Q: In your Redemption Song's video, you are seen puffing out thick smoke from a hand rolled wrap of weed suspected to marijuana. What message are you trying to pass across?
A: For me, that scene was just a way of pushing people's perception about some certain things. It was just about making some people feel uncomfortable. People sing a lot about love but can they love as much as an armed robber? Segregation leads us nowhere so the weed was just to offend people's thinking.
Q: Don't you think people will see it as promotion of weed?
A: I do not see anything wrong with weed; just the same way I do not see anything wrong with money or women. I just think anything done in excess is bad. However, if I have never married before, I cannot say anything about marriage whether it is right or wrong. It is about someone else's life.
To those who smoke, some condemn the area boys (social miscreants) and see them as smokers, though certain steps and experiences may have led them there. So who am I to judge anyone? If I was born on the streets of Lagos, probably I would have been an area boy too. None of us is better than the other. That is life. Yes, I have spoken about marijuana in my music. However, every other artiste have made allusion to marijuana in more demeaning and derogatory ways than I have. Others have sang 'Give me the lighter; pass me the ganja' but my own message is not about that. People should listen to the message in my music not the marijuana. If you really listen to the truth in my music, you will not have a problem with the marijuana in my music. I am not promoting or condemning people who use it but I guess everybody wants to evade the truth that I talk about in my song.
