Mr. Eazi and Lydia Forson after the event
Mr. Eazi has launched a project called ‘emPawa’ to assist some 100 young artistes.
The project involves financing 100 music videos by 100 artistes across seven countries in Africa, including Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Nigeria and Ghana.
This will, on the average, be picking 10 artistes from each of the above countries and ‘emPawa’ will fund their videos and also market them.
There is a budget of $3,000 for each of the 100 artistes and to be part of the project, young artistes will have to do short videos of themselves singing or rapping and then upload on Instagram with the hashtag ‘emPawa100’ and the artiste’s country. The emPawa team will reach out to the best artistes and support them.
The project was unveiled at the La Villa Boutique Hotel in Accra on Monday evening with a press ceremony which attracted top entertainment personalities who came out to support Mr. Eazi and his team.
Among them were Lydia Forson, Deborah Vanessa, Gasmilla, Regina Van-Helvert and more.
Mr. Eazi, who spoke at the ceremony, described the project as part of a dream to support other artistes who need help and also his corporate social responsibility (CSR) to give back to society as a successful artiste.
“On one hand it is part of my CSR. At least 50 per cent of the people who listen to my music are artistes themselves. Sometimes I see people bashing me and If I check the person’s profile, the person is promoting a single. I think this is partly because they feel like they have so much talent but they can’t get their music out. May be they are more talented than Mr. Eazi… so when they see me singing ‘Pour Me Water’ they are not happy because it is bringing them down. It is bringing negativity. So the best thing to do would therefore be to make my CSR related to music. So that’s my first reason for the project,” he said.
The CEO of Banku Music revealed that that Betpawa will be supporting the project for at least the next three years. There is, therefore, money to sustain the project for the next three years.
Out of 100 artistes who will get their videos shot by emPawa, top 10 will be selected for a workshop with the best music stakeholders in the world in South Africa.
He advised young artistes to take advantage of the project to get to the next level.