Kenny Saint Best, formerly Kenny Saint Brown, is a popular Urban Contemporary gospel artiste, who has been in the music industry for over 12 years.
In this interview with TOPE OLUKOLE, she talks about her pastor deal, her new passion for inspiring and counselling people and how she wants to go into food business, because she feels people must eat good food.
HOW did you survive those traumatic periods; those periods when you had negative stories written about you?
I went through a period that killed my career. broke it into pieces; my career died. Right now I am trying to revive myself to get the value back, because my name and career was stripped of value. So, all my efforts in the last four years is to add value back to Kenny. Now, I want to move on to higher things, I don’t want to remain in the shackles of my traumatised period, that’s why I renamed myself Kenny Saint Best. The angle I want people to view me now is from the angle of an inspiration queen.
Do you have any album you are working on presently?
Yes I do, and that is my new song Live Your Life. I am currently working on the video. Amazingly it’s a story of my life. It was written by Eldee. He gave it the title, Live Your Life and I wrote part of the song. I wrote about 30 per cent and he wrote 70 per cent of the song. I think he was inspired by my personality and he knew where I was coming from, what I have been through, all the name callings, blackmails and so on.
The song absolutely talked about me, and now I want the music to talk to people, to speak to their lives. I am living my life, no matter what people say about me. People will always talk, so I don’t care about anyone anymore, right about now, all I care about is what God says about me. The song is like an admonition to people to live their individual lives. You can’t blame everybody for everything that happens to you.
You have to always stand up for yourself and live your life. In the video, I was living my life large. Trying to express myself without caring about what anyone will say. Life is not something you live in misery, heartbreak and pain, life is life, so live it to the fullest. How people see you is how you live your life.
What genre of music do you sing?
I play contemporary hip-hop soul music, it can be Afrocentric. It is mainly urban contemporary music. You see, it has an African flavour and employs African and Nigerian languages. My song is 100 per cent the Kingdom of God and it is gospel music. My gospel music is the street gospel. It’s really not what you hear the choir sing on Sundays. I will call it alternative gospel music.
What other thing do you have passion for apart from singing?
My greatest passion is inspiring people and counseling them. Everytime you see me talk, I am encouraging someone and giving inspirational words. I am passionate about people; I am a people person. I am passionate about you living a fabulous life, you eating good food, you looking your best, you fulfilling your dreams. I am always lending a helping hand to people. You don’t have to be in distress. I am so blessed with good people around me. I am blessed with so much love. I am blessed with wisdom as well as so much wise people around me. Basically I am surrounded by a wealth of good friends and so that is what I can give out.
I always look out for who to talk to and to encourage them on how best they can live their lives. What I can contribute to make a person’s life and living better. So, my passion reflects in my music and the kind of friendship I keep. I have a passion for food that is why I am going into food business. I feel that people should not manage food. If they want to eat, they should eat and be satisfied. I am passionate about children. I am passionate about the kind of habits they pick-up now because they do not know that the habit they pick now is what will either make them or break them.
Does your passion for children have to do with your background?
I am a youth coach. I was made a youth coach by my pastor, so I meet over 100 teenagers every month. Originally I thought it was something I could not do, but one day I listened to Ben Bruce when he said, “Whatever it is you are doing now, if you are not doing it for the teenagers, in the next 20 years you will be out of business.” If everything you are doing now is for people who are over 30 years, in the next 20 years, they will not be inquisitive about a lot of things about life anymore, because they have a lot of things on their minds that they are pursuing. That opens me up to what kind of life I should mentor kids about.
Everytime, I ask myself, what goes on in the mind of a teenager? How come people see teenagers as being difficult? Why can’t people, especially adults, easily connect with them? Why can’t I do music that teenagers can easily embrace but still connect with the God factor? How many programmes are there for the teenagers? What feeds them with information, apart from the Internet? Nowadays, teenagers are so inquisitive, because they are in that age where they want to know everything.
So, everything they take in now is cemented, their mind absorbs it and acts on it. It is at teenage we are tempted to smoke cigarettes, heroine and so on. It is during teenage years that you become disvirgined. I am passionate about what kind of information the teenagers are taking in. I always want to have a chance to meet with them. I had a conference in December; I am having another conference in July called Teens Connect. It is being supported and funded by my pastor.
