Profile of the week: Ruggedman

Real Name: Michael Ugochukwu Stephens

Stage Name: Ruggedman

Date of Birth: September 20 

State of Origin: Abia State, Nigeria.

Genre: Rapper

A graduate of political science from Lagos State University, Ọ̀jọ́, he started loving music in 1989. He had his own songs done in 1991 and released a CD, which had two tracks. The two songs got massive air play, but in 2002, Ruggedman felt Nigerian rappers (such as Rasqie,Eedris Abdulkareem, Maintain and many others) lacked talent and he needed to do something about it. He was the most controversial musician at that time and that won him a lot of awards.

One of his controversial tracks is Big Bros. This diss track was attacking the CEOs of Kennis Music Keke Ogungbe and Dayo "D1" Adeneye. He also hit harder than anyone could have imagined when he said "the fact that you have (got) money doesn't mean you can toy with me" reasons being that he felt that the CEOs were politicizing the industry and barring other acts from proving their skills. He did not attack rappers such as Modenine, 2-Shotz, Freestyle, Six Foot+ possibly because he saw them as rappers who use words, because that was what he advised Edris Abdulkareem - "try use words, and u might sound nice, but not as precise as my guys you see in front of your eyes". He is from the Igbo ethnic group in Nigeria.

He has however made up with all the people he has dissed in the past save for Mode Nine.

He released an album entitled Thy Album Come, and also has an album with Afro hip hop artist Faze . He has also been around the world including Dublin and Durban, South Africa where he says he had the time of his life hanging out with his old time friend, Deji of Soundcity at the 2005 KORA Awards.

He is still considered by a larger proportion of Nigerians to be one of the best rappers ever to emerge from West Africa. On March 3, 2007, he released his second album, Ruggedy Baba, which includes the lead single Ruggedy Baba (featuring 9ice) and Club Rugged. It moved over 100,000 units after only three weeks of release.

Hosted the prestigious NB Plc sponsored Star Quest Reality Tv Talent Show (2009) and anchored for the 2nd year running MTN Project Fame 2009 Official Press Media Launch.

In 2010, Rugged had his fair share of controversy as the media once again brought out lines from 9ice's song, 'Once bitten twice shy' and that led to a series of stories centered on Toni Payne, 9ice's wife at the time.

On the positive, he dropped his 3rd album titled 'Untouchable' which has an array of the finest artiste in Nigeria (2face, PSquare, MI, Ice Prince....)and from what we hear, it is doing very well.

Awards:

Hip Hop Artiste of the year (Nigerian Music Awards (NMA) 2006)^[2]

Hip Hop World Awards Best rap album (Ruggedy Baba)2008

Nigerian Music Awards Best Rap Artist 2008 

Nigerian Music Video Awards Best Indigenous video concept (Ruggedy Baba)2008

2008 KORA Award nomination for Best African Hip Hop.


Videos:

Baraje - Ruggedman

Banging - Ruggedman