CO-FOUNDER of 360Nobs and Boomplay Music, Oye Akideinde, has revealed that he once took to rapping but failed. He disclosed in an online interview recently where he also talked about his life and building his business.
“I grew up in a family of music,” said Akideinde, who is also Boomplay’s West Africa Regional Director.
“I’m proud to say I’m a failed rapper because I tried my hands on rapping. So, growing up, my two older brothers went to St. Finbarrs. So, we had a group called the Ace 4. I used to enjoy seeing them break dancing. And this was in the 80s.
“At that point in time, Michael Jackson was the biggest thing. So, I was huge on dancing, I was huge on singing and then, first time I heard the song from Grand Master Flash, Curtis Blow, I knew that rap would take over. Hip hop would take over. So, I wanted to be a rapper. That was my formative years.
“Around 1993 or 1994, my dad brought home a Windows 3.1. That was like just MS-DOS and that kind of changed (me). I just said, okay, I think that time, I was in SS2. I just said, okay, IT. I just fell in love with it because he gave me access to it. And that was it for me.
“At some point, I said, what did I want to do in IT? Was it gaming because I grew up with consoles as well, from Atari to Commodos and NES. So, it was just interesting. And my dad was a civil engineer, my brother was an architect. They were upset that I was leaving the artistic path but I said that every skill I have, I would put it to good use.”
Akideinde also talked about professional incursion into the IT world during his one year mandatory National Youth Service Corps scheme.
“You know, everyone is always looking for where to work. At that point in time, there was a company called Comet. So, I took letter to NYSC. They thought it was Comet newspaper, so they deployed me to Comet newspaper. But I think in a way, it helped me because I’m actually grateful for that role. At Comet, they just threw me to the publications department because of my I.T background. They said: ‘They’re doing website. So, you will just be updating the website.”
“I picked a lot of my web designing skill from there. So, after that, I went to an Internet Service Provider (ISP) called Prodigy. Prodigy, for me, was where I really sharpened my skills. They were an ISP that was providing internet services but they had a woman that just started a web department. And the first thing she said to me was: ‘Draw me a comic.’
“So, I drew a comic. That was my test and interview. It took me about a week and it was fun. I’ve been looking for that comic for years now. It was about Obatala. I created a story about Obatala. And the next thing, she said was ‘try and animate it.’
“I was like, ‘for real? I think I could only animate that front page but she was impressed. She said, ‘I think you will be better as a web designer because you already have IT skills but what do you know about html? Then, it was about Frontpage and all that. I dabbled, dabbled and before I knew it, I started doing a lot of websites.”
Today, Akideinde who has over 17 years’ experience in IT holds a Masters in Information Systems and is listed among 100 Most Influential Young Nigerians.