I’m lounging on the sofa, Paybac is sprawled on the ground while a documentary about 2chainz is on and he (2chainz) is being wheeled around to perform. I tell Paybac that I’d love the job of wheeling 2chainz around because free weed, free food and I’ll still get paid. I refocus on the documentary, but I can feel Paybac’s gaze on me. “Do you smoke?” Paybac asks.
I show him my always ready lighter and he smiles then follows up by asking if I’d like to smoke before or after the interview and I tell him that before is best. Just as he gets up, Boogey’s frame pushes through the front door and I get up to shake him. Just then does it occur to me that I’m chilling with two of Nigeria’s top rappers and I’m trying to soak in as much of the environment as I can. Paybac and I had been talking about our favourite books prior to Boogey’s arrival as I admired the collection that was on display in a built-in shelf in the apartment/studio. The studio has enough space for games, recording music and a kitchen with different faces shuffling in and out of the space. I ask Paybac where we’d be smoking.
“Anywhere, I’m an outlaw.”
He is dressed the part with a bandana reeling in his massive mound of hair and a Denim jacket fastened unto his waist. I pick up plastic seats and arrange them on the cool opening just in front of the house. There’s a little scuffle to find the rizla but it is eventually found, and I begin rolling. Just as I’m done applying the last bit of saliva to the joint, both men walk out with plastic cups containing alcohol with a bottle in hand in case a refill is needed. A little lisp gives Paybac a goofy dimension and it is very endearing. But Boogey is severe in looks with his dreadlocks firmly held behind his head. Even the few dreadlocks that escape the hold behind his head look very intentional and I see him spitting a few bars into his phone before he takes his seat, plastic cup in hand. However, his subtle voice gives him away.
I’m with The Lost & Found (Boogey & PayBac) who released their joint project, Alternate Ending around the beginning of June and we are talking about music and many things:
Me: so, I’d like to know where the idea for Alternate Ending came from.
Boogey: Should I go, or do you want to go?
Paybac: Go, let me drink.
(laughter)
Boogey: so, the idea like every other idea, started with a dot (makes a sound mimicking a dot). It didn’t come out of nowhere, we had a project called Face Off (their first album together) that we recorded in 2016. While we were recording face off, we were already thinking of alternate ending – that was 3 years ago. While we were recording face off, we saw what was it? 14,605,000 futures (Avengers reference which causes some laughter especially when Paybac chimes in with ‘we had the time stone’), and it was only in one of them that alternate ending dropped so we did everything possible. But on a more serious note, we started planning for alternate ending while recording face off cos we saw the full story, and we knew we couldn’t fit everything into one project, that was how alternate ending came about. It was a fantasy thing, okay right now, we are talking about our struggles in the industry, our individual stories, apart from this now, what else can we use to inspire people? Fantasy. You’ve gone through hardship and when you’ve gone through hardship, what do you dream about? You dream about beating it and getting to a certain level, so it doesn’t end with the suffering and the hardship. We thought about WHAT IF, we became the biggest rappers in Nigeria, Africa (or even the world Paybac adds), or even the world, as farfetched as it might sound, it’s the dream of most artistes. That was what we thought about, fantasy. Everybody listening to this now is thinking like ‘these guys are going hard men’ and if you see the tweets at me and him (Paybac), people were saying ‘I wish these guys would just blow up men’, so it wasn’t just our fantasy, it was fantasy of the fans too. So, we said okay, what if we could actually bring this thing to life on the next project. This is stuff we thought about while recording face off. So, thought ahead of time, 3 years ago. We were ready for alternate ending 3 years before time, all we had to do was gather thoughts, put them together. So that’s where the idea came from, WHAT IF.
Paybac: that’s it basically. It’s the more positive side to the story. That’s why the title is alternate ending. Looking at an alternate route or an alternate ending for the story that was being told at that point in time.
Boogey: what if Daenerys didn’t destroy kings landing (laughs at his game of thrones reference).
Paybac: best ending ever cos people are crying all over the world.
Me: did you guys select the features together or?
Paybac: together. I always tell people that this shit was like a group project. People always think that it’s me and Boogey, but it was like a group project of like 3 producers and 2 artistes. There was a WhatsApp group, okay this vibe, this idea, whatever we tried to do was a conversation between the 5 of us.
B: every time we came up with something, if even 1 person wasn’t really feeling it, we go back to the drawing board. So, everything had to be unanimous.
P: exactly like a group project in the university, when you guys are 5 working on a project.
B: there was a song, an instrumental, that we had to leave out cos I just said, ‘I am not really feeling this, I can’t lie’. That was it, we dropped it.
P: thank god we actually did and something good actually came out of it, cos that was when we got the song with Aramide.
B: that’s how we did the song with Aramide that I’m a huge fan of. You see this story we just told you, we had to kick something out. Just shows you how positive my aura is. That’s the way my chakra works men, when I’m in sage mode (anime reference).
P: (laughing) calm the fuck down dude.
M: who are the 3 producers?
P: Charlie Xtreme (@charlie_xtreme on twitter), Sizzlepro (@sizzlepro on twitter) and Black intelligence. He is a fucking genius.
M: yo off record, who is Lyn? Lyn is @majesty_lyn1 on twitter.
B: no man, on record.
P: we hit up Lyn for a hook and she just brought that verse.
B: I was the one directly in contact with her, cos I’d seen her on Instagram when I followed her months back. I was going through her page, like this girl is nice, she can sing, she can rap, she’s very artistic. This is someone I’d like to work with so, I hit her up like ‘we should work together sometime in the future’, the memories song wasn’t even done. This was months ago, before we recorded the album and she was like ‘yeah okay’. That was it. Then when memories came, I thought of her and I hit her up and I said, ‘we need a hook’. It was supposed to be a hook.
P: I don’t think it was clear to her
B: Yeah yeah, I actually didn’t say ‘we need a hook’. I said, ‘we need you on this song’ and I thought she’d say since its 2 mc’s, they wouldn’t be asking me to rap. When she sent it back, and I heard the verse, no hook, just a verse. I was like whaaaaat, I called her, and I was like ‘what the hell did you just do?’ and she was like ‘oh I thought that was what you needed’ and I was like no we weren’t asking for a rap verse, but that’s not even what I’m talking about right now. That verse was crazy, but you are going to add the hook that we initially wanted and that was it.
P: I know “Shun Sir” is more melodic, hard to kill is like the hard jam but memories (the song with Lyn), the love it got, I did not expect it and its just rap and hook.
B: I was just about to say that. They did not expect that, that’s why it had that effect on people. They didn’t expect it. I’ve realized one thing all this while dropping projects and I’m sure you’ve noticed it too. The element of surprise gets people the most. When I did my verse on MI’s Illegal Music 2, I still don’t think that’s my best verse, even though many people think that’s the best verse they’ve heard from me, that’s nowhere close to my best verse. I think by my standards, average at best, but the element of surprise. People did not know me, they did not see anything like that coming from someone they had never heard of. The way it affected me is the way it affected everybody else. That shock. She’s actually nice like this? There’s someone that can do this?
P: She was in the pocket men. Very impressive. The song is going by itself men. Like it’s on the Rhythm’s urban contemporary chart. That’s not where you expect such a song to be. That’s a song without any hook or rather, the hook is the last part of the song.
B: she came through on that, and she killed that.
M: which song was recorded first?
P: god fucking damn. I can’t remember that shit, but I think it might be implode.
B: I’m certain it wasn’t implode because when we recorded implode, I asked about the intro track and then Sizzle said ‘oh we will do that later’. The first song we recorded was uwaka.
P: yeah yeah. It is.
M: how did one cross river guy and another Akwa ibom guy arrive at “Uwaka”?
P: it was the guy on the song that rapped or trapped the hook (Danladi), whatever they call that and Sizzle. That had nothing to do with us, like I said, group project.
B: yeah so that chorus had nothing to do with us. Everyone heard it, we heard the beat with the hook and we wrote to it.
P: not the actual hook. The guy gave us a demo of what the hook would sound like and then we got the actual hook.
