Nwelue on world tour with new book, Hip-Hop Is Only For Children

AUTHOR of The Abyssinian Boy, Onyeka Nwelue, has begun a world tour of his new book Hip Hop is Only for Children. Expected to reach over 15 cities in about 12 countries on all continents, the tour is planned to span at least seven months from January 15 to August 18, 2015.

  Hip-Hop is Only for Children, a creative, non-fiction written book, is the writer’s personal perspective on hip-hop culture and it takes a critical view on Nigerian hip-hop, as adopted by Nigerians, with influence of the American type.

  He said, “The book, which has taken years to write, focuses on The Golden Age, The Silver Age, The Bronze Age, The Stone Age, with a heavy concentration on The New Age Generation, which includes Davido, WizKid, TerryG, Oritsefemi, MC Galaxy, Iyanya. My finds span years of personal and cultural research, travelling from Lagos to Accra, Monrovia, Kampala, Nairobi, Lilongwe and from Paris to Budapest, Brussels, Copenhagen and to Mexico City then to Delhi and many other cities scattered around the world, and interacting with Nigerian hip-hop culture enthusiasts and promoters”.

  Onyeka’s new book is also expected to be available in various cities around the world, including Hong-Kong, Delhi, Los Angeles, Paris, Florence, New York, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Lisbon, Singapore, Prague, Dubai, Barcelona and Crete, with more dates and cities to be added in the course of the tour.

  On the choice of countries for the book tour, he said, “I get opportunities and I jump at them. I am not the one picking on countries to do my tour in. I am touring all continents, even going to Australia, to promote my new book. If I don’t promote my writing, no one would. I don’t also belong to any clique as most Nigerian writers do”.

  The book tour, he said, was inspired by musicians elsewhere, apart from Nigeria, who, upon release of new materials, quickly go on tour and promote them. This, he said, inspired him to do the same for literature, as he hopes to inspire such in an evolutionary process in Nigerian literature.

  He continued, “My creativity is fuelled by personal dealings with the world. I’ve not had to blame people for my failure – when bad or terrible things happen to me, I recreate them to create some kind of a healing process. With the way I do things, I believe that at the end of the day, death justifies it all.

  “I take lots of risks. I am also not afraid of hurting people – I will apologise later, but first I must accomplish what I really want. I’ve seen these traits in successful and famous people. If you are overly sentimental about people’s emotions, you may never get anything done. This is why I am nemesis myself. I am my own karma. I pay people the way they would have paid me.

  “I’ve been through ridiculous stages and some of them are coming back to me in fresher ways. I’ve failed in many ways and I’m getting back on my feet by revisiting the past and rebuilding whatever is lost”.