Some parents just don’t seem to understand how lucky they are. My mother is giving me grief for wanting to go into Journalism (I actually would like to own a digital magazine), does she realize that at one point in my life I was seriously pursuing the idea of being a rapper?

When that dream died, or at least when it was still in a reality-induced coma, I settled for trying to be a singer/songwriter. I was trying to find cheap recording studios in London to get stuff done, I had written some songs and my friend had given me some tracks to record over, so I was very much in the mind frame of imminent music success.

One day I went on the internet and found this place and the pics looked great… No, the pics looked amazing! Apparently Madonna, 50 Cent and Dr Dre, Busta Rhymes, Jay-z, Mary J Blige and Destiny’s Child had all recorded there, and the hiring rate was exactly what I could
comfortably afford.

Oh dear Lord, I was already imagining touting my CD amongst my friends and a few new ‘fans’ and signing autographs… (Is that a bottle of Cristal? Oh I’ll have two, thanks. <<< This was my state of mind). So, of course I jumped at the chance and booked this studio online with immediate effect, whilst still waving at 30,000 imaginary fans from an imaginary stage in my head. I called my friend and told him about ‘our’ imminent rise to fame and our Hollywood recording studio experience which was about to me, and he eagerly made his way to London the next day to help me get ready. My friend took this whole thing seriously and insisted that we dress smart. After all, there was a chance we would have to tell Beyoncé to hurry up with the microphone, or explaining to Pharrell that we actually have the studio booked until 9pm and it’s only 7pm. We were about to be the new A-list! We got in a black cab and started trying to find the address; '90 Moscow Road', it was apparently close to Bayswater. It was a bit hard to find and in the meantime, my friend reminded me to go through my vocal warmups… And who was I to say no? Finally, after driving up and down the same stretch of road and asking every pedestrian (and believe me, everybody we asked was certain of where it was, and somehow pointed us in the wrong direction… Thanks!), we found it! It kind of looked… residential. It was a bit taller than the usual London townhouse though. It was maybe about five storeys high. We got down from the cab, paid the cab fare (plus a huge tip, because from then on, we were going to be superstars). In went our deep breaths of ‘this is it, guys’ and out went the last breaths of our old lives of waiting for the 98 bus to Oxford Circus and shoving past the guy who insisted on bringing his bicycle onto the crowded Jubilee line. We walked up to the door and I went ahead and pressed the buzzer. There was no answer for about twenty seconds, and so I hesitantly pressed the buzzer again, fearing deeply that I was disturbing Prince or Jay-Z’s recording session. Some dude then answers (trying to sound composed, but with a hint of restrained panting). He goes ‘ello' (Two Pints of Lager meets Middle-of-Brixton accent), and I (almost fearfully) respond “hey, I'm the artist booked in for the 2pm session...” He goes, “yeh awrite, come up to the top floor, take the stairs”... My friend and I became ecstatic instantly… We were like “No bloody way! Penthouse recording studio?! *cue excited white girl screaming and almost hugging each other in excitement*. We took a quick second to compose ourselves, adjust our blazers and ties (yes, we were dressed that smart for a recording session), and we proceeded into the building. The ground floor was okay, nothing out of the ordinary, white walls, and nothing else. We located the stairs and began walking up these goliath sized steps. With every step we took, we were seriously psyching each other. “Dude, Jay-z has been here, 50 cent *we both quietly chant a short chorus from P.I.M.P. and the opening line of snoop's verse – F - I – F – T – Y, C - E – N – T…* No words could adequately describe the excitement we felt as we got closer to the top. Finally, we got to the top floor and there was a very slight change in the air. Not sure if it was the stale smell of fried plantains, but oh well, it wasn’t enough to alarm me. I read once that these celebrities have some crazy riders; Mariah Carey with the Cristal and bendy straws, Prince with the white feathers on everything and so on. Who knows, fried plantain might be Pharrell’s secret to eternal youth. There was a perfectly good explanation for the stale smell of fried plantains. I just wasn’t privy to such information yet, until I joined the A-list… And I was about to! The door looked rather old, but we thought “Naaah, fuck it, the inside is always the sick bit. Nobody ever really cares about the outside.” I knock on the door, as there was no doorbell, and there is two minutes of absolute silence… Maybe nobody heard me knock. I’m even more hesitant to knock again, before Beyoncé gets to know me as the guy who disturbs recording sessions. A few more seconds go by and finally, some dude opens the door. We are now looking at a skinny black guy (about 30-something was my guess) topless, jeans sagging like his pockets were stuffed with heavy potatoes, and this guy was panting heavy, and drenched in sweat. My friend and I were instantly mortified! But