Simi reveals she dumped gospel music because churches used to pay her N5k

Award-winning Nigerian singer, Simi, has revealed that she used to be a gospel artiste, but she dumped the genre due to low performance pay.

She said that whenever she goes to churches to sing, she would receive as low as N5,000-10,000 and the highest she was ever paid then was N70,000.

Simi made this disclosure this while appearing as a guest on MTV Base Africa’s Official Naija Top 10 programme.

The ‘Smile For Me’ singer revealed that at some point she stopped singing because she wasn’t making enough money from gospel music to pay for studio sections and song promotions. She also said lack of finances, made her accept a deal with a record label that she regretted signing till today.

Simi said; “I actually used to go to a lot of churches to perform. They will pay me like N5k, N10k. Do you know the highest amount of money I actually collected when I was doing gospel [music]? N70,000. And I felt like I had arrived. I still paid a 10 per cent tithe from the money.”

Meanwhile in another news…

Popular singer, Kingsley Okonkwo, known professionally as Kcee, has revealed that the money he’s made from his joint gospel album with Okwesili Eze Group, ‘Cultural Praise’ surpasses everything from his entire secular music career.

The ‘Limpopo’ made this disclosure while being interviewed on Cool 96.9 FM, Lagos. Kcee, who is signed to his brother’s Five Star Music, said the gospel album is his most streamed project ever.

The artiste said a lot of people wrote him off when he did the album as they believed his career was dead. He, however, said he knew the project was going to be a commercial success even before it was released.

Kcee said; “When I did the gospel [album] and a lot of people were like, ‘It’s over, he is actually going close to his village. Now he’s taking the music to the village.’ That was horrible.

When I heard that I was like, okay, let’s see how that works. And it didn’t happen. I made more money from it [the gospel album]; more than any ever before in my whole career.”