THE MUSE FACTOR

[henriyire]

I met 9ice about 12 years ago. I had just won a music competition and I was to perform with a few A-list artistes on stage. I walked into the green room where the P-Square twins were chugging away at cigars and I could hardly see them through the haze of smoke they had filled the room with. They took one look at me and hollered that the show promoters should get me out of 'their' room. "Abeg carry am commot for here. Give am 9ice," they laughed. 9ice smiled when I walked in and asked me in his characteristic husky voice if I knew 'Gongon Aso.' . Really? . Who didn't know 'Gongon Aso'. It was easily the most popular song in the country. I nodded, a little star struck. "I will do the first verse and then you can use the space in the second verse to do your own verse. Is that okay?" That encounter with him stuck with me. Congrats on the New EP boss! . Legend in every sense. . @9iceofficial . #BeforeYourTime #BackStory #Legend #Music #Vereran #tipoftheiceberg https://www.instagram.com/p/CAx-f4NJ6Q1/?igshid=1cb93lretpvtq

[henriyire]

Here are a few things that are at the top of my list this season.

Hope they resonate with you as much as they do with me.

#TheBlessing #Music #HipHop #God #Fatherhood

[henriyire]

........l....l....mm..

[henriyire]

Here are a few things that are at the top of my list this season.

Hope they resonate with you as much as they do with me.

#TheBlessing #Music #HipHop #God #Fatherhood

[henriyire]

THANOS; A Remake of Avenger Infinity War/EndGame's Villian Profile.

Photo: Film Frame/ Marvel Studios & Sideshow.com

First off, I need to categorically state that Thanos is a big deal.

If he wasn’t, the Marvel Cinematic Universe wouldn’t have positioned him as the one to create the biggest standoff of the entire franchise; a face-off with earth’s mightiest heroes.

After an impressive trans-dimensional sojourn across the universe, the imposingly-ripped, lavender-skinned villain conqueror simply known as Thanos finally hit pay dirt.

He had a finger-snapping Eureka moment.

He looked across the intergalactic landscape and decided that the universe needed pruning.

There was a glaring disparity between its finite resources and its infinite life forms. The universe was a fast sailing ship, on a collision course with a boat-sinking iceberg.

Can you see what I am getting at yet?

The truth is that Thanos is a genius.

Uncelebrated but a genius nevertheless.

We basically owe him our lives. We should all gather round the master mind and sing him praise songs that would reverberate across the fabric of the universe.

But we have instead flagged him wrongly; branded him a villain.

You see, no one else had the balls to do what Thanos did.

Not universe-leaping regulars like Thor, Captain Marvel or the Guardians of the Galaxy.

Thanos crafted a simple economic solution to a problem that has plagued the world for years.

The sad truth is that the universe is dying and its resources with it.

Why? We have too many people feeding off it.

Economists have over the years slaved to find a sustainable system where the finite resources of the earth would match the infinite life forms that inhabit it.

That search is still ongoing.

Yet when a single-minded intergalactic life form like Thanos decides that the only way to save the universe and it’s bludgeoning inhabitants is to prune it with a snap of his infinite-stone powered fingers, the avengers are all riled up about it.

Simpletons.

Can you see my point now?

So would you rather guard a universe where its life forms are unable to survive another life cycle because its resources have all been used up by its entitled population?

Maybe Captain America might be a bit consumed by his exaggerated ‘Americanism’ or Ant man by his annoyingly small-time philosophy, but I expected more from genius-minds like Tony Stark and Bruce Banner.

Anyway the last time I looked, Spider man was still tethered to his friendly neighborhood viewpoint and Thor too engrossed with trans-galaxy accommodation challenges, so who, if not a universal high-flyer like Thanos would be totally invested in fixing the world?

Let’s not be quick to judge a book by its dust-covered wrappings.

Not everything that looks strange is actually Dr. Strange.

