Nigeria's Basketmouth explains why he approached Flavour and Phyno for his album

One of Nigeria's top comedians, Basketmouth has disclosed why he approached Flavour and Phyno before kicking off work on his debut album, ‘Yabasi.’

He made the revelation during an Instagram live session with participants of the Tony Elumelu Foundation.

According to Basketmouth, ‘Yabasi,’ a highlife album released in November 2020, was a purpose-made music project that had all tracks produced by Duktor Sett.

“As long as you are partnering with the right person you can hardly go wrong. When I was creating the Yabasi album, I wasn’t selfish with the process, yes I rap but I didn’t hear myself on the album, I wasn’t there.

"The first people I went to talk to about the album were Flavour and Phyno, this is what I did, I didn’t do it over the phone, I went to visit them and I told them a story, told them what I wanted to do, I made them understand the end goal, purpose and when they agreed I started talking to other people,” the producer of ‘My Flatmates’ said.

Continuing, Basketmouth said, “I called a much as I could and I was trying to create a force, an army but beyond the fact that these guys might want to do it for me based on relationship and love I need to give them something that will interest them so the first thing I did was to get the right producer, Duktor Sett that can give the right beats.”

On why he collaborated with over eight established music acts, he said, “I needed numbers as well, I needed people that had a good following and because of the kind of music I was making if you listen to the Yabasi album closely you will find out that we didn’t talk about shaking your bum and all those things, I am not saying it is wrong but I was like we do not have an album that is clean, that you can play with the family, that the young and old can listen to so when I was selecting these guys and I didn’t select them based on friendship I selected them based on who can deliver the goods.”

Basketmouth’s ‘Yabasi’ featured Flavour, Duncan Mighty, Ice Prince, Phyno, Peruzzi, Ill Bliss, Waje, Umu Obiligbo among others.