CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS?

You Can’t Be a Good Musician without getting high’ says Majek Fashek

He was certainly the best in his time, driving the crowd wild with his hit track, ‘Send Down The Rain‘. His light skin complexion showed off the screens as he jumped around singing and chanting what he believed in. Today, many long years after, his stringy, thinning hair hangs from his head. His eyes are colourless and the pallor of his skin fades. He is gaunt, malnourished, a few minutes from death. He still holds to his past glory…that is all he has got  to hold on to….that and white dust (cocaine) wrapped in paper. No other person than Majek Fashek.
He defends himself saying that to be a good musician; one needs to get involve in hard drugs. In his words;
“People must definitely talk. But they make you popular; that’s the truth. You cannot fight the press, you cannot fight the media. They are the ones that will tell people what is going on, so I cannot fight the media. They said I’m crazy, I use cocaine. Well I still use cocaine. ‘I dey blow my nose, I dey smoke my igbo’. As I speak to you, I have cocaine in my pocket and in my house. I still dey use am. I can’t stop. How will you play music with a ‘normal eye’? Quoted from his words. You can’t be a good musician playing without getting high. Pastors dem dey high too. The truth is that you can’t be on the human level and give the message. The humans are looking up to you, so you must get a way to be super- human to live up to their expectations.”
That’s the fact.Coming from a musician that we all grew to love and respect, this is sad. Does this mean that all those tunes and lyrics we used to love are drug induced ramblings? Is this true that great musicians and preachers have to be under the influence of hard drugs to deliver their message? Or is this the empty excuse of a befuddled maniac? This is a question yet to be answered…