we kept it all in. The change from excitement to confusion on our faces and the way we hid it so well was definitely worth a couple of performance awards. We could have easily given Meryl Streep a masterclass in facial expressions that day. We both rather cautiously walk in through the doors; it is a broken down, rundown, crack den of an apartment with one of those small keyboards you probably got on your eighth birthday... And one or two keys were missing from it! There was one of those old PC microphones that was part headphone, part mic and this keyboard that could sit comfortably on an infant's lap. The keyboard and the call centre headphones were on a small table that couldn't stand on its own, save for the rat abode of a sofa that was propping it up. Oh sweet sacrifice! This couldn’t have been any worse. No Beyoncé in braids and booty shorts, no Jay-Z (cue his annoying macaque-esque laughter), no Pharrell drinking fountain of youth juice… Hell, Shaggy wasn’t even there! Oh, but this was far from my real problem. The kitchen was the living room which was half the guest toilet and all of these doubled up as the veranda/recreational area. There was another slightly opened door with a mattress on the floor (and I kid you not, it looked like someone was tied to it… All we saw was a leg) and then the guy suspiciously went and pulled the door closed (it didn't even have a functional lock on it1 - I take it the massive hole in place of the lock and bolt meant that a drug bust happened there and the police blew it open with one of those pump action style guns). Immediately, I switched into high gear... I turned to this guy (who most likely had a gun somewhere on his person, or within a stretch - hell, all you needed was a stretch to touch all four walls of the apartment whilst standing in the centre of the room) and with the most convincing look on my face, I ask him “where is the grand piano?”. He was a little bit confused and responds with “tha wha'?”, I cut in, in a slightly more commanding diva-esque voice and ask again, “where is the grand piano?” I catch my friend from the corner of my eye looking at me like “you fool! You’re going to get us both murdered.” But I continue, “When my assistant booked this place, he told me there was a grand piano, this piece requires a grand piano!” And I proceed to pull out a (actually blank) piece of paper from my bag and start flailing it about (so the guy wouldn't see the fact it was blank) whilst ranting, and I began increasing my voice steadily and going repeatedly, “it's right here in this paper, the label wants us to record this piece with a grand piano (how I prayed I wouldn't hear him say “let me see”). The guy goes over to his broken baby keyboard (this thing had like eight keys, and two were missing, so at best, all I could have recorded was doh – reh - mi - fah - soh - lah - ti - doh, without the 'reh' and the 'lah'). He then says to me (in a soft, 'I'm trying to convince you of the impossible' tone) “yehhh *bites lip for a second before continuing* ahfink we c’n make viswon do like a grand peeano sound”. And he starts fondling the volume dial and the on and off button like I was supposed to somehow now believe this was some tech equipment we were dealing with. I just put my face into a ghostly stare and began momentarily muttering to myself like a lunatic “this is a disaster”, each time, psyching myself more into a diva state of mind. All this while, the depth of my soul was in a terrible panic. Oh mother of mercy! This guy had already planned to rob me of my life savings with his broken keyboard and a gun, and I was attempting to play this stunt on him? I kept on with my act, but all the while assuring myself that a command was coming which I must obey… Something along the lines of “bring out your fucking wallet and lie down on the ground” whilst facing angry keyboard guy and his loaded gun (which was yet to make its cameo appearance – or maybe he was just going to flash the gun and I was just going to give him all my money and maybe even my shoes, without even being asked – we Nigerians aren’t the ones to joke with our lives, you know). My friend (white guy by the way) was standing there turning all shades of pink and blue with fear and just watching me and praying to his Nordic ancestors that my stunt would work for both our lives' sake. I then whip out my phone, pretend to dial a number, and start shouting down the phone (to nobody) about there being no grand piano and how the label will fire someone before the end of the day… And as I'm doing this, I'm pacing up and down the room, timing myself to end the call by the door, positioning for an escape. I remember getting to the door, and pretending to end the call, but the next two minutes are still all a blur for me, because all I can remember is that I was running so fast... And as we were running, we heard a loud bang which after we thought about it, we realised it was the door, but it did make us run faster. We didn't even wait for a cab! Down the street, people would have just seen two well-dressed men sprinting like we had just stolen from the Starbucks nearby. Oh, you know that very common theory about white people not being able to run as fast as blacks? LIES! My friend was already panting at the safest bus stop on the next street BEFORE I got there.

Op-Ed Editor