Onoyom Mbuk, better known by his stage as Iyanya, a Nigerian artist, has described how he and his crew lost millions of naira trying to get the famous American-Trinidadian, Nicki Minaj, to appear on one of his songs.
After the success of his breakthrough song, “Kukere,” the former Project Fame West Africa champion admitted that he and his crew felt pressure to create the following major single.
They had already recorded “Flavour,” he said, but they didn’t think it should be the follow-up single to “Kukere.”
He said that his producer, D’Tunez, changed the beat for Kukere before using it to create the song “Your Waist,” which had a lot of radio play. Also, he claimed that his team wasn’t happy with the song’s popularity, so his record label’s head, Ubi Franklin, recommended a remix with Nicki Minaj to increase the song’s sales.
He claimed that after travelling to Atlanta, Georgia, to visit Nicki Minaj for the feature, they learned that signing her to a song would cost $200,000, which they were unable to pay at the moment.
Ur waist was so massive we decided it should go international and we needed the right artiste to help with that journey. Ubi franklin suggested Nicki Minaj and I asked how we’re gonna pay for that, he laughed and said ‘if your dreams don’t scare you, they aren’t big- according to iyanya.