Shoday, the Nigerian singer, has shared the struggles he faced early in his career, revealing that he relied on borrowed iPhones to create social media content and later sold noodles and performed comedy to afford his own device.
During a guest appearance on the OkayAfrica podcast, the 26-year-old artiste, born Shodade Solomon Segun, said he realised early that producing quality videos was essential for gaining visibility on social media.
According to him, many of his friends owned iPhones at the time, while he had to rely on borrowing theirs whenever he wanted to create skits.
“As at that time, there were a couple of my friends that were into fraud. So, they had iPhones. If you’re doing skits or content at that time and you’re not using an iPhone, you’re using Android, there’s a way Android used to lag behind when you’re editing. The video won’t come out nice,” he said.
“From the onset, I kind of understood the algorithm. A quality video can easily fly more than just making a random video and expecting it to blow.”
Shoday said he eventually became uncomfortable with constantly borrowing phones and decided to save up for his own device.
“Most times, I would go to their place and borrow their phone. It got to one point that I wasn’t comfortable with it again. I needed to get my own phone,” he said.
“Then I started hustling. I started doing comedy. I would do performances at night.”
The singer said he also worked as a noodles salesperson during the day, going from street to street convincing people to buy the product.
“In the afternoon, I used to engage in one job, which was a noodles job. We would be like 10 people inside a truck, then they would split us into different streets,” he said.
“You’ll now be convincing people to buy it. The noodles might not even be sweet to you, but you’ll convince them to buy it. It’s not Indomie; it’s noodles. You know Nigerians, every noodle is Indomie.”
