By Seli Baisie
Ghanaian rapper and business mogul, Desmond Kwesi Blackmore, popularly known as D-Black, has organised a program to hangout with his fans in person.
The program dubbed #AskDBlack, on Sunday, February 9, at Oasis lounge at Cantonment in Accra was his first time hosting Q&A session where he interacted with his fans one-on-one.
In attendance were youth from all fields of work, including upcoming artistes, beatmakers, producers, singers, app developers, bloggers, scriptwriters and many others.
During this interactive session, artistes were given the opportunity to perform their songs and also to ask questions. Some young entrepreneurs also presented their business ideas and asked for help to grow their businesses.
D-Black in his response picked the best artiste and promised to help them shoot their videos and also have a studio session with them. He also revealed that he is not ready to sign any artiste now but rather looking for upcoming producers to work with.
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Sharing his experience, D-Black who is also the sole proprietor/CEO of Club Onyx, a plush nightclub; Oasis Pool Lounge also located in Cantonments next to Club Onyx; owner of clothing brand ‘Black Avenue Clothing’, said it hasn’t been an easy road.
“I had a lot of friends in my neighbourhood who were into music. I lived at North Kaneshie and as a young boy coming up, everybody wanted extra money. My parents had divorced, my mother didn’t have money, you know, so you see the things that your friends have and you also want to buy nike shoe, so I wanted to find a job. Something that would be able to pay me money and I loved hip-hop music. I started listening to hip-hop music when I was only 15. So I decided to start recording those songs that I was enjoying and it became something else.”
I went to school; I run away from secondary school to come and record in Accra. And along the line, by the time I was aged 23, I just finished school. I was in a group and we used our last money to shoot one video and we posted it to South Africa just to see if they would play. We send the video to MTV Base and I realised they started playing. I started seeing things on Facebook, we got an email from them. All of a sudden, I was on Channel O Awards in South Africa and thy nominated our video. I was in a group with another rapper called ‘Kwaku T’, and the song was called ‘Move’. We went to South Africa, we didn’t win but as soon as we got back, we started getting shows. And this hobby of ours that we were doing turned into a career because it started getting paid for it. We shot the second video, someone shot for us for free, that was GYO of Phamous Films. And now those same awards nominated us again, but this time they nominated us as three times. They flew us first class and that’s how my life as an artiste started. I got back to Ghana and Ghana Music Awards introduced ‘Hip Pop of the Year’ category for the first time since hip-pop songs were going far.”
Background
D-Black was named by Forbes Africa as one of Ghana’s most successful music mogul. He is a rapper/ CEO / Entrepreneur/ Philanthropist and has broken boundaries in his 10 years in the entertainment industry.
D-Black was the first Ghanaian rapper to be nominated for the Best International Act (Africa) at the prestigious Black Entertainment Television (BET) Awards and the only Ghanaian act with a Channel O Award.
In the business space, he won the ‘40-under-40’ awards for Best CEO in the hospitality industry with his night club ‘Club Onyx and Oasis Lounge.
He has worked with big brands such as Rlg Phones, Ciroc Vodka and Belaire LUC as their brand ambassador.
He also has his own record label called Black Avenue Muzik were he signed and managed artists.
