Nigerian stand-up comedian and singer, Otolorin Kehinde Peter, known in showbiz as Kenny Blaq, has revealed he sang with a juju band for 10 years before his foray into comedy.

Kenny Blaq left secondary school in SS3 over school fees. He sat for the West African Examination Council examination and proceeded to study ‘Presentation’ at the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria. He has since become a very popular comedian, travelling abroad for shows.

Speaking on his journey to fame, Kenny Blaq, 27, said consistency performing at comedy shows made him what he is today.

He said,

I wouldn’t attribute my journey into fame to a project, rather I would say it was my ability to stay consistent with what I was doing. It was when I kept operating at shows that made me popular and here I am today.

Speaking on the challenges he faced as an up-and-coming artiste, Kenny Blaq said,

While starting my career as a comedian, I faced some challenges. One of them is the fact that I started young and had a small stature so people usually didn’t want to give me their platforms.

They saw me as a boy who wouldn’t be able to deliver because of my appearance. Some didn’t even care to hear me out. People judged me by my appearance and when some grudgingly allowed me to perform, they gave me the stage for like two minutes when the halls were being arranged.

Another major challenge I faced was my genre of comedy (music-comedy). It was hard for some people to accept it because it was either music or comedy. So, accepting someone who was combining the two wasn’t that easy.

I had to find a way to balance it and made it more appealing to people. However, all of these didn’t deter me, rather they made me stronger. I kept working on myself until I was able to build the brand KennyBlaq.

He added that the lack of privacy is the price he had to pay for being famous, saying

I will say fame has taken privacy away from me. It brought me to the public eye. I can’t do everything I used to do as Kehinde. Now, I have to behave like Kenny Blaq though I still try as much as possible to be myself.