Sarkodie Shares Story of How His Mum Gave Him a Success Ultimatum

Photo: Sarkodie/Instagram

By Kinyua Mwangi

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Award-winning Ghanaian rapper Sarkodie reveals that his mother was at first opposed to his idea of venturing into music.

Speaking recently to Podcast and Chill with South Africa’s MacG, he says his strict mother couldn’t hear a thing about letting him do music, but he convinced her and she gave him one year to do his thing and if it failed, he would then have to forget about it completely. 

“She gave me a year to prove myself if this is really what I want to do and thank God the same year us when I had one of my biggest records,” he narrates. So it happened that one day within the one year that his mom got into a taxi and the driver was playing his music.

The taxi driver unbeknownst of the fact that he was driving Sarkodie's mum told her that ‘this kid is dope’ and she couldn’t believe that her son managed to do it. She thereafter supported him while his sister introduced him to the big shots in the industry. 

Looking back at his achievements, his October 2019 Black Entertainment Award (BET) award took it all. Sarkodie made history when he won the Best International Flow award at the BET Hip Hop Awards in October 2019. He was the first African artist to win this.

According to him, he was able to win the award due to the fact that his supporters were quite aggressive with him. They pushed him to get better and he rose in the industry to become a big name in Africa. They also nominated him ‘aggressively’ and it stunned BET.

He credits his musical success to having a story among other things. He explains that while many artists’ success comes from banger records they produce, he always has a story inspiring his songs which is what Ghanaians love with his music.