M: did you guys contribute to the production?
B: I don’t know if Paybac contributed in some way, but me, I know nothing about production (laughs).
P: I don’t think I contributed to production. I’m starting to learn engineering though.
Somehow our conversation veers into talk about both artistes wanting to be seen as the best rappers in Nigeria and they explain their views on being the best.
B: let me tell you something, if you are doing this rap thing, and you don’t think you are the best or should be the best, then why are you doing it? Probably just for the money and I’m not judging you.
P: the art of rap evolved from ‘I am better than that DJ’s mc’. Fuck Logic for saying he is preaching peace and positivity. He thinks he is the best rapper in the world (and rightly so).
B: even gospel rappers lowkey, in their minds are thinking they are the best rappers. Artistes come out and say this and this, but everyone wants to be the best in the world.
P: everybody wants to be the best in the world men. The artiste painting under the sun believes Davinci’s father (throws a waka sign).
B: all he is thinking is just give me the opportunity and I’m going to wreck shit. I tweeted something yesterday about how it’s all love. I mean, I don’t hate, I’m not jealous of anyone. If I see someone doing good, I’m actually happy for them and I want them to do well and I wish them all the best and all that, but I actually want to destroy them. Like everything they’ve done, that’s my mentality, I see what you are doing, and it’s great, I love you, it’s all good, you are doing it for the culture and for hip-hop but I’m trying to beat that. Where you’ve taken it to, I’m trying to beat that and go ahead of you, so I actually see you as competition. Does not mean you are the enemy. Him (referring to Paybac) for example, he is my guy but I’m trying to kill him.
P: we are trying to kill each other, all the time (laughs).
B: if we are jumping on tracks, that’s the mentality.
P: that’s exactly how it should be. I want to fucking kill this guy.
B: that’s why the album sounds like that cos we are trying to outrap each other because we were actually trying to murder each other. It raises your self confidence and all that. I don’t want a situation where I’d be like, I don’t care, or I don’t mind. I actually want to be regarded as the best in the game.
P: I do men. You want to be the best writer (referring to me) in the world. You may not say it but that’s it.
B: the only difference is that some people lie about it and they aren’t honest about it. We are honest about it. We are guys oh, but I’m really trying to make people hopeless men, like they can’t rap. That’s one of my goals, I want to make everybody doing it feel like they want to quit. Don’t quit though, I expect you to bring back the same energy, give me back that way, do your homework and try and destroy this guy. That’s why sometimes people tweet things at me that could be disrespectful, but I actually like it. Like someone would tweet something at me like, this one actually happened yeah. Someone tweeted at me like ‘I know guys in PH wey dey rap pass you’. I told them to show receipts cos if I hear this thing, and these guys are making me feel some type of way, I’ll go and write better stuff and try and beat that. I told the guys to send me stuff but unfortunately, he hadn’t dropped music so (smirks), I don’t know how it works but you get. I like stuff like that.
P: you can’t be the best rapper with no songs.
B: when I see something mad, I need to beat that, that’s my mentality. I am the best or I want to be the best. And that’s his mentality too (referring to Paybac).
P: that’s exactly the mentality.
M: who did the intro?
P: that’s an app.
B: the portal? We used an app.
P: we just typed in the words and it will voice it. People meet me and ask me and I’m like that shit is an app.
B: people ask me which British narrator we hired and I’m like nah, it’s an app. It’s automated, you just type in the words, and it voices it.
P: if you notice, there are some inflections that don’t sound human. The female voices are real though.
M: any videos?
P: yeah, we are planning, 2 are in the works right now.
We venture into discussions about drug use by several artistes for “inspiration” and both artistes have different views on intoxicants in relation to what they do.