Take Farouk Abdulmutallab, for example, in the bid to bomb a plane he ended up getting himself injured. It was somebody that sat him down and brainwashed him. So, I want to brainwash teenagers as well and tell them good stuff about God and how they should live their lives right. If you take a look at these suicide bombers, there are lots of teenagers among them. I want to talk about what the pulpit will not talk about to teenagers. This is the era where teenagers are raping themselves. A boy teenager is raping another boy. Teenagers have sex and get into fraudulent deals. I am going to have a television programme very soon and it may even get on the radio. I just want to connect with the teenagers and let them connect with positivity.
How did you overcome and survive your marriage break-up, blackmail, the false stories and so on?
I think I was born to face bad experiences and overcome them. That is basically my story and that is why I am passionate about people; to encourage them that that particular difficulty and challenge they are going through will pass. I can’t boast of surviving it all by myself, I will say that I got into the word of God and I was able to discover for myself all that I needed to pull through. Looking back now, I can only laugh and give God thanks.
Those were times that I had a death wish. I just wanted to sleep and not wake up, but each time I went to bed, I will open my eyes the following morning, and I will cry because I was sad that I was still alive. It was the grace of God. It was a lot of prayers and the word of God that I have acquired on the way, on the path of my journey as a Christian.
The bible says that “the weapon of our warfare are not carnal, but are mighty through God in pulling down strongholds,” and these strongholds are not just simple or ordinary things. It could be a best friend being a problem to you, It could be your partner, it could be an examination, and it could be a case of disappointment.
Mine was all muddled up together, but I have found comfort in the word of God, to combat what I was facing every step of the way. It was not easy, that was when I had broader understanding of what the bible says that “man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.”
It was about finding those words and using them. It is synonymous with knowing that if you have malaria, it is not ordinary tablet that will handle it, but an injection. I had to search the word of God to discover the word I could use, that could bring me back to life. I really do not have anything that I can say that kept me. I stood to confront my shame, disappointments, fears, failures, and found every word that I could use to combat them in the bible.
The word of God says “study to make yourself approved a workman that needs not be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” That is why even when I came out, I came out with the scriptures, as evident in my song, Turn Around. Just like what the bible says in Psalm 121.
That is why I said I was born to face trials and overcome them. I think God was just looking for a true and sincere disciple and he allowed me to go into that kind of marriage, because he was sure I will not get hooked into drugs. My own drugs were the word of God, I got addicted to the word of God.
It’s not that I am a perfect soul, but we are all working towards perfection. That is why even in my comeback songs, I had to call God my “Alaye,” that I can boast in him. The songs are just more than everything I have been through. It is also for people who are going through similar challenges, for them to be able to identify with the song, so that their spirits can get lifted.
Also, my brother (Baba Keke-Kenny Ogungbe) was very instrumental in helping me overcome my ordeals. He would call me and fire me up and give me reasons why I should not just stay at home and cry. He would encourage me to go to events and be in my best dress and look my best. He would tell me to make sure I get the microphone to talk to the crowd and say something. He would tell me to be ready to answer whatever anyone wants to ask me.
All I needed to overcome was the blackmail and the ability to overcome the shame. As hard as it was, if I did not face the shame, the negative vibes and blackmail, I would never be able to overcome it. I would just withdraw finally. That is what people do, when they face negative ordeals like this, they just leave that path they are excelling and find another career. This one, I have overcome it and I am here to stay.
What inspired you to start singing?
I didn’t have any inspiration per se. I had just finished my Master’s Degree; I just had an MBA and all I needed to do was to become a career girl. God just spoke to me that he had a job for me. I was confused and I asked what kind of job it was, that I just wanted to be a career girl with Chevron or Shell or one of those oil companies. It was a conversation between me and God, I was on Broadstreet at Lagos, going for an interview.
He told me he has a job for me that I should not bother doing the interview and I just handed it all over to Him, from then on. One proverb that keeps me going, and I strongly believe so much in, is “you cannot go into a partnership with God and be at a loss.” It didn’t come as an inspiration then, it came as a service.
