D’banj told Ebony Magazine, “I Own Mohits; Don Jazzy is my Artist” in an interview in which Ebony Magazine’s music journalist, Hillary Crosley sat down with the artist to have a chat after his concert in New York. The African musician, D’banj, joined Kanye west’s G.O.O.D. music imprint in 2011 and Hillary wanted to know how he is adjusting to America, being a “machine” and working with Chicago’s “crazy genius.’
[dropcap]O[/dropcap]n Sunday (Feb. 19), fans from as far away as Maryland packed into New York City’s Irving Plaza to see D’banj, Nigeria’s biggest Afrobeat star in concert. The self-proclaimed “Kokomaster” hit the stage to screams and even fainting, as one woman sunk to the floor after D’banj touched her hand. Running through his three albums No Long Thing, Rundown Funk U Up and The Entertainer including his international hit “Oliver Twist,” the MC born Dapo Daniel Oyebanjo commanded the stage with waist wines, glittering outfits and jokes about his “Koko,” also known as his manhood.
EBONY.com: How will you break into America’s entertainment scene? D’BANJ: I’m bringing my culture, my music and preaching the gospel. We’ve been learning from America’s Hollywood scene and other areas in Africa because our continent is developing. We look up to the way you’ve built your industry and we try to do ours in the best that we know. It’s so good to see that Americans appreciate my music so that’s what I’m bringing, just original Africa.
D’BANJ:
EBONY.com: How did you join Kanye West’s G.O.O.D. Music label?
I had a concert in Dubai and when we pulled up to the airport’s first class lounge and a hostess ran up to me with a plaque with Kanye’s face on it, asking me to sign it. I said ‘I’m not Kanye West, I’m D’banj but Kanye West is coming? All eyes open.’ Then my manager spoke to Kanye, came back and told me ‘He’ll give you five minutes.’ I walked over — as an African man I’m always prepared — and I played my music ‘Stand Out,’ ‘Fall In Love’ and ‘Scapegoat’ for him on my iPod. Before we knew it, I’d almost missed my flight and he invited me to New York.
Coming from Africa I’m my own manager, I have my own label called Mo’ Hits with my artists Dr. Sid, Wande Coal, Don Jazzy, D’Prince and K-Switch. I own Mo’ Hits and we’ve won numerous awards by the grace of God. Being with Kanye for the last eight months and me leading a successful label in Africa, I’ve learned a lot and I believe people will see what we’re going to do. I signed with Kanye in June and that same month I won the BET Award for Best International Act. My New York concert isn’t done by G.O.O.D. Music, it’s done by Live Nation, meaning I’m already a moving machine. So who better to introduce me to the global world than Kanye West, a crazy genius?
EBONY.com: What is your chemistry like in the studio with West? D’BANJ: Kanye doesn’t try to change you. He has great ears and great people working with him. I learned the way people do music in America is different, number one, the budget. You don’t have to rush a song, you can take your time. I was glad because I have a studio in my home but I thought I was doing too much. I’ve been working with everyone else on G.O.O.D. Music too and John Legend and I worked together in London recently. It’s been great experience, I just beg people to listen with an open mind.
A few day ago, we published the viral video, “Kony 2012” that was produced by the Invisible Children’s group. Today, we are presenting you the critique that was written by Adam Branch titled “Dangerous Ignorance: The hysteria of Kony 2012.” In addition, we have added a video by Aljazeera in which different experts gave their views and opinions on the “Stop Kony” social activist documentary.
Kampala, Uganda – From Kampala, the Kony 2012 hysteria was easy to miss. I’m not on Facebook or Twitter, I don’t watch YouTube, and the Ugandan papers didn’t pick up the story for several days. But what I could not avoid were the hundreds of emails from friends, colleagues, and students in the US about the video by Invisible Children and the massive on-line response to it.
The hunt for Joseph Kony is the perfect excuse for US militarisation of oil-rich Uganda [AP[/caption]I have not watched the video. As someone who has worked in northern Uganda and done research on the war there for over a decade, much of it with a local human rights organization based in Gulu, the Invisible Children organization and their videos have often left me infuriated—I remember the sleepless night after I watched their “Rough Cut” film for the first time and then tried to explain to the audience of students what was wrong with the film while sitting on stage with one of the filmmakers.
