Dedeukwu, formerly known as Spunky Black, is a rapper and creative director. Born in Aba, a commercial city in Abia state, south East of Nigeria. He started writing demos while serving as a backup artist to the late Malaki A.K.A Blakilla,classic hip hop producer. He also worked with the likes of Uncle Ben of Africa, Baby Boy ( Item Okpi ), Zeak of songs, Xhuman, Xralarge, Lyfstyle, E-Marshal, Master G, Nocasting and some other talented musicians that were breeding in Aba.

Starting a project and collaborations

Dedeukwu joined a telegram group called NxM ( NEAR x MUSIC ) the first music DAO built on the NEAR blockchain with other creatives where they shared music, vibed with each other and interacted with testnets, where he also got to build from the Createbase testnet and the hackathon that was organized by Mintbase, NF and ect. He was excited about this prospect and vowed to explore.

Intro to NFTs

In January 2020, Spunky Black learnt of a new medium his brother has been using to market his crypto arts named NFTs. He researched for a while but couldn’t really figure out what NFTs were, so he let it be. He kept on working on his music, creatively and financially contributing to a collaboration – OBOHIA – with Zexmode entertainment (Xralarge ) produced featuring the likes of Baby Boy aka Zeak of songs, Master G, No casting, 2000BC, A music video was shot and the tune trended in major radio stations in southeastern Nigeria. “it got us some shows, got some influences and recognition”. While figuring out ways to protect his intellectual property, he worked as a borehole Engineer and night club host in Owerri and Asaba.

“So earlier February, I was in a conversation with my brother and he said that there are also ways in the crypto community where I can trade my music, build my community.” Dedeukwu believed and trusted in his brother, knowing fully well that he wouldn’t be involved in anything illegal.

Dedeukwu was introduced to Vandal of DAO Records who exposed him to the concepts of DAOs – Decentralized Autonomous Organizations. “Vandal made me understand that there is something called DAO, Decentralized autonomous organization. DAO is a group of people helping each other, elevating each other, working collaboratively and also using blockchain technology to achieve a common goal. They keep everything visible and they keep it going. I was intrigued because it’s just the future for me. I’ve never seen or heard about such things in my whole life”. 

During his meeting with Vandal, Dedeukwu also learnt of Mintbase, an NFT marketplace community friends and brother Gattraps from the US reached out to me that they want me involved in the collaboration he’s working on with Fishbrain. And it would be cool to have my accent. I’ve been a lover of collaboration and I believe in teamwork”. In order to record and produce his verse in the track, Dedeukwu reached out to a secondary school friend , 2keys, in Lagos who connected him with a producer SterryO . “We arranged a meeting and I came over to their record label studio in Lekki. Then I recorded my own verse of that very song. The first collaboration. Solsmasher. Solsmasher was the first collaboration I did with them. And after the recording, mixing and mastering, it turned out to be something else. It became a vibe of a kind”. Fishbrain and Gattraps loved the track and decided to form a team with Dedeukwu where they would work collectively, play blockchain Defi games and interact with projects together. 

CTRL was created and this was based on the concept of control over one’s data, information and creative results, later on we met BSK who is a dope graphics designer, voxel artist and guitarist he designed the cover art to the project and became a member of CTRL and as a result Solsmasher was minted in the Ethereum blockchain in partnership with DAOrecords and sold for 0.06 ETH to Jerome ( Co-founder of COMETH DEFI games ) because the community of Fishbrain and Gattraps was very active in the ethereum blockchain and Dedeukwu was able to bridge between NEAR and ethereum.

“So then I got to learn about the Cipher community” founded by Kinchasa & Ezincrypto a community where members could drop bars on a beat, freestyle and unlock some tokens that could be converted to ETH and be traded.  The shows were late at night, around 1 am Nigerian time but Dedeukwu made it a duty to always attend. “So if you check cipher.media , you can relate to the website where you can generate AI beats and record your music and mint immediately like you do everything at the spot before one hour. You’re done with the recording, mixing, mastering and minting your hip hop collectible. So it is a platform for selling freestyles”. While doing this Spunky Black interacted with and played some Defi games with the team like Axie infinity, Warriders, Cometh, Sandbox metaverse and wearable creation etc.

Chapter 1 Foundation

“I founded C1 Guild aka Chapter One Global charity foundation with JCB after a collaboration. We all met in the same NXM ( NEAR x MUSIC )  telegram community. So, we made a collaboration titled Baboon, a song produced by JCB on the beats, Jahzone on the vocals and then myself. And we have Mykhelpixel also from Nigeria that made the cover art which was really amazing”. Baboon is a song that describes the journey of leaving home to find your footing. It describes the consciousness one needs to have to be goal oriented. Baboon sold out for 5 NEAR  and more than 50 editions were listed on secondary markets.

