THE STORY OF DAGRIN

Lots of people might not be aware that Dagrin was a phenomenon at the busy computer village in Ikeja, Lagos as a phone vendor after the release of his first album. Things went really bad then and he needed to survive.
Born Olanipekun Olaitan, he chose Dagrin as his stage name at the off shoot of his career. He got signed to a new label, Leo Entertainment, in 2006 where he released his debut album. He was with the label until last year when he called it quits. “I left after my contract expired and my first album didn’t even enjoy good promotion”, said Dagrin. `
After his exit from Leo, he faced serious financial challenges. He forfeited the apartment that had been given to him by his label within their office premises in Magodo and he struggled to get a place of his own. Money was coming from no where and he needed to survive. After so many options of what to do for a while to keep body and soul together, he chose to trade phones at the computer village in Lagos. He started making little profits and he felt the need to go back to his music career.
He started by doing different collaborations with some artistes to keep the promo going and as fate would have it, it paid off. Some of them are; YQ, Sheyman, Bigiano, Lala and so many others. He later started recording his own songs and released a single titled Pon Pon Pon, a rap song with heavy punch lines. The song even got him a nomination at the last Hip-Hop World Awards.
Lots of people feel he will do well if raps in English because of his punch lines but he is not thinking in that direction. “I decided to rap in Yoruba because I understand it better than English. It is not that I can’t do English rap but I want to represent my origin and I rap in my mother tongue. I respect my colleagues that rap in English too”, Dagrin said.
His new album, a 10 tracker titled the Chief Executive Omota (CEO) is about two months old now in the market. It has great tracks like Ghetto Dream, Pon Pon Pon, Kondo, What They Want, Make Doe and Others. The album which featured acts like Omawumi, T Frizzle, E Jay, Sossick, Dark Poet and Isolate has the production imprints of Dr Frabz, Sossick, T Frizzle and SAS.
He now has his own entertainment Outfit titled Missofunyin Entertainment and explained why he called himself the Chief Executive Omota ( Omota is a street boy in the local parlance) instead of Chief Executive Officer. “I decided to call myself Chief Executive