By Bukola Kayode
Grammy nominee, David Adeleke, better known as Davido has disclosed how his billionaire father, Adedeji Adeleke fought him when he started out as a musician.
Davido said in an interview that his wealthy father was only interested in his becoming a university graduate over any other ambition of his.
The ‘Fall” singer revealed how he sold hid father’s electronic items, just to rebel against him,
He said: “When my father re—fused to fund my career and said that he didn’t want me to be a musician, I bro—ke into his house in Atlanta, sold all his 30 TVs and some of the furniture. I almost sold his Rolls Royce but I didn’t have the documents. My dad didn’t care even if I won 20-GRAMMYs, he just wanted me to go to school.” Davido
“I only wanted to act cra—zy until my dad lets me do music. After I sold his stuffs, I left for Nigeria but immediately I landed at the airport, an army of about 200 soldiers which was dispatched to catch me and take me to my father picked me up by trousers and bru—tally took me straight to my father. So my father asked “Son where have you been?” And I was like I wanna do music, I don’t want to go to school and you can’t force me to go. Then he said “Okay, let’s have a deal since you really love music.” And I said now you’re talking business. So he said that he’ll invest in my music career, he’ll build me a world-class studio but I have to go to school. So we arranged that if I go to school from Monday to Friday, I’ll stay in the weekend and go to the studio he’ll build for me and do music. So I accepted to take the money he was giving me but I planned that I’ll go to school for like 2 months and if I shoot the video he was gonna pay for and blow up, I’ll run away again. And as he promised me, he sho—t the most expensive music video for me at that time in Nigeria and fortunately for me, it blow up and that’s how I kinda like got into the industry.
“So when I went back to school, my friends called me and they were like “Bro, your song is going cra—zy.” I was shocked and the one which touched me the most was when they told me that all the girls were going cra—zy for my song. I was in school then and I was feeling cra—zy so I started planning how to es—cape from my father and school again. So over time, I now dropped another song and this one sca—ttered the whole of Nigeria. After this second song, I couldn’t even go to class again like students were just dis—tracted coz I was famous. That’s when I ran away from school again so this time, imagine my dad seeing me on Billboards, headlining shows but he didn’t know where I was. Anytime he saw a show with me included, he’ll send the police to ca—tch me”.
He added: “He did it like twice and then he started messing up my business because everybody was scared to book me for their shows because if you book Davido, you’ll be a—rrested. So I made a song called “Dami Duro”. The song goes like “E Ba Dami Duro, Emi Omo Baba Olowo.” In my dialect, this song means “You cannot stop me, I’m the son of a rich man but I must be a musician.” So I dropped that song and it became a street anthem. It was the president of Nigeria’s best song and ringtone. Even the police and army which my Dad sent to arrest me and bring me to him became fans.
“When he sent the police to come and arrest me, they were like “We can’t arrest Davido, he’s super-talented.” But after this, he discovered that I was already unstoppablę so we found a way for me to go back to school. My Dad doesn’t care if you’re as big as Joe Biden, if you’re not educated, he will not respect you. So even if I win a hundred GRAMMYs, my dad won’t respect me if I didn’t go to school. But I eventually got my degree before going into music full-time. I got my degree in 2015 and as from that time, there has been no turning back till date.”
Years down the line, Davido’s father has become his biggest supporter with the “Kante” singer recently revealing that the older Adeleke gave him a huge amount of money after seeing him on stage.
According to Davido, his father, Chief Adedeji Adeleke came to watch him perform at his State Farm Arena concert in Atalanta and after the show, he got a well done message from him and a $300K gift.
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