Boogey only drinks but will not have a drink until after he is done writing and recording. He sees booze as self-reward for his efforts. Paybac can cope with being opiated while writing or recording. He postulates that those who need drugs to write music, are dealing with a lot of insecurity and that the drugs don’t necessarily serve as “inspiration”. He alludes that he smokes because of his stress levels and paranoia. Both artistes would like to inform people not to do drugs though. We take a little break and Boogey and Paybac sing praises of the producers they worked with and how impactful they were in creating this body of work. They want their producers acknowledged and they honestly posit that popularism plays a key role in toning down the massive impact that producers have on bodies of work from singles to albums. Despite artistes bellowing the producer’s names on the songs, only a few producers get the recognition they deserve. Kel P, who has been one of the most prolific producers in the past year doesn’t have a face in the mind of most listeners to put onto his works. The lost & found want their producers to deliver their perspective on what it took to make this album and what was going on in their mind. They allude that the production, just like their lyricism must be broken down to allow people truly understand the full intentions behind the album stating that the work they (producers) do is as important as whatever lyrics bounces on their beats.
B: also, the cover art for alternate ending was done by a genius called macsolomon (@notoviae on twitter) who has been working with me since the beginning. He made the first album art for the first project I ever did, artificial intelligence.
P: are you fucking serious?
B: yeah men.
P: I didn’t know it was that way back, I thought it was like from the next 2 projects.
B: I’ve been working with him since 2012 and he is my number 1 fan, when it comes to the music. That’s one person that never shook and never wavered, even at times I wasn’t dropping music, that’s one person that’d always be on social media shouting my praises. Since 2012 till now, that’s 7 years so come on, I must give him his props, not just as the dope graphic artist that he is but as the number 1 fan.
P: first time I noticed his shit was the song that had the Hitler artwork.
B: that was the song with LordV, Aduke, salute me. Been working with that dude since 2012 till now, so he is like part of the family now. He even did the cover art for face off and now this, so I think he deserves props for what he does. Just like we talk about producers, graphic designers also do not get enough praise. The thing that catches your eye first about an album is its album art. People underestimate how much cover art affects your decision to listen to something. Since the beginning, it has always been something important so, it has to be something that’ll make people think. What’s the idea behind this?
M: who else do you look at and think they can do what you do?
B: personally, I don’t think… (Paybac bursts into laughter)
P: talk your shit.
B: always now, I’m an advocate for people talking their shit. I want other people to talk their shit too. Before the album dropped, there was something I tweeted that got mixed reactions. I announced the album on twitter and I said, ‘nobody in these parts is capable of rapping at this level and you we hear the album, you’d understand’. I meant no one had the skill level to rap like this and I meant it.
P: ya bish.
B: I wasn’t trying to mess with people or troll, I meant it and I’m not trying to be vain or anything cos in these parts, we have some messed up definition of humility.
P: (laughs) Nigerians like it when you are suffering.
B: yeah so, we have some messed up definition of humility here. If you talk your shit then you are not humble but no, I can be humble and talk my shit. I can acknowledge what I’m capable of, especially if I talk and I walk it. If you talk it and you walk it, its fine. There are other people I see talk their shit too and they back it up and I have respect for them. I acknowledge them as being awesome and great at what they do but I still think I am better than them. You have to maintain that mentality that you can do better than what you are doing now or what anyone else is doing right now. That’s how you keep your juices flowing, if you don’t have that mentality, then the game will kill you. After everything we’ve been through, the only reason the game hasn’t completely killed us is because we have that mentality that we can get better. Any obstacle that comes can always be climbed over or broken through, you get? I always see a few people and I think these niggas are dope, some are legends like MI, Modenine, AQ, Paypercorleone. These are all my guys, or his (gesticulating at Paybac) guys or our guys. Do you get? We know they can rap, and they know we respect what they can do, does not mean we are not trying to destroy all of them.
P: (screaming) I think I am better than Modenine, I don’t care that he is Modenine men.
B: you must have that mentality, and I think even he (Modenine) who is the god mc, he’d appreciate this. He knows that I have respect for him, but he’d appreciate that I’m trying to kill him. He’d appreciate me trying to prove that I’m better than him. It’s the essence of hip-hop, its competitive. I said it on a song, but I can’t remember the exact song or lyrics, I said MI and Modenine should be scared that I’m on their toes. I think I said I’m on their heels like volcano craters.
P: I gat love for you all but trying to murder you niggas (laughs).