My frustration with the group has largely reflected the concerns expressed so convincingly by those on-line critics who have been willing to bring the fury of Invisible Children’s true believers down upon themselves. They have pointed out what is wrong with the group’s approach: the warmongering, the narcissism, the commercialization, the reductive and one-sided story they tell, their portrayal of Africans as helpless children in need of rescue by white Americans. As a result of Invisible Children’s irresponsible advocacy, civilians in Uganda and central Africa may have to pay a steep price in their own lives so that a lot of young Americans can feel good about themselves, and a few can make good money. This, of course, is sickening, and I think that Kony 2012 is a case of Invisible Children having finally gone too far. They are now facing a backlash from people of conscience who refuse to abandon their capacity to think for themselves.
But, as I said, I wouldn’t have known about Kony 2012 if it hadn’t been for the flood of emails I received from the US. And that, I think, is telling. Kony 2012 and the debate around it are not about Uganda, but about America. Uganda is largely just the stage for a debate over the meaning of political activism in the US today. Likewise, in my view, the Kony 2012 campaign itself is basically irrelevant here in Uganda, and perhaps the best approach might be to just ignore it. This is for a couple reasons.
First, Invisible Children’s campaign is a symptom, not a cause. It is an excuse that the US government has gladly adopted in order to help justify the expansion of their military presence in central Africa. Invisible Children are “useful idiots,” being used by those in the US government who seek to militarize Africa, to send more weapons and military aid to the continent, and to build the power of states that are US allies. The hunt for Joseph Kony is the perfect excuse for this strategy—how often does the US government find millions of young Americans pleading that they intervene militarily in a place rich in oil and other resources? The US government would be pursuing this militarization with or without Invisible Children—Kony 2012 just makes it a little easier. Therefore, it is the militarization we need to worry about, not Invisible Children.
Second, in northern Uganda, people’s lives will be left untouched by this campaign, even if it were to achieve its stated objectives. This is not because all the problems have been resolved in the years since open fighting ended, but because the most serious problems people face today have little to do with Kony. The most pressing are over land. Land speculators and so-called investors, many foreign, in collaboration with the Ugandan government and military, are grabbing the land of the Acholi people in northern Uganda, land that they were forced off of a decade ago when the government herded them into internment camps. Another serious problem for northern Uganda is so-called “nodding disease”—a deadly illness that has broken out among thousands of children who had the bad luck to be born and grow up in the camps, subsisting on relief aid. Indeed, the problems people face today are the legacy of the camps, where over a million Acholi were forced to live, and die, for years by their own government as part of a counterinsurgency that received essential support from the US and from international aid agencies.
Which brings up the question that I am constantly asked in the US: “What can we do?” where “we” tends to mean relatively privileged Americans. In response, and as a contribution to the debate going on in the US about Kony 2012, I have a few proposals. The first, perhaps not surprising from a professor, is to learn. The conflict in northern Uganda and central Africa is complicated, yes—but not impossible to understand. For several years, I have taught an undergraduate class on the conflict, and, although it takes some time and effort, the students end up informed enough to be able to come to their own opinions about what can be done. I am more than happy to share the syllabus with anyone interested! In terms of activism, I think the first step is to re-think the question: instead of asking how the US can intervene in order to solve Africa’s conflicts, we need to ask what we are already doing to cause those conflicts in the first place. How are we, as consumers, contributing to land grabbing and to the wars ravaging this region? How are we, as Americans, allowing our government to militarize Africa as part of its War on Terror and its effort to secure oil resources? These are the questions that those of us who represent Kony 2012’s target audience must ask ourselves, because we are indeed responsible for the conflict in northern Uganda—responsible for helping to cause and prolong it. It is not, however, our responsibility, as Invisible Children encourages us to believe, to try to end the conflict by sending in military force. In our desire to ameliorate suffering, we must not be complicit in making it worse.
Adam Branch is a Senior Research Fellow at the Makerere Institute of Social Research, Uganda, and an Assistant Professor of Political Science at San Diego State University, USA. He is the author of Displacing Human Rights: War and Intervention in Northern Uganda (Oxford, 2011) and can be reached at abranch2(at)mail.sdsu.edu.
A version of this article first appeared on the CIHA Blog at UC Irvine.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect AfroCosmopolitan’s editorial policy.
At 48, Lenny Kravitz’s hot six pack can make both teenagers and youths in their early 20’s go jealous. At almost fifty, the singer’s body is so toned that he is hotter than most people he is old enough to father.
