Valentine ‘Valo’ Ngaji is Rewriting the African Story one Song at a Time

Today we shall be spotlighting a player in the music business. A lot is said and written about the stars but when you take a second to look beyond the glitz and the glamour of these stars, you will find some indefatigable and highly driven business people and we shall be taking a closer look at one of them today.

Valentine Ngaji popularly known to the music industry as ‘Valo’ is the CEO of KeyQaad – a record company he co-founded in 2017 and currently taking care of talents like the superstar Omah Lay, as well as developing stars Kaestyle and M3lon. He has recorded immeasurable success with Omah Lay from performing at the iconic Barclays Center in New York, a feature with Justin Bieber, sold out tours all over the world amongst other feats.

To get a clear idea of what drives a man, you have to go back to when he took his first steps. Valo started out as an artiste himself, sneaking out of school to studio sessions and “to be honest that was the most important part of my life”, he recalled. Going through the struggles of an artiste, from saving up for studio sessions to messaging everyone on Facebook asking for show opportunities gave him the big insight and the empathy he needed to run a record company. On how he moved from recording music to the business side of it, Valo recalled that while at the University of Port Harcourt in 2010, he caught the attention of Tonye ‘Big Tee’ Ibiama who was the CEO of the biggest Record Label in Port Harcourt at the time. Big Tee opened the doors of his Grafton Records to him albeit as a recording artiste but he knew he was down the pecking order on the roster of talents at the Label which included the Frontliner Mr 2kay and the already famous Tha Ibz. Knowing that it would be a while before anyone looked his way that’s if they did at all because looking back “I really wasn’t that talented” he mused, he sought to start forging his own path. First, he started auditioning to be a Radio On-air personality with the hopes that they would give him access to endless airplays but along the line he got the opportunity to intern at Cool Fm/Wazobia Fm which more or less got to serve the same purpose. Even though this was supposed to be the stepping stone to him selling his craft, it ultimately became the “point of evolution”, this is where “I lost the hunger for good” but as Jay Z once said “Nothing nothing wrong with my aim, just gotta change the target”.

He went on to work on the radio for another 8 years while keeping his eyes out on his dream of being a Music executive, waiting for the right time. The radio not only gave him first access to talents but also a means of promoting their music when the time was right. In that time, he found a few artistes, tried to give it a shot but failed even before taking off, partly due to his business inexperience but after moving to Lagos in 2016 and partnering with his childhood friend Marshall Onaemo, it was time to do it right and voila! KeyQaad was born. That didn’t automatically guarantee success as talents would either not take them seriously or got bored right before anything would start happening. This was until May 15 2019, “a certain kid from Port Harcourt sent me an email asking me to check his music out, at that point I knew it in my bones that he was the one!” Valo recalled. That was how they flew the “kid” out to Lagos and started working on his music together and by May 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, that “kid” became ‘Omah Lay’ and at that point the fate of KeyQaad was sealed.

KeyQaad has gone on to record a lot of success with Omah Lay, making the right partnerships and deals; expanded as a company with more talents and even most recently launched its publishing arm – KeyQaad Music Publishing. “In conclusion, what would you say is your biggest drive Mr Valo?” I asked, “A decade ago when I made the decision to go intern on radio, a lot of the people I knew were either trying out their hands on Internet fraud or putting their papers together to flee the country for greener pastures, fast forward 10 years, that hasn’t changed much. What motivates me everyday is proving to the next generation of kids that they can make it out here in their own right and on their own terms, at least give it a shot! I want to embody that African Dream and I believe I’m rewriting that African story one song at a time.