“In Paris I don’t think about gender,” she told CNN’s Zayn Asher at the Access Bank International Women’s Day conference in Lagos earlier this month. “I have to fight Nigeria because I am from Africa… Gender is not a problem. In Nigeria, I have to fight for (my) gender.”
The multi-award-winning artist, whose fifth studio album, “V”, was released in February, said that early in her career her gender had a profound effect on her behavior.
“I was very aware of my femininity, so when I went into the studio, I had to wear baggy clothes, because I didn’t want to emphasize the fact that I was female,” she said. “I didn’t want to focus on myself, I wanted to go out there and work.”
The AA said these choices prompted men to question her sexuality. “I would remark to men like, ‘Are you also a woman? What happened to you?’ must have slept.” “People think if you’re a female artist you’re sleeping, so I had to prove that to the family,” she told CNN.
In her youth, Aa said, she was mostly inspired by male musicians. “When I was growing up my influences were men – strong men, Bob Marley, fella kuti; and when I saw what they did, I said that’s what I wanted to do. I saw the way people did. I was impressed by his words, he saw the government’s response, people loved, people laughed, and I wanted to do the same thing.”
equality and respect
But the famous private singer also said that she struggled with her parents’ attitude towards her parents, especially her disciplinarian father. “It was a bootcamp at home – he forced us to eat beans for a year, and insisted on helping put the weevils at home, sprinkling them on as protein!”
She says she was “ready to be a wife”. “You have to learn to cook for your husband, you have to be sweet to your husband, and I was like, ‘Am I going to do all this for one person? And I don’t even know who that person is. !'”
The star said she now takes a relaxed approach to relationships. “Believe me, once upon a time, when I was, I think, 28, every man who surpassed me, I was always looking – ‘Is he the one?’ ‘Is it the same?’ It’s not working, and I’m letting God do it, you know?”
Now, with five hit albums behind her, Asa believes women still don’t get equal opportunities. “I want to see women selling whisky, brand ambassadors for whisky.
Most important for the 39-year-old is to have an equal playing field for men and women. “I think we can find a balance,” she said. “With the new wave of feminism no one is saying we should be on top, on top; All I am saying is that we can be equal and respect each other.