Zlatan Ibile Says Football Was His Dream Not Music

Nigerian indigenous rapper, Zlatan Ibile has revealed that he stumbled into music and that he always wanted to play for the Spanish Liga club, FC Barcelona.

Zlatan Ibile said his dream was to be a footballer after he found it difficult to cope in secondary school. But that dream couldn’t be realized due to what he called corruption in the football system.

Zlatan has gone on to become one of the biggest indigenous rappers in Nigeria in the last six years, a field he found himself in unintentionally.

The ‘Zanku’ crooner said when a friend of his played a song the friend recorded to him, he asked the friend to take him to a studio and that was how his journey in music started.

The 29-year-old Nigerian rapper has gone on to own a record label, Zanku Records, and has won several awards in the music industry including Best Collaboration at the Headies in 2019.

“I was not a bright student in secondary school. I struggled with Mathematics and Accounting. I was in a Commercial class. I failed my WAEC and I was supposed to sit at home for a year. All my dream was to play for Barcelona”, Zlatan Ibile told Echo Room.

“I tried my possible best but the corruption in Nigerian football discouraged me. I was playing for a local club then. When I failed WAEC, I was going to sit down at home for a year, and then one of my friends came and played his record for me. I told him to take me to the studio the next time he was going. That was how I became a musician. I never had the intention of being a musician.”