Here is Rihanna’s new photoshoot. The shoot is theme is red. What do you think about these photos? Is the singer hot or not? Share your views by leaving a comment.
Bobbi Kristina, Whitney Houston’s daughter does not want her dad’s name. Her mother was against such a change but the teenager feels she is now free to change it now that her mum, Whitney Houston is no more.
Whitney Houston’s daughter Bobbi Kristina Brown can’t stand her name … because of its association with her father Bobby Brown — and now, TMZ has learned, she wants to change it all together.
Bobbi Kristina is telling friends … she’s wanted to change her name for years — ever since her parents split — but Whitney wouldn’t let her.
Now that Whitney’s gone, we’re told the 19-year-old feels untethered — and wants to finally change her name completely … making it simply “Kristina Houston.”
A Nigerian woman known as Afolake Awoyemi was arrested at the Kennedy Airport for being ‘pregnant’ with heroine. She had reportedly swallowed several pallets of the drug to smuggle it.
The woman, identified as Afolake Awoyemi, attracted the attention of a U.S. Customs and Border Protection inspector as soon as she got off the Air France flight No. 6 Wednesday, The flight was coming from Paris.
The woman attracted the attention because she was walking very awkwardly.
When the official noted her strange gait, they asked her to step aside to perform a body search. Afolake Awoyemi became very nervous when she came under observation and started sweating.
Awoyemi, 42, was wearing a loose-fitting dress and when asked what was wrong with her, she said that she was pregnant and was three months along.
These details were given by Homeland Security special agent John Moloney, who filed the complaint against Awoyemi in a Brooklyn Federal Court.
Afolake Awoyemi was selected for a pat-down by the official and after feeling a “bulge” in the woman’s groin area, it became evident that something was wrong. When she was asked to drop her drawers, pellets of heroine started dropping from her groin area. She was then taken to a medical facility at the airport where she also underwent a pregnancy test that came back negative. Later, an X-ray showed more pellets in her intestinal tract.
Officials then asked Afolake to sit on a special commode dubbed by the custom officials as the “Drug Loo”, a special toilet that sanitizes the incriminating evidence. By the end of the day, Afolake had passed around 25 pellets of heroine from her system.
According to the details provided by a Homeland Security spokesman, Awoyemi was still hospitalized and expected to be brought before a federal magistrate on Monday. According to details, the twenty-five pellets of heroine can have a street-value of about $20,000, but the value can increase depending on the demand.
Experienced drug mules swallow and ingest the substance that they want to smuggle and later pass it out through a very painful process. Some experienced drug mules can swallow up to 200 pellets containing drugs and still go undetected.
Netherlands: Ministers decide to get tough on dual nationality, this is also applicable for the Dutch’s.
A decision was made on Friday the 2 of March 2012 by the Dutch ministers to press ahead with the legislation aimed at decreasing the number of people with dual nationality, despite extensive disapproval.
According to the legislation, everyone who becomes Dutch or wants to become a Dutch citizen has to give up their original nationality if legally possible. On the other hand, Dutch nationals who take a second nationality will also automatically lose their Dutch passports.
New Dutch nationals will also have a family income of at least the minimum wage and show that they have at least two years work experience or have some sort of professional qualification.
With a Nigerian father and a Kenyan mother, Fumi Desalu Vold is a Super Model of West African origin whose achievement is worthy of celebrating. She is one of such models whose work needs to be highlighted in order to inspire Africans in Europe that with passion, determination and the can-do attitude, they can open doors and make their dreams become reality.
Vogue Italia Article On Fumi Desalu Vold
Fumi Desalu Vold is a very colourful story. Born in Moscow, Russia and raised as a child in Scotland of West African parents. Her father is Nigerian and her mother is from The Gambia. Fumi became the 1st Super Model of West Africa. Fumi has graced all the major designers with her presence on the fashion runways from Paris, to Milan, to London and New York.
And this was all at the same time as obtaining a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration at the London University. She didn’t stop there after relocation from London to New York, she was accepted at the famed Actors Studio in New York where the one and only James Lipton declared that she was going to be a star.
And so she has, not only in Hollywood where she’s had memorable parts in Ugly Betty withAmerica Ferrera and Vanessa William, Norbit with Eddie Murphy, American Dreams with Hugh Grant as well as Entourage to name a few.
She has found great success in Norway where she now resides. She is happily married to a Norwegian, a former National swim champion.
