May 28, (THEWILL) – Veteran Nollywood soundtrack producer, Stanley Okorie, has said that producing and recording songs for Nollywood in the late 90s and early 2000, all by himself, came at great personal costs.
The singer said he missed out on a lot of quality family time because of the strict deadlines he had to work with.
Stanley is the brain behind viral songs like ‘Billionaire onye ji cash’, ‘Happy Mumu’ etc.
Stanley, over the course of his career as a soundtrack producer, has recorded over 10,000 soundtracks for Nollywood.
“The first soundtrack I ever did, I was paid a bottle of Sprite for three songs. I didn’t drink the Sprite alone, so it was still half payment and the guy that gave me the job said he was even doing me a favour,” he revealed in a recent interview.
“He said he would connect me to somebody who will give me a job. The very first job I got payment for was for a film called ‘Compromise.’ And then, from that, other films followed.
“It wasn’t for the pay but then, the next film I got big pay for was a film called ‘Evil Genius.’ There wasn’t money until much later I started charging because it was taking a large chunk of my life.
“You have to write it, produce it, record it, master it, engineer, everything. And Nollywood is brutal because there’s a timeline. When they give you the rough script, they expect in a week or two that good music must be ready,” he revealed.
Okorie recalled how he got into altercations with his wife for missing family events and their wedding anniversary.
“They were paying well but nobody is ever paid what you deserve for your art. But the money was coming, I was living well and bought my cars but the cost was that I was missing out on life itself.
“For like four years, I was making all the music in Nollywood. I’ve made over 10,000 songs. It is a lot and believe me, it came at a cost.
“Negligence to some things; you don’t have time because you’re so focused on your art. You can’t go to birthdays because you have deadlines. You miss wedding anniversaries; that was always pissing my wife off.
“But when I knew that my work was important was when they started naming movies after my music,” the singer said.
