Banky W recently spoke about Grammy-winning artist Wizkid's challenging early days, highlighting the dedication and sacrifices that paved his way to global fame.
In a video making rounds online, Banky W, who helped launch Wizkid’s career through his label Empire Mates Entertainment (EME), looked back on those initial years. He described Wizkid as relentlessly focused, often facing financial struggles but always determined to improve his craft. Banky W recalled Wizkid's reputation as a "studio rat" – someone who would spend long hours in recording studios, working closely with producers and engineers, often waiting for any chance to record.
He said, “Wizkid for a long time in his life was not fortunate enough to afford or pay for studio time and so he was a studio rat as he will go to any studio where they will let him hang out and he would hang out all day and just wait, hope and pray for the end of the day for the engineers and producers to just take pity on him and say oya, come, come and record for 15 mins or 30 mins because he could not pay for his session.
“So, all day long, he would be working on hooks and melodies and just coming up with things in case he was given the opportunity to jump on the mic for five minutes. He did not have time to think about what to write at the moment, so that became his process.
“And now he is one of the fastest songwriters that I have ever encountered in my life, he will just sit, listen, and listen to music, he would start freestyling a melody that would become a song that the whole world would want to sing and that is where the name Wiz started from, his genius-level creation of melodies is at the spur of the moment.
