Many Hip-Hop Artists Are Lazy and Seeking Easy Money -Fatai Rolling Dollar

Fatai talking to AFP

  Highlife Maestro , Fatai rolling dollar is still kicking it hard at 85 . He recently sat down with French news Agency,AFP outside his modest Lagos Apartment .

   We are reviving and reforming highlife," he told AFP . "Highlife makes people happy."

   Fatai is unimpressed at the surging popularity of hip-hop in Nigeria and questions the musical credentials of the genre's artists.

   "Hip-hop... has its own time, when this time will pass, everything will close up, but highlife will be there, because highlife is the root of the music that we have in Nigeria today," he said.

   "If you want to know a good musician, a good musician should know how to play any instrument," betraying a slight irritation with hip-hop artists he accused of sometimes being "lazy" and simply seeking "easy money."

    Sitting in the shade of an acacia tree, he talked about his love of music, life... and women.

  "I love women," he said with a mischievous smile. "They are important to music. There is no music if there is no woman."

   He hopes to set up a music school for young artists with no opportunity to develop their talents.

   "They are roaming about the streets, They leave university, they have no jobs but they have the talent to play music," he said.

     Fatai appealed to the government to back his plans so that "my name will not perish".

  "I have no job than music in my life. If I stop what can I eat? But God knows what will happen to me when I become very old, because I am not very old now, I am still young," he declares..

   Fatai Rolling Dollar is currently working on a new album.