• According to John Mosh Muchiri, Davido gave Diamond Platnumz and his management a hard time during the My Number One Remix videos shoot in Lagos
• Diamond was forced to call AY who made several calls to his contacts in Lagos, forcing Davido to play ball
Ten years ago, Tanzania’s crème de la crème musician Diamond Platnumz decided to take his music a notch higher.
Then, he released the Number One -Remix video, featuring Nigerian crooner Davido, who was riding high with his hit Skelewu at that particular time.
Davido was madly in love with the original Number One song, so it was not hard to get him to do the remix.
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Challenges came into play when it came to shooting the video.
By late 2013, Diamond Platnumz was becoming a big name.
However, he was not making as much money; just enough to push his music agenda ahead.
But the aforementioned song changed the narrative completely.
That is the known story.
What many people do not know was the struggles the WCB boss went through to do the My Number One video.
By this time, he had only two managers, Babu Tale and Mkubwa Fella.
Sallam SK, who ran a management company called SK Entertainment then, was warming up to join his team.
Sallam was already working with AY then.
So, Diamond landed in Lagos, Nigeria accompanied by his dancers and manager Babu Tale.
All was set and the main mission was just to do the video with Davido, go on a few media tours and get back to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
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However, in a twisted fate, things changed, in fact for the worst.
Davido was a no show.
King of OBO just wanted his money and the negotiation was not going well.
The more Diamond and his team stayed in Lagos, the higher the expenses became for them.
Diamond Platnumz once told me (John Mosh Muchiri) that the money they used in Lagos, was from a loan he had received from a reputable Tanzanian bank.
But it was running out fast.
His team almost went back to Dar with no video, were it not for his colleague AY.
Ambwene Yesaya called his friend, Nigerian singer J Martins, who had to intervene and ensure Diamond leaves Lagos a happy man.
That’s how the video was finally shot, albeit in one location.
If you look at the video again, you can see there’s no much effort in it.
Just one location, two sets of clothes for Davido and it was a wrap.
When Davido once called out Diamond for not crediting him for his success in the music industry, this is why.
To be honest, Davido being on the track made Diamond a continental star.
But the pressure of having that done is always at the back of Diamond’s mind.
So how much did he end up using?
According to Diamond, his budgets for his previous videos, mostly done by Lucas of Ogopa DJs, was around $ 3,000.
With the exchange rate then, that was about KSh 300,000, which was quite high.
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The Number One – Remix costed Diamond 10 times more, he told me(John Mosh Muchiri).
However, with that song, he managed to recover the money in less than a year and signed his first major act at Wasafi WCB, Harmonize.
To deal with international issues like what happened in Lagos, the artiste decided to bring Sallam SK on board as a third manager, whose first major assignment was to deliver his collabo with American singer NeYo in 2015.
Davido and Diamond have in the recent past shown each other brotherhood in the music industry, but people who pay close attention to how it is done know there is more to that than meets the eye.
Writen By: JOHN MOSH MUCHIRI – The writer is a UK-Based Kenyan Entertainment Journalist And Entrepreneur.
