How Daps went from being bounced at the BET Awards to receiving 2 BET nominations

by Rachel Ogbu//

It’s a wonderful ‘grass to grace’ story for Nigerian-British video director Oladapo Fagbenle better known as Daps who told us how he went from being bounced from the BET Awards show last year to receiving two nominations this year.

Hailed as “the Flex God”, Daps who got attracted to directing videos from producing music videos for his brother’s company, Luti Media recently opened up to his Twitter followers on how in 2016 he had prepared to attend the BET Awards with Wizkid and fellow video director, Sesan only to be denied entry at the gate. He recounts how he had to do a “long trek of shame” and call an uber while deleting all the hype he made in social media. The embarrassment didn’t stop him from putting more work into his music videos with clients spanning continents from Davido in Nigeria to Stormzy in the United Kingdom and Migos in the United States.

Fast forward to the 2017 BET Awards and Daps was nominated in two major categories and of course got a premium invitation to the event.
This year, critics can’t get enough of Daps calling his directed video “T-Shirt” for Migos the best video of 2017. “I might be wrong, but I don’t recall any other director that is touching people on three different continents and working with three different genres. Migos went number one in America, the album and the single. They’re hot in the streets and the club. Stormzy went number one in the U.K. That’s grime. Grime doesn’t go number one in the U.K. It just doesn’t. There are directors bigger than me, but who is touching three different places at once in several different genres? The scope is crazy,” a ‘humble’ Daps told OkayAfrica.

Many people don’t know this but Daps used to be a rapper who had his very own mixtapes when he was in college in North Carolina. His rap name at the time was Urban Child a.k.a. Daps. He also played basketball for the Westminster Warriors and it was two basketball scholarships that saw him through a degree in Business at Campbell University and a Masters Degree in Communication at Bellarmine University. “I’ve always been creative. As a kid, I used to design sneakers. I wanted to work for Nike. After that, I rapped. After that, I made beats. I’ve always been creative,” he said.

When Vibe asked him how he comes up with video concepts? He replied that the song dictates everything and it depends on the tempo and content. Is it angry, is it sad, is it about love, or is it street sh*t? That normally determines the vibe of the video.

For the future, Daps plans to release work on his fashion project. He is also working on writing for TV and directing movies. Daps

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