Saturday was great. As I mentioned in my post I visited a soccer game. Later that day, I caught up with a Naija hip hop artist, Sound Sultan. When I called him to arrange a time to meet, he mentioned that he would be shooting a music video and that Wyclef was in town. I was delighted at the idea of possibly getting some footage of Wyclef in Nigeria, what a treat that would be. So I’m at the Meridian EK Hotel on Victoria Island. The EK Hotel is a very classy hotel. As I waited in the lobby, I saw all of these opulent looking people dressed in either expensive suits or elaborate and elegant African attire. Most of the men wore dark shades, anything from Boss to Jacob. There was a big event happening, I later found out that this is why Wyclef was in town. He was invited to give a performance for a private event happening at the hotel. When the people started to attend the event, I was completely blown away. There were mostly Mercedes and Bentley’s pulling up to the hotel. Army men with machine guns served as security, made sure that the dignitaries got into the building safely.
The interesting thing is that once the event was over, instead of hanging with the opulent bunch, Wyclef made his way back to his hotel room where he hosted the video shoot for Sound Sultan. Wyclef was cool enough to give me a great interview before his show. In his words, “how can I say no to Brooklyn, then I’ll be hearing, oh really Clef, really?” LOL! He was hilarious. I learned from my interview that this was Wyclef’s seventh time in Nigeria. He is known in Nigeria amongst the hip hop heads as the Haitan Nigerian. When he first visited the country he was at a TuFace show and was blown away by a performance that Soul Sultan gave. Since then Sultan has become his little brother from another mother. Sultan ended up doing a cameo on Wyclef’s album and Wyclef also did a collaboration on Sultan’s album. He sees similarities between the hip-hop community in Nigeria and Haiti. For the love of the art form and the need to spread social awareness he shares his creativity with his brothers across the waters.
It was certainly a wonderful and quite hilarious to share a few hours with Sultan and his video crew and Wyclef in the hotel room. We had moments of laughter, seriousness and creativity…in the midst of it all my vision was being accomplished and more…the day was great.
