“THE INDUSTRY WAS HOSTILE.. I THOUGHT OF DROWNING MYSELF IN THE 3RD MAINLAND BRIDGE” – MO’CHEDDAH

The talented rapper/singer and fashion designer  soon exited the scene at a point when she was seen as the next big thing.

In a recent edition of the Dang Monologue, Mo’Cheddah opens up on her career, her battles and how she wanted to take her life at some point.

”I have been active in the music industry since I was 12,” she said, ”When I say actively, I mean going to the studio…I always knew what I wanted to do… Music was my life, it was what I wanted to do and It was easy for my parents to support me.

The day I recorded ‘Won Beri’, my life changed in an instant. I was 16 and the lady that was supposed to record the song didn’t show up, so they asked me to come record this thing pending the time she shows up, so I entered the booth and sang but nobody thought it sounded that good, until Sauce Kid [now Sinzu] came and asked, who sang this hook.

I didn’t need to be in the video, but Clarence Peters was like, the whole of Nigeria has been asking who is she and that changed my career.

She speaks on the part of the industry she wasn’t prepared for

”I was brought up to be very honest, to be very proud of my emotions, brought up to make my own decisions… I was coming from a naive, God-fearing family and I went into the world of adults and I was thrown into a jungle and people didn’t care if I was 16,  they attacked me.

The industry was hostile… I would be performing and they would turn off my microphone because the A-list artist doesn’t like me. I didn’t get it, i didn’t know there was hate… I never knew hate…

There was one day I looked at my Mum and told her ”You taught me everything about love but you did not teach me to hate.” I don’t know why she did not, but the truth is there is hate in the world, so I went into the industry thinking everybody loved everybody. I didn’t understand that hate.

The day I won the Channel O award, that was around when Twitter came out and people I knew started dragging me online. People started asking why I won the award, people starting questioning me and carrying stories around me.

How do I meet a legend and I kneel down to say hi to her and she is like ”Get off me”, a woman I have looked up to for years, the industry was hostile.”

What broke me?

”What broke me was that when I left my label… people chose to pick sides and obviously it wasn’t mine.

I will never forget I was in my bedroom and I broke down. It was a week of shows and I was at home for that day, the next day I was to go to Ghana and I got a BBM that you had to come to the studio right now.

I just wanted to lay down, I was to go to Ghana the next day to record and perform, I just wanted to lay down… and it all dawned on me at that moment that I wasn’t living and even if I got to that place I was going, I will be so sad and miserable.

I was crying and I told my then boyfriend, [my husband now] and I told him I didn’t want to do this anymore.

There was a big family meeting and I told my Mum to get me a lawyer… so I have known these men since I was like three, I have known them, they were amazing to me and they came for me because of money, at that time I was 21 and I was fighting a legal battle with people I called my brothers.

That was when I knew the world was really messed up, that was when I knew I was on my own. I was poor, I won’t say I was depressed because I was famous and poor because my parents didn’t teach me to value money. I will be on a bus and someone will look at me like Mo Cheddah, why are you on a bus?

On depression and contemplating suicide

”I felt as I had failed, especially because I had thought that business will pick up. They had so much hate for me, they started bad-mouthing me to people to companies, to producers, so I was kind of blacklisted, so you know all that time people were saying, where is Mo’Cheddah, nobody wanted to work with me because they hated me and they wanted to do everything in their power to ruin me and I felt God forsook me, sadness consumed me.

I googled ”there is this darkness inside me” and I saw a lot of people had it, they were talking about depression.

The only reason I did not kill myself, first I didn’t know how I will kill myself. I thought about it so many times… I thought of drowning myself in the 3rd Mainland bridge, at times I wanted it to be quick, so I will be praying that God should just kill me.

All I had to do was understand that as long as I was at peace with this person, every other thing will be OK. I live to be happy.” she concluded.

See the concluding part here: