Olawale ‘Brymo’ Ashimi hasn’t featured a Nigerian artiste on his albums in a long while. Ever since Iceprince featured him on the hit song ‘Ara’, the talented singer has shut the doors on collaborations.
In the same vein, on his new recent album ‘Oso’ he didn’t feature any artiste.
When asked about his decision for not collaborating with others, the crooner in a chat with BBC Yoruba on Tuesday revealed that it is difficult to work with artistes who don’t talk about the same issues as him.
However, he said Nigerian soulful musician, Asa is the only artiste he can collaborate with. Communicating in the Yoruba language, he said: “I have spoken to Asa’s handlers. What remains is to set it up.
“She is the one person who I can collaborate. What she talks about — love, social issues, everyday issues — are things that matter to me.
“I had important things to talk about. It is hard to bring someone who doesn’t know my thought process to collaborate on such a song.
“Many of my colleagues collaborate because of positioning. There is so much politics involved in collaboration so I chose to sing alone. I have collaborated in the past but I was not satisfied with the outcome.
Explaining further, he said most artistes in Nigeria engage in ‘collabos’ for the sake of advancement.
“If you look at it well, many people like KSA, KWAM 1, Ayinde Barrister and other indigenous musicians hardly collaborate
“Abroad too, people like Adele, Coldplay and Bruno Mars record albums alone”.
Brymo was born and raised in Okokomaiko, Ojo, Lagos State, to an Awori carpenter father and an Egun petty trader mother. He is the only child of his parents.
Brymo grew up in a multi-faith household and learned to recite the entire Qu’ran after being placed into an Islamic School.
He went to Aganju Aka Primary School and later enrolled at Japual Primary School. Brymo was quite troublesome while growing up, and got into numerous fights with other kids from his neighborhood. He initially had interest in playing football after graduating from secondary school.
In 1999, he recorded his first song while in secondary school and titled it “Future”. In 2002, Brymo and a few of his friends formed a group called The Aliens. Between 2004 and 2005, the group started having problems and eventually disbanded in 2005.
Brymo was inspired to create music after listening to his mother sing along to numerous fuji songs.