Cockroaches and mice were my room mates – Shatta Wale

Successful dancehall artiste Shatta Wale has revealed that he suffered hunger and rejection for ten years for wanting to do music.

In an interview on Happy FM’s Ayekoo after drive show, he recounted his days as ‘Bandana’. According to him, he imagined the music industry as something he could easily conquer but it was not like he thought.

“Before I started music, I felt there were people already in the industry I could easily do better than but when I got in, the music industry wasn’t like I thought it would be

When I came and it didn’t work out. That was when I decided to play beats myself because I realized the engineers they didn’t understand the direction I wanted to go.

Shatta described the living conditions at that time of his life as pathetic.

“Hunger was the order of the day then, it took ten years for me to bounce back. You being an artiste that everyone knew about you will be sleeping in a room with frogs, cockroaches and mice and people were seeing me like a star.

Where we were staying wasn’t a place for an artise to stay, I wouldn’t say it was bad though,” he narrated.

In response to why he went through all that hardship, when his father was well to do, e explained that his father wanted nothing to do with with him due to his career choice.

“My dad was around but it just that he also didn’t get the realization of what we were trying to do at that moment, but by His Grace, now my father listens to my songs and picks ‘Kakai’ as his favourite.

There was a time we were very hungry so I decided we should forget everything and walk to my dad for money but the security turned as back saying my daddy says he doesn’t want tosee me, so we walked back home,” Shatta explained.

Looking at how things panned out with his choices and what his father expected of him as a son, Shatta gave a word of advice to Ghanaian parents, he said,

“I think in all we Ghanaian parenting should be reanalyzed. Parents should also listen to their children just like children listen to their parents. I listened to my inner self and that time the music was eating my brain like cancer.”