Fumi Desalu Vold has established herself both in television and film with multiple critically acclaimed articles written about her while she has impressively been able to pick up the language! Fumi stars in a Norwegian feature film called Varg Veum that is in theatres now in Norway.
And in the entire cast, Fumi is the only actor that spoke three languages, English, Norwegian and Afrikaans. She is looking forward to one day having her own clothing collection, Make-up brand and signature fragrance in the stores and boutiques around the world! We cannot wait!
Nigerian soul singer, Bez was recently featured on Vogue Italia Magazine. Bez’s new single, “That Stupid Song” is one that has drawn the attention of various audiences. The song is thought to be very creative, talented, artistic, comical as well as entertaining. It is different from the everyday Afro pop or Afro Juju Music most Nigerian artist are known for. Listening to BEZ, you would think you are listening to Afro American artist such as John Legend.
Below, BEZ’s Interview with Vogue Italia
Twenty-eight year old Nigerian alternative soul singer, Emmanuel Bez Idakula, is charmer, a dreamer, wine lover, traveler, comfort junkie, and one who appreciates beauty.
His music, an understated and unusual hybrid of Soul, Rock, Jazz and R&B music, sets him apart from the mainstream movement. “The Nigerian music scene has a popular sound called afro pop or afro beats… it’s dance music that you hear every where you go.
My music, on the other hand, is almost at the opposite end of the spectrum from the afro pop/afro beats genre. My sound is very organic yet refined and carefully put together. I feel my music is best enjoyed when it is performed live on stage. The latest single That Stupid Song from his albumSuper Sun is gaining momentum particularly in the US where African artists are the new black.
Bez explains, “every musician would love for their music to be known world wide, and that is a great goal to pursue. I really want to tour a lot. Touring creates awareness about the music and you learn a lot when you’re on the road.
Bez can be shy off stage, but any stage will bring out the beast in me. I like to believe I am principled and a hard worker, but because of thecurse of the genius I am never truly fully satisfied with anything I put together, I always feel it could be done better. I believe I am here on earth to add value to people through my music, and for that fact alone I believe the music shall transcend borders. After touring the Super Sun album, I’ll proceed to create another record; merging what I’ve learnt on the road, like music business, inspirations, and sounds to make my goal of world domination feasible.”
It seems there is hope for people with kidney problem as a new stem cell injection could remove the need to live lifelong on drugs to suppress the immune system.
An injection of stem cells given alongside a kidney transplant could remove the need for a lifetime of drugs to suppress the immune system, say scientists.
Early tests of the technique at US hospitals were successful in a small number of patients.
The journal Science Translational Medicine reports how the majority no longer need anti-rejection medication.
Researchers said it could have a “major impact” on transplant science.
One of the key problems associated with organ transplantation is the risk that the body will “recognise” the new organ as a foreign invader and attack it.
To prevent this, patients take powerful drugs to suppress their immune systems, and will have to do this for life.
The drugs come at a price, preventing organ rejection but increasing the risk of high blood pressure, diabetes and serious infection.
Challenges
The study, carried out at the University of Louisville and the Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, involved eight patients.
Their transplant came from a live donor, who also underwent a procedure to draw stem cells, the building blocks of their immune system, from the blood.
The transplant recipient’s body was prepared using radiotherapy and chemotherapy to suppress their own immune system.
Then the transplant went ahead, with the stem cells put into their body a couple of days later.
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It’s almost surreal when I think about it because I feel so healthy and normal”
Lindsay Porter
The idea is that these will help generate a modified immune system that no longer attacks the organ or its new owner.
Although the patients started off with the same anti-rejection drugs, the aim was to reduce these slowly, hopefully withdrawing them completely over time.
Five out of the eight patients involved in the trial managed to do this within a year.
One of those is 47-year-old Lindsay Porter, from Chicago.
She said: “I hear about the challenges recipients have to face with their medications and it is significant.
“It’s almost surreal when I think about it because I feel so healthy and normal.”
Dr Joseph Leventhal, associate professor of surgery at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, said: “The preliminary results from this ongoing study are exciting and may have a major impact on organ transplantation in the future.”
He said that, as well as kidney patients, the technique might improve the lives of those receiving other organs.
While stem cells from organ donors have been used before, this is the first time it has been used for “mismatched” transplants, in which donors and recipients do not have to be related and immunologically similar.
D’BANJ:
