CDQ
Artist
Sodiq Abubakar Yusuf (born 6 May 1985), popularly known by his stage name CDQ, is a Nigerian indigenous hip-hop rapper and songwriter best known for his single “Nowo E Soke” featuring Wizkid and MasterKraft’s Indomie where he was featured alongside Olamide.
While the former is instrumental for launching his career into the Nigerian music industry, the later won him his first career award at the 2016 Nigerian Music Video Awards. Signed to his label No Struggle No Success Entertainment, CDQ’s repertoire of music includes rapping in Yoruba language with addition of ad-libs such as the popular “Woss Wobi” which he invented.
CDQ started music professionally in 2008 when he used to be a back-up singer for Da Grin before he started rapping in English language with M.I. In 2013, he signed a recording contract with MasterKraft’s General Records after winning a rap battle at the weekly Industry Nite in December 2012. In 2014, he released his breakthrough single titled “Indomie” which featured vocals from Olamide while the remix of the song featured Davido. The MasterKraft-produced song brought CDQ’s career to limelight and further earned him two nomination spots at the 2015 Nigeria Entertainment Awards and a nomination in the Best Street-Hop Artist category at The Headies 2015.
In anticipation of his debut studio album titled Quality, CDQ enlisted the service of Wizkid with whom he released “Nowo E Soke” as a lead single off the album. The music video for the song was directed by Unlimited L.A and went on to win the Best Afro Hip Hop Video category at the 2016 edition of the Nigeria Music Video Awards. On 16 August 2016, he unveiled the cover art for the album before it was released through General Records on 22 August to positive critical reviews. On 11 November 2016, he launched his own record label N.S.N.S, a short-form for No Struggle No Success Entertainment. On 1 Feb 2017, he dropped his first official single under the platform titled ‘ Say Baba ’ which was produced by Jay Pizzle
