Back in the days, a child wanting to venture in the Emirate city of Ilorin into Entertainment of any kind is seen as vapid and incorrigible for the city is known and regarded to be a sacred cum reverence state—islamically. It’s also pertinent to note that Islam has a reservation sort of, for entertainment such as Music, Acting, Dancing, Production and the rest of them. If you’re skeptical about that, it will interest you to know that a whole lot of Musicians emanated from the beautiful city in the 70s, 80s,90s and till this millennium but they couldn’t lived up to their full potential due to the general belief that Artiste of any form in Ilorin can never make it big unless the name “Ilorin” isn’t attached to such artiste. Alhaji Adisa Owala is a perfect example of one.
There’s not so many Fuji musicians that can boast of his ability to conjoin words in natives and turn it to sweet music for the listeners pleasure. This is a fact that was attested to by a popular figure in the Fuji industry, Pasuma, when he was called to performed at the celebration of forty years on stage anniversary of Adisa Owala. Pasuma was particular about the ingenuity of Adisa in Fuji industry. Same goes for Alhaji Besco Azeez, Lemi, Aloba, Barry Adeta, to mentioned but few. With the exception of the so-called Islamic singers like Labaika, Aminat Obi rere, sarumi. Even though the acceptability of those people is not nationwide let alone worldwide because of their attachment to Islam — no one needs to be told that other religions have their musicians and will not jettison theirs for other religions.
Ilorin has never produced an artiste as big as Sodiq Abubakar Yusuf popularly known as CDQ. Sodiq was born on the 6th of May, 1985, though in Orile a suburb of Lagos but his father is a proud Ilorite. CDQ moved to his hometown to attend his secondary education where he attended the renowned Government Secondary School (GSS) Maraba. Upon moving back to Lagos State from Ilorin where he had completed his secondary school education, he proceeded to further his education at Lagos State University where he graduated with a B.Sc in Economics.
Wikipedia has it that “CDQ started music professionally in 2008 when he used to be a back-up singer for Da Grin before he started rapping in English language with M.I. In 2013, he signed a recording contract with Masterkraft’s General Records after winning a rap battle at the weekly Industry Nite in December 2012.
In 2014, he released his breakthrough single titled “Indomie” which featured vocals from Olamide while the remix of the song featured Davido. The Masterkraft-produced song brought CDQ’s career to limelight and further earned him two nomination spots at the 2015 Nigeria Entertainment Awards and a nomination in the Best Street-Hop Artiste category at The Headies 2015.
In anticipation of his debut studio album titled “Quality”, CDQ enlisted the service of Wizkid with whom he released “Nowo E Soke” as a lead single off the album. The music video for the song was directed by Unlimited L.A and went on to win the Best Afro Hip Hop Video category at the 2016 edition of the Nigeria Music Video Awards. On 16 August 2016, he unveiled the cover art for the album before it was released through General Records on 22 August to positive critical reviews.
On 11 November 2016, he launched his own record label N.S.N.S, a short-form for ‘No Struggle No Success’ Entertainment. On 1 Feb 2017, he dropped his first official single under the platform titled ‘Say Baba’ which was produced by Jay Pizzle.
CDQ has never hide his identity of been an Ilorite that he said one of his punchlines “Ebamiki Sai Maigida, gomina mi ni Ilorin Afonja” which means ‘say me hi to Sai Maigida, my very own Governor in Ilorin Afonja.’
In his magnanimity of giving back to the city that birthed him, in early 2019, CDQ visited the Emir of Ilorin where he promised to help the less privilege ones who are in anyway sacred with a talent in entertainment. He immediately left the palace to pay a visit to his Alma mater GSS, where he distributed lots of writing materials for the pupils in the citadel, he also vowed to always support every project the management of the school wishes to embark on when call upon.
It will be tantamount to a fallacy if one says CDQ bursted into limelight in Ilorin, still, his Ilorin-ness can not be overlooked as he is writing the name of the city in sapphire in the music industry. CDQ could be termed as a pacesetter cum an epiphany for he defied the normalcy when discussing Ilorin in the entertainment sector. For CDQ’s legacy not to be usurped, every Ilorites do hope that youths as brave and determined as the “woss wobi” crooner starts emanating from Ilorin and putting the city in front in Entertainment world.
If anybody says CDQ is defying the normalcy in Ilorin, we do hope you understand that very much!