I can remember vividly when I heard the guy for the first time.  I can’t believe he has risen so fast. When we started playing his songs in clubs and radio stations, it got everyone dancing.

He is a musician with a magic I can’t really understand. His song and beats got everyone’s attention. I think he will do well in the nearest future.
Written in 2010 by Musa Jibril and Ameh Comrade Godwin


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