DJ Neptune: My Goal is to Make Timeless Music

Sunday Ehigiator

Disc Jockey, Patrick Imohiosen, known as DJ Neptune, says his goal is to deliver timeless music. Having one evergreen song to his credit, ‘Nobody’, his 2020 smash single, featuring Joeboy and Mr. Eazi, the multiple award-winning DJ has stretched his ‘Greatness’ ladder more than fifty steps higher, with his just-released ‘Greatness 2.0’ album, which he hopes would present more evergreen songs to Africa and the world, “all things being equal and by the grace of God.”

Neptune in a recent chat explained how the sixteen-track sophomore robbed him of his sleep for scores of months saying, “It wasn’t easy getting twenty-seven artistes on one album project, but because I had a goal, I had a target and something I wanted to achieve with this project, so with God and a lot of patience and endurance on my part, we made it.

Neptune, who is unarguably one of the most booked DJs for 2021 didn’t mince word saying that “2021 has been good to me in spite of the many challenges.”

He maintains with a smile: “This is the hustle; we work hard to get booked. This is just what we all pray for, so I cannot complain one bit. We prayed for it, so we have to handle it.”

The hit-laden sound piece titled ‘Greatness 2.0’ with a star-studded lineup featuring the likes of Waje, Zlatan, Laycon, Joe Boy, Patoranking, Rema, Adekunle Gold, Stonebwoy, among others, stands out as Neptune’s biggest sound piece having the highest number of potential hit songs in one album.

A no-skip album, laced with easy-going groove, party bangers, and a ting of inspirational lyricism, it’s the pattern that has trademarked his projects, from his earliest stints with the late Dagrin, Naeto C and MI Abaga, to his ‘Greatness’ series, among others. For the 31-year-old DJ, the assignment remains simple: steadily create timeless sound pieces. The Edo-born showbiz icon had hinted of how the ‘Greatness 2.0’ project wasn’t originally planned: “Whilst working on my debut album, in 2018, I was going to name the project something else.

“On a particular day, I was taking a nap. It felt like someone was communicating to me that ‘you are doing great stuff; you are doing amazing stuff and greatness is all I see.’ It became so impossible to let go of that voice. I woke up and the word was still ringing in my head. I went back into the studio and started hyping all my songs with ‘greatness.’ That was how it came to be.”

As for how he arrived at his choice of artistes for the collaborative works, he said when he picked artistes to work with, it was just him having an idea in his head. The ‘Greatness 2.0’ opening song, Rise Up, features Waje, Ladipoe, Laycon and the Kabusa Choir.