B: its not a disrespectful thing, even though once you mention anyone’s name on a song then you dissed the person.
P: even if you are using it as a metaphor, they’ll put the title there and put diss track in bracket.
B: there was a diplomatic immunity freestyle I did over the Drake song and I was just saying these are my top 5 rappers and people actually called it a diss track even when I clearly said these are my all-time top 5 mc’s. I kind of described a bunch of things and you are supposed to guess, you are supposed to listen to it and work it out. That was the whole point of the song. I deliberately made one ambiguous to keep the conversation going, so even if you are smart enough to figure out the other 4, you’d still not know that one. Those guys I just called their names are guys that we respect, and they can really rap. We can’t call everyone, but these are guys we know are nice. Doesn’t mean at the back of my mind I’m not thinking, you are nice, but I still want to kill you. I expect these guys to have that mentality. I’m almost sure they have this mentality.
M: any individual projects coming out soon?
P: I have a project dropping most likely late August or early September. CULT, that’s the title. (me staring at him mouth agape) Why does everyone always react like that when I tell them that? Someone said I had a cult following and I’ve always loved movies with a cult following. Like pulp fiction, I love pulp fiction. That’s where the idea came from. One of the first times I ever heard anything be regarded as something with a cult following, it was pulp fiction and I love that movie.
B: I don’t have a title yet for my individual project and it might not drop this year but me and Bigfoot (producer), we are working on something together and it is more likely to drop before my solo project. I know, a lot of collabos, that’s how we keep the game fresh. We are both really busy, but we’d find a way to make it work.
P: that’d be fire men, cos Bigfoot is fire. I feel like it’s (collabos) good for your energy. For the culture.
B: it’s good for your energy, and I feel like you get different perspectives.
M: what was the writing process for songs like implode where you guys had to go back and forth?
P: we just wrote that shit
B: we just sat down, and I’d write my own and rap it to him, and he’d write his own and he’d rap it to me. We wrote implode in like 30 minutes.
M: how long did the album take?
P: the album didn’t take that long. It was recorded mostly on the weekend.
B: we were recording every weekend cos I have a 9-5 now so all through the writing and recording process, we were coming here (studio). Knockout 2-3 songs one weekend, next weekend knockout 2-3 songs. So, it didn’t take long. Like 2 months.
P: like 1 month 2 weeks or 2 months. What was left was features.
B: we now had to select the right features for the album.
M: so how did you select the features?
B: it was kind of spontaneous really. Its not like all of us had one person or something. When we were done recording or even if it was just the beat we listened to, we’d all make suggestions. Even memories, we had like 3 or 4 suggestions in mind.
P: yeah, we had like 3 or 4 suggestions. We all go listen to people we suggested, then we reconvene and reevaluate. Group project.
M: anything you’d like to clear the air on?
P: yeah, cos I’ve been reading a lot of reviews, hard to kill does not have anything to do with any critic or any bad belle. It’s just a fictional song about actual bad guys coming to kill us and we are running away from them. Then we say fuck it and go to kill them.
B: it’s like science fiction, so basically a movie. We are saying, WHAT IF, we are the biggest artistes in the world which obviously, we are not, but on the album, we are. So, you have to look at it that way. We created a balance. Doesn’t mean the emotion behind it is not real.
P: it sounds real enough. Its art. I feel you should just be getting your full idea of what the album is about just now. It’s not just raps over beats.
B: there’s that one person that said its just “waxing lyrical”. The last time I heard someone say waxing lyrical was like ’95. To be honest.
P: its not just rap over beats, there are layers men, and under those layers, there are other layers.
B: I feel like anyone who reviewed the album, within that week should go back and listen again and go back and do another review. I like that many writers were rushing to do reviews, gave us this feeling that what we did was impactful, so it made us feel good. But, even after that, you can do a part 2 review. Things that I might have missed or things I might have evaluated wrongly. There’s no harm in that.
P: I think the problem is the culture. Cos the world is very right now, right now. Everybody wants to see things now. If you can actually digest an album in one or two days, chances are that you are listening to a wack album.