*This newsletter was curated while listening to TheBig4 by Kingsley Okonkwo

[henriyire]

MESSING WITH YOUR POLITICS

MESSING WITH YOUR POLITICS

If you are anything like me, then you probably don't know who to vote for in tomorrow's election.

Big deal.

If that horrifies you in anyway, you are probably over 35 and have responsibilities. Real ones.

I on the other hand have none. At least nothing of the sort that would push me over the edge or spark up an episode of mid life crisis.

If you are anything like me, then you probably don’t know who to vote for in tomorrow’s election.

Image source:

My only worldly worry is to someday reach the last battle in the game ‘The Last of Us.’

So I have no party affiliation; real or imagined.

Some people think that I should feel some form of guilt but I don’t.

I didn’t even bother ‘googling’ the manifestoes of the major contenders.

No point. Heard their names before and like a post from Bloomberg Business week aptly puts it, the Nigerian presidential election is between a Former Dictator and an alleged Kleptocrat.

If you think I am alone in this freemason-type mindset then you need to really do your research. Like the man possessed by a demon in the biblical lore said,

We are legion.

The official number of INEC-certified new voters this year according to a Pulse TV article stands at 15,170,608

See how much we are? I am pretty sure that a large percentage of that number is like me. Young and politically clueless.

INEC statistics show that there are currently 91 registered political parties.

Confusing right? I thought so too.

And I am pretty sure most young people don’t know more than two. So you would think that political contenders would naturally pay a little attention to new voters/millennials and their more entitled protégées, the Generation Z.

But they don’t. They prefer to rustle through the rural settlements hoping to convince a market woman or two to abandon the party they have voted for years for a supposedly better party.

Big deal.

The surprising thing is that the bunch of millennials who are first-time registrants are not in the least interested in selling their votes.

We don’t roll like that. How much would they pay us after all. We are just interested in someone, anyone reaching out to us as a clique and speaking our language instead of littering the sidewalk with banners of smiling candidates with no story behind their pledge.

So here I am with a PVC in my hand and no party in mind to vote for.

I know this message is coming late. It was intended to.

Like the sinking ship with a captain that has no desire to be saved.

Image source: https://dumielauxepices.net/wallpaper-2675991

[henriyire]

DARK CHILD

I was born in darkness.

The government had promised to connect my community to the national grid so many times that we had honestly lost count.

So I came into the small town called Aiyetoro on a quiet dark night.

Like every other night after it.

My first introduction to any light source apart from the sun's was to kerosine lamps.

They smoked and smelt so much, causing my Mother to cough everytime they were lit and they were all we had for light; a necessary evil.

My second was to solar energy. The community representative that gave the talk about it in our school said it was bound to take over electricity soon.

I believed him.

I talked my way into an after school job with the solar company that the

representative worked for.

It was far away in town but I didn't mind. The walk every day helped me take count of how many houses we had in the community and how they were clustered together.

A solar panel cost a ton of money and Aiyetoro just couldn't afford it.

So I started researching on how else we could harness solar energy without the huge expense involved. Soon enough, I stumbled on an idea that could work.

An affordable yet effective, all-inclusive solar box that could power bulbs and fans alone. After all that's all we needed at Aiyetoro.

The solar company was excited at the idea and guided me through the schematics I had designed. Armed with a few resources and a team I had put together, the first few boxes with their help was introduced to Aiyetoro that year.

Because the town was comprised majorly of clustered settlements, each neighbour noticed the light in the other's house and was curious as to the source.

It caught on fast.

By the beginning of the new year, I had started my own solar box design and distribution company and the products were already being used in neighbouring towns.

I eventually left Aiyetoro and moved to the big city and soon enough I was fabricating customised solar boxes for other rural African communities like Ghana, Senegal and Kenya

Just three years after I stumbled on the idea of customised solar boxes, my company had become a major player in the solar business.

My vision was simple. To make sure no other child was born in darkness like I was.