The Dark Side of Being Afrobeats’ Most Wanted Director — TG Omori

For six months he lay in a hospital bed while the internet decided he had fallen off. "He doesn't shoot no more." "Nobody rocks with him anymore." "He has outpriced himself out of the market." He was fighting for his life.

The first kidney came from his brother. After a seven-hour surgery, the doctors came back with the news: no flow, his body wouldn't take it, and it had to come out. Before they wheeled him back into theatre he posted online and said what he believed was his last prayer. "God, let your will be done."

TG Omori is the Headies-winning director behind some of the defining videos of modern Afrobeats, from the Marlian era with Naira Marley to Asake's run of Terminator, Bandana and Organise. He started out making whole videos on ₦2 million budgets. Today a single video can run past $100,000.

In this episode we get into why a director can take a big budget and still go home with nothing, the year he and Asake worked like "two people in one body" with no treatments and no revisions, why he dropped his public fight for 10% of music video streams, what dialysis really costs in Nigeria (about ₦31 million a year), the "pull me on" texts from friends still in the hood, and why every day is a good day for greatness.

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