I was in the choir for three months and later he put me in the prayer band because he needed to ‘cook’ me with prayers and the word, to get me more rooted in the word, instead of just doing the singing. Meanwhile, I didn’t know the two were just moving side by side. I would spend as long as five hours just worshiping and acknowledging him. It was a life I did for a whole year before he now told me well done and I should take music.
Will you say your placement in God helped you overcome your ordeal?
I was called to work by God; I didn’t know what he wanted me to do then. The job I was given was to pray for a nation. Then I was sent to the United Kingdom, where we were praying for the Holy Ghost festival in London. Then, there were just few churches in London and I used to go to the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), Jesus House.
I was just a yes-God girl.
Do you have intention of becoming a pastor?
When I came back front the UK, I went to Bible College. I was an assistant pastor. I was a teens’ pastor. I had prepared for the ministry fully, until the Lord said no, that I should go into the music ministry. We are going into the 21st century, and it has a lot of challenges, especially in the place of music. So, God said I should go into the line of gospel music.
Just like when God told Abraham in the bible, that he was going to give him a son, he waited a long time, then God gave him the son. God later told him to sacrifice his son, then at the point of the sacrifice, God told him not to worry that he should sacrifice a lamb instead.
So, that is the kind of school I belong to, where God tells me to do it this way, then another way, then another way again. Then he tells me to go and marry this person this way because in the future I am going to be doing hip-hop music. “Go on the wild side, go on the high side. You know hip-hop people you can’t intimidate them, they are ready for you anytime.” I am just one foolish girl in the hand of God.
You cannot separate me from God, I don’t have a life outside the job God calls me to do. I love the Lord, so when I sin, I can easily go back to him and say sorry for all my sins. It is a simple way of living for me; it is a life I have been living for over 15 years.
This is the way I have been assigned to do it. It was God that sent me. People look at me and ask if I still sing gospel. Yes, I still sing gospel, that is the assignment I have been given. I blazed the trail in the gospel music.
Which one of your songs will you say is your favuorite?
I am passionate about all of them because they are all my babies. As long as it is blessing people, both home and abroad, because I get more calls from outside the country. I was in Dublin, last summer, and they took Alaye from my mouth. I was stunned and I was just blessing God.
Every now and then they call from Dublin to say “thank you for the song” and I will not be able to ask them which one of them. There is one song that has been a blessing to my soul, because it is one thing to sing a song that blesses others and it is another thing for the song to bless you; the song is Iye Ayeraye (eternal life.) This was the song that kept me those times I was going through my ordeals. It was actually this song that brought me back from my misery, from my tomb, from my casket, just waiting to die and I will wish I was dead.
I would stay in bed for three days, refusing to eat, I would not talk. I was just there waiting to die, hoping that breath would leave me. All I had then were rejection, blackmail, lies, and disappointments. There was no one I could look in the eyes and tell that they are all lies, because people will look at me and be confused and ask who they are to believe between the media and I. Amid all of that, that song reminded me that I have got eternal life and that kept sinking in my memory.
I was waiting to die and the only thing I know I had left was eternal life, and then life came back to me. That was the song that brought me back on my feet again. That is what I wish everyone, including this generation and generations to come. We all have eternal life, both with God and on earth, so I want eternal life.
Do you have any role model?
No I don’t, not one, apart from when I was growing up, and it was Whitney Houston. I didn’t know how much I had idolised her until I became Mrs. Brown that is my ex-husband’s name. Back then, I sang so aloud and even in the Choir I sang very aloud. Before I became a born-again Christian, she was my role model, but when I became a Christian, God became my role model. It is from him I get more inspiration, more insight, to mention a few.
What is your official position in Kennis Music?
In Kennis Music, I am a pioneer staff. While my brother was the President, I was the Vice President. Somehow, because of the job God has called me to do, I declined my position. I don’t want to be a music executive; I just want to be the artiste. I was officially the A and R (artiste and repertoire) director.
I was in charge of sales, marketing and production, while my brother is in charge of promotions and finances and all those stuffs. It got to a point where it was challenging for me, where becoming the artiste was my calling and I wanted to stick to my calling. So, I played it down a lot of times.
