We can never break up — Tunde and Wunmi Obe

Music stars, Tunde and Wunmi Obe, popularly known as TWO, have said they cannot break up as a music group, not even for publicity sake.

The duo, who spoke at a press conference in Lagos, said they were not just best friends, but happily married with kids and are seen as role models by several persons within and outside the entertainment industry.

“How do we explain to our kids whose friends in school will ask them if the split is true?” Wunmi said. “Do we say, ‘See daddy and mummy are just playing so we can sell records and make headlines?’ Ours goes beyond just music. We were members of the same band then became best friends, dated and married, so it’s not going to be easy to split up.”

On their scandal free career, the Mogbo Moya singers said they had learnt to deal with issues as mature adults and had stuck to the persons they started out with from the beginning.

“We are lucky, we have been working with the same manager, same people for over decades,” Tunde said. “Whenever we have any disagreement, we talk like mature adults. We have never had any confrontational period. I’m her best friend, she’s my best friend. When you don’t talk to your best friend you know how it feels.

“We make a joke of everything like “Wetin dey do you sef?” That’s the kind of relationship we have. We always communicate with a lot of respect. If you talk to me respectfully and I talk to you with respect, where will the quarrel come from and that’s the same thing about our marriage.”

Tunde jokingly blamed their clean image for their lack of brand endorsements.

“Maybe you (should) ask the brands, because I don’t understand,” he said. “It is giving the impression that having a clean image is not ok in Nigeria. Maybe we need a little bit of scandal in our lives, but we don’t know. It’s as shocking as ever.”

T.W.O recently released their fourth studio album, TWO plus. The album features Tuface, 9ice, Dammy Krane, Floss, Teniim and Tunde’s brother, Segun Obe. The duo also worked producers Samkelf, Del’B and Papi J.

Wunmi said the album was recorded in their studio.

“We felt freer recording this album and it is our best body of work so far,” she said. “We tried a mix match with the collaborations and production and it was fun. We found artistes who were willing to work with us and producers who were not willing to change our style or give us the regular production but true music production.

“We did what is true to us working on this album and we did not compromise or sell out to what is in vogue. We are not gunning for man or woman of the moment. We are more particular about style and we were futuristic about it.”

The album features a comedy skit by their children, Modie and Ricky.

The duo dismissed the idea of collaborating with international artistes, noting that Nigerian artistes who have done so do not break out with such collaborations. They also explained why they don’t feature a lot of Nigerian artistes on their projects.

“For us, it’s about connection,” Tunde said. “If an artiste cannot connect with our kind of music, we don’t. We ran into Dammy Krane at an event and he was like when will he do a collabo with us and we thought about it and invited him later. So that’s it.”

The duo that became popular for their skits on the Charly Boy Show was asked when they will return to television.

“We promised that this year, we just wanted to get this album out and its available everywhere, online, stores, airport then we can do two more videos then face TV,” Tunde said. “It’s going to be a variety show. A lot of people say TV is boring and people laugh at things I don’t find funny so I’m challenged.

“You remember the Charly Boy Show? That was funny. We want to challenge ourselves so we can get to that level of fun and take it up a notch. We stopped doing Charley Boy Show in 2003 or 2002, and then we were doing Zoom Time and stopped in 2009.

“It’s a funny thing; music came first but we became popular with TV. We stated TV in 1992; first album didn’t come out until 1998. So by the time the first album came out, people were like I know these guys and by that time I had done movies too, so they now thought every actor/actress want to sing not knowing that we were actually musicians who had other talents. We will return later in the year.”

Tunde said they remained friends with Charly Boy even though they don’t work together anymore.

“I think that’s what happens when you’ve been working with somebody for 15 to 16 years,” he said. “We’ve been working together for a long time and when it’s time to move on, even though there is really no conflict or area were we fought or disagree, I mean if you ask him, he will tell you we are cool and if you ask me, I will say the same but I think because we are no longer working together, (it) leaves that little gap.

“If you’ve worked in more than one place you will know that your relationship with your boss is not exactly in the same place, so that is it. But the respect will always be there. We worked a lot, we achieved a lot. We changed entertainment on TV with Charly Boy Show and Zoom Time, but now is time to smile.”