30% of the proceeds from the sale of Baboon was given to Charity. Giving back to the less privileged has been part of the foundation’s goal. “So I used to do this in most less privileged houses, buy things for the kids you know, synergize with them and pray with them at the end of it all”. The guild is focused on onboarding and creating opportunities for the underprivileged in the Web3 space. C1 Guild is registered in the Corporate Affairs commission of Nigeria RC:185318 and has been partnering with some creatives now prioritizing their partnership with Shinygloves.club a US based NGO to create opportunities for the underprivileged using the NEAR  web3 tools as a way to spread adoption and creative education. C1 guild deployed CC-4 & CC-5 classroom in Jos, Plateau state with Shinygloves club as they get started with their movement of NFTs for social while the news of their NFTs marketplace built by Harmonic guild is brewing to go live.

Building the Shryne

Dedeukwu created his first NFT album –Ikenga– a mixture of sounds projecting the Igbo heritage and culture, spiced with classical drums with the likes of Gattraps, Bullymeow, Bskz, and JCB jumping on the album. With Ikenga, you have several unlockables: 777 IKENGA tokens, one lucky song, one VIP moment in Virtual reality, one NFT card, mind control NFT bear and rights to commercial use of the songs. Vandal grabbed a song, Dedeukwu for 70 NEAR.

“After that, I sold a couple of the MARY feat. Xteno audioNFT in the album collected by Ezincrypto, symbolic, Pesos Beatery and Paul Crans plus a couple of other community builders. It was such a great ride for me because this is a community of artists helping artists investing in artists’ projects. So, during all those experiments, I had some collaborative networks. I met a lot of metahumans and people that identify with my sound and my journey, people that were actually curious to learn about the African Igbo heritage, tradition and culture through my sound and through my synergy. So, it’s something that I’ve appreciated, you know for as long as I ride through my waves.”  This moved Dedeukwu to build the Shryne.

DedeukwuShryne is tasked with bridging the gap between creativity and heritage using web3 technology. The sole purpose is to curate web2 experts trying to launch the career on web3 through residency of 7 artists from 7 tribes of Africa while propelling them as ambassadors to build in their tribe after the 7 weeks experimental experience in the shryne “We are the Reverend because we know how it works from the terminology to the structure to the experience NFA/DYOR. If we have all it takes, we have the developers that will probably work on coding strategy for adoption like African friendly DApps and the tools for decentralization both in our off chain community.” 

The Shryne will be more like a corporate DAO for curation and education, “my mission is to put the Dedeukwu’s music NFTs at the forefront of information and technology, collectively grooming  him to be a full-time live musician for phygital community of web3 and onboard 1 million Africans into blockchain while tapping from the creative economy for more web3 education and tour.” The Shryne will be a community owned project and holders and collectors will be apportioned royalties like backstage experience, percentages of streaming royalties and the privilege of contributing ideas to projects cooked in the Shryne whenever there is a launch in web2. The goal is to make the Dedeukwu live band perform in various metaverse channel also, get incentivized and share the proceedings, thus returning value to the community. Long term, the vision is to become the biggest African curator community agreeing on a project proportion execute and split revenue with time with believe that “NO CHAMPION LAST FOREVER”, bridging the gap between the physical and digital ecosystems with live bands, handmade collectibles and promising utilities for holders and collectors. Other musicians will be curated while on the go and Dedeukwu will remain the frontline musician for the Shryne.

“I got a family physical space. A permanent space for the shryne. And yeah, a site  where we’ve been curating, you see artists come to the shryne to harness their skills, mix their skills and work their magic to create mind healing and captivating pieces.”  Projectors are provided for practicals on how to interact with the metaverse, DEfi, DEx and blockchain projects. A non-profit digital recording unit is also available for artists to flex their chords and produce their sounds free of charge, handmade fashion merchandise and physical paintings are also available. 

“So in my opinion, DedeukwuShyne is curating everything African and also beyond Africa. With the spice of, you know, African heritage and culture. So while doing that, I am setting to launch the Shryne as a DAO in the first quarter of 2023 and my official website store. It’s coming along with an album titled – LESSONS AND BLESSINGS. So the lessons are my experiences while living in Lagos as I try to pave my way, to survive, my thoughts, my ideas, my relationship, the struggle and how far I’ve gotten to be who I am. And the blessings: the achievements, the wins, you know, the Priceless ones. I mean, the difference, the community, the family, you know, which gives me joy.”

“Right now, I’m not sure of how many tracks because there’s a lot of tracks In the kitchen and most of them I’ve been brewing around and I have been able to tease people with snippets. I have been keeping collectors on suspense and I also hope that you support the movement, let us curate Africa, Let us be able to interpret ourselves by ourselves. Thank you.”