M.I Raps With Rubbin' Minds On Chocolate City Structure

M.I Abaga has been announced as the new CEO of Chocolate City.

M.I Abaga was a recent guest at TV show Rubbin' Minds where he talked about his reign at Chocolate City, new imprints springing up under the label, relationship with artistes like Ice Prince and Jesse Jagz and more. Abaga talks about life as a CEO being 'terrible' but loves the thrill that comes with it despite the rigours. “Terrible Terrible,” he said. “I love it. I love going to work. It’s hardwork. Shout-out to everybody that has a 9-5 job out there and then balancing it with my career and also being the guy that takes the bullets, when things don’t work out the way they should. However I am blessed and it’s the best experience.” he added. Speaking on how far the label has come, M.I said " We are the teenager in the industry, eleven years now, oldest fully functional label, we had a great year last year and it was shocking to everybody that even though our year was great, everybody said, 'Ah Chocolate City, what's going on. What's M.I doing, I just told my staff. just told the boy that we have to look past that and understand that we are becoming more of a corporate business than a boutique brand that people can be excited about...," adding that they were fully in support of Ice Prince's Super Cool Cats as well as Jesse Jagz' Jagz Nation, and that they were looking to float more labels. He also defended Chocolate City as being sustainable countering the perception that all Nigerian record labels are not sustainable. The 'Bad belle' rapper also talked about the company being on the look out to sign new acts in addition to the 12 he mentioned that they already have, which will be done by the A&R. About Ice Prince and working with him, he said "Ice Prince is the easiest but also the most difficult person. He’s so opinionated and he knows what he wants and he is a go-getter which makes it easy but also difficult because you are always catching up when you meet him again. He’s always on to the next thing and his zeal is something that has been apparent since he was 16 and 17 in Jos. You know you could always see he was going to be a big star and conquer Africa and the world as he has done is doing.” Speaking of Jesse Jagz, he made it known that Jesse Jagz was still close to Chocolate City during the period of his exit from the label in June 2013, and was of the opinion that Jesse's departure was right to find his identity outside Chocolate City. Although he made a return to the label in March 2015, the rather unceremonious manner in which he left two years earlier made people believe that there was bad blood between the two siblings. M.I further revealed that Jesse was done working on his album as he received a call from him to that effect. On gaining international recognition, M.I stated that he wasn't interested in pursuing global fame "I’m very weird about the international thing. I’m not interested at all. I’m interested in building Africa and building in Nigeria. I think in that way, the biggest thing we can do internationally is to set up our businesses and our industry right here. America is very funny. You know I had the opportunity."