Learn to pass messages through your jokes, Basketmouth cautions colleagues

By Benjamin Njoku

Nigerian comedian, Bright Okpocha, popularly known as Basketmouth has cautioned his colleagues on the need to be mindful of the kind of content they are pushing out, saying “such content must be loaded with messages.” Basketmouth gave this advice, while receiving an award recently in Lagos.

He said comedy isn’t just about cracking jokes but passing useful messages that will affect the society positively. He said music was not really doing that much again and recalled days when people listened to reggae or hip-hop music genres that were loaded with messages.

According to him, “today, when you listen to our music, it has empty messages. But comedy is like poetry and comedians are poets. In poetry, you see messages there so also in comedy. “We have a platform that has been more competitive than ever. I came from a time where there was no social media. That was 25 years ago. There was nothing to sell yourself to the audience. Right now, we have social media, which means we have a platform where we can showcase our content, messages and express ourselves and the world will see us. My brothers , let’s use it well. Make sure you try as much as possible to be an example of passing messages through your content. It’s not about cracking jokes with butts and so on.”