Flavour recalls the life-changing night P-Square inspired his journey into full-time artistry.
Seeing their crowd-swaying performance pushed him to create a sound uniquely his own.
Renowned Nigerian highlife singer Chinedu Okoli, popularly known as Flavour, has shared a pivotal moment in his early career that ignited his ambition to become a full-fledged music artist. During an appearance on the ‘In My Opinion’ podcast, the Enugu-born singer shared how the legendary music duo P-Square played a significant role in shaping his path in the music industry.
Flavour recounted a memorable evening when he was performing live just moments before the arrival of the iconic duo, Peter and Paul Okoye, widely known as P-Square. According to him, everything changed the moment the award-winning brothers stepped into the venue.
“I was on stage playing live music when the manager suddenly said, ‘Hello, get off that thing!’” Flavour recounted. “I switched off and passed the microphone, went somewhere and sat down. Then the girls started screaming ‘wow wow wow.’”
He watched in awe as Paul Okoye took the mic and sang the duo’s hit track “Temptation”, immediately electrifying the atmosphere. “He just sang ‘This na temptation’ and the whole place scattered,” Flavour said. “It hit me deeply. I was stunned because I was doing the same kind of music, but the reaction they got was different. I was cold watching them.”
That moment became a turning point for Flavour. He realized that while he was skilled in live performance, what set artists like P-Square apart was their ability to create and record original music with a unique sound. “They weren’t just musicians; they were artists,” he said. “That’s when it hit me I needed to transition from just being a music man to becoming an artist who could create his own sound.”
Flavour admitted it was a challenging shift. “I thought it would be easy because I could play and sing,” he added. “But to create your own sound, your own music where do you even start from?”
The highlife star’s revelation sheds light on the behind-the-scenes struggles many aspiring artists face in carving out a distinct identity in the competitive music industry. Today, Flavour is celebrated not only for his vocals and instrumentals but also for successfully creating a sound that blends traditional Igbo rhythms with contemporary highlife and Afrobeat just as he once aspired to after witnessing P-Square in their prime.
