BEVERLY HILLS, August 24, (THEWILL) – Nigerian music star, David Adeleke, aka Davido, says he was racially abused by white kids while he was a student in the state of Alabama, one of the southern states in the United States.
The Nigerian singer spoke during a chat with the Recording Academy, the body governing the Grammy Awards.
He said: “Yeah, of course. It’s crazy, because I’m from both America and Africa, so I know how both sides think. I went to school in Alabama. I went to college at 15. I was very young. And Alabama was a predominantly white state. So being an African kid in a university where it’s 13% Black people, it’s amazing. It’s not easy.
“I had to learn a lot of the things when I was like, “Yo, why you look at me like that?” And not even just being Black, being African. They used to ask me questions like, “Yo, how’d you get to America?” I’m like, “What you mean? I came on a plane. “Oh, y’all got airports?” Now every American wants to go to Africa.
“Everybody wants to know where they’re from. So it’s good to see the transition from not being appreciated, to being appreciated right now. Even with fashion. You got designers making African print fashion, so it’s not only music. The culture is being felt everywhere.”
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Davido also talked about Nigerian music and its global acceptance.
He said: “And once the Afrobeat come on, you can tell the difference from the scenery, the feeling, the beats. Most people don’t even know what we saying, but they still listen to it. So that’s the great thing about it.”