B: and here’s something I noticed, some people don’t actually listen to an album from top to bottom. I know people that listen to an album on shuffle or just go through the tracklist, looking for a feature with a big artiste or someone they like. You don’t get the vibe of the album, you don’t get the story, you don’t know what led to that song. Another thing I tell radio personalities, critics that I don’t like is the underground tag.
P: or the hardcore tag.
B: I don’t always blame them, cos I think it comes from a place of ignorance, but I wish they’d ask. There are times when an interview starts, and I’d be referred to as an underground rapper. What is an underground rapper? I’ve had like 5 industry nominations (including 4 headies), I’ve had my face in front of screens for the whole world to see, there’s some impact I’ve made so I’m definitely not underground. I’m just somewhere chilling so it’s a bit insulting. And the hardcore part, I’m trying to come on a song and talk about my life and you are calling me hardcore, what part of the song is hardcore? What I’ve noticed after all these years is that what Nigerians consider hardcore is that you are rapping in English. Or you rap over a beat that is not pop or afrobeats, but I feel that since the alte scene got bigger, many people are beginning to see that there can be something different, it’s not black and white. Its not either hardcore or commercial.
P: some Nigerians listen to Jcole and think he is hardcore. How can you listen to Jcole and think he is hardcore? Hardcore is trigger fingers.
B: it’s not hardcore, we are just rapping. I feel if I changed everything I rapped to a local dialect, I wouldn’t be considered hardcore. As long as the music is not misrepresented with labels and tags, then it’s all good.
P: also, this thing about people not liking my shit or not liking my voice, I think it’s actually okay. I told a guy he is actually allowed not to like my shit. Jay Z, who is like one of the greatest of all time has people who don’t like his shit, it’s allowed. There are people that didn’t like Jesus, jee fucking sus. So, its allowed. You know say rap no dey work for naija. That was the first conversation I had with someone in the studio. My first time ever in the studio, I was 18, fucking 18. They kept telling me you think 2face can’t rap, they kept giving me these labels to discourage me.
B: I always get that I’m complaining that people don’t like me, which is wrong. I’m only ever concerned about hypocrisy. I don’t expect everybody to like me, if everybody liked me, I’d feel some type of way. Fake. So, I expect that there are people that don’t like my work. What I hate is people that lie. Someone hits me up like yo I’m your biggest fan, but why haven’t you dropped anything since sanctum? I get shit like this all the time on Instagram, twitter, and I’ve dropped about 8 projects since then, been on numerous features, dropped videos. Those are the guys I don’t like or someone that just comes out of nowhere and says dude we missed your music, where have you been? Do you get? Then I ask them where have YOU been? Then they admit that they haven’t really been listening. And there’s this thing that I do where I try and inform people, everybody coming up, upcoming artistes about what’s going on behind the curtains. These guys will lie to you, this person will do you like this, this artiste will do you like this. Like I kept telling people how many times that their favourite mc’s that they want to see me collaborate with have yanked off my verses from their project.
P: (laughing) shots fired (mimics shooting sound).
B: then people will come and say I’m always complaining and that I should focus on the music but I’m actually doing the music. I’m doing it and I’m trying to let you know. What you see in this music industry is not what is. I say it all the time but because of where I’m at these days, I stopped bothering about it but there was a time it used to bother me. I was just trying to tell them what’s happening when they ask why I haven’t worked with this or that guy and they say I don’t like to work with them, I have worked with them, but they don’t want you to hear it. I am trying to let you know this because there were tweets that implied that we were complaining, and I just want to use this to clear it up.
P: since the album dropped, over 10 people have tweeted at us that the album is so dope and they wonder why so person isn’t supporting it. We are not complaining, it’s almost like an intentional misunderstanding. Nobody owes you shit. I feel that you have to build your own shit and then sooner or later, people will fuck with it.
B: I have never complained about nobody supporting our shit. What I don’t like is hypocrisy.
P: like rappers preaching unity (laughs).
B: like rappers preaching unity, when there is no togetherness.
Listen to The Lost & Found Alternate Ending below: