I don’t know which imitates the other more between art and life, but Nigerians take note when neither of them do.

Tuface’s dalliance helped keep several journos busy in the late 2000’s, including yours truly. The fact that he fathered children by multiple women was worth its weight in printing ink but Tuface wasn’t the first singer to do this. What made his story more intriguing than others was the stark contrast between his life choices and his squeaky clean art and image.

Similarly, if Goldie’s death in 2013 was a news quake, then reports that she was survived by a husband provided the aftershock. Her music implied availability, her image implied that it was more than an implication and her relationship with Kenya’s Prezzo on Big Brother Africa, 2012 seemed to provide confirmation of same.

So also, when R&B songstress J’odie released her ode to infanthood “Kuchi Kuchi” it was hard to believe that she didn’t actually have a child of her own.

Surely she must have had her own bundle of joy in one hand while she wrote..

It seems something binds us together, supernatural /
I can hardly live a moment without you .. Oh baby

But no, J’odie was a virgin at the time and for her, children come after marriage, not the other way around. Which would have been a perfectly normal thing to say, if only she had stopped there.

She didn’t.

In an interview with Y Naija in 2014, the singer pontificated –

There are many people out there who don’t know who they are or where they are going… if people would truthfully bare their inner thoughts, no one wants to stay with someone who is “the national cake”.

Keep your privates to yourself and your wedded partner. It may look “cool” to be a sexually loose person on television or magazines, but in real life, people actually respect those who have self control.

That struck a cord, nationwide.

Nigerians have premarital sex, lots of it. The Adekunle Ajasin University conducted a study 6 years ago and found that 8 in 10 women from the South West have engaged in premarital sex before. 4 out the 5 states with the highest rates of HIV infection are located in the North and this study by the University of Ilorin showed that Nigerians from the East, West, North and South all want abortion to be legalized, albeit for varying reasons.

So by her comments, J’odie made instant enemies of several folks who weren’t necessarily fans of her music to begin with.

The soul singer reportedly put to bed late last week and when those same enemies subtracted the date of birth of her newborn from the date of her wedding in 2015 and the number they got didn’t rhyme with “mine” , they had her head for dinner!

J’odie deserves to be chastised for being a hypocrite and I’ll move out of the way for her to get these arrows from the people, but I believe it is well within her and other artistes’ rights to approach their music from any angle they see fit. We often encourage artistes to imprison themselves in the art they create and the image they portray as if they owe it to us to be consistent.

Why is Banky W still unmarried after all these songs about love?  Is Wizkid really balling if he’s still a Lagos tenant? Is D’ija’s marital status really any of our business?

Granted there are those who want you to know every sordid detail of their lives and to those I say – do your thing. I’m more concerned about those who don’t take to Instagram every time they want to tell their significant others that they love them or Snapchat their children’s embarrassing mistakes at home or send press releases every time they take a new picture. I’m also not talking about those who openly compel you to view them through the prism of their art and image.

We ought to allow those who don’t want their art to imitate life, and vice versa, to do so without fear of retribution. Image, music and personal life do not have to converge in order for an artiste to have a complete story.