One of Ghana’s most romantic Hiplife artistes and dancer, Slim Buster, has stressed that the problems that have bedeviled the Musicians’ Union of Ghana, the mother organization for musicians in the country, and the music industry as a whole, can easily be surmounted within a short time only if musicians stop their hypocritical acts.

In an exclusive interview with The Saturday Statesman, Slim Buster explained that every blessed day musicians complain about the wrong doing in the industry “but the same people who complain will stab you in the back when you try to speak on their behalf.”

He observed, “We have top musicians like Kojo Antwi, Amanzeba, Lumba and others who have been in the industry for a very long time but they are not talking, instead the younger ones are talking. One may ask why these people are not coming out. It will be very difficult for these people to come out and talk about any problems because someone will go against them. These days I have decided not to talk because of my personal experience.

In fact, you need to be extra careful when representing them”, he stated.

He emphasized that if all the people stopped their hypocrisy, they would be listened to. “So I will advise my fellow musicians to put a stop to this hypocritical act so that we can move with one voice.”

He also touched on some other pertinent issues in the industry, one of which is the Security Devices or ‘Stickers’ which are yet to be introduced. He believed that it was a ploy by the leadership of the association to do musicians in.

Asked whether he agreed to the fact that the Nigerian music industry was far ahead of ours, he said, “If Ghanaians can appoint a Nigerian to chair the Ghana Music Awards, why can’t they explore the necessary avenues to promote their works here; even as they are always nominated for awards”?

Again, Slim objected to the claim that miming to perform is not music, rather live band performances show how professional one is.

He believed miming is more difficult than any other act of performing because “in miming one has to learn the exact words, other than that one might forget it on stage, unlike live band where one can sing in any other way that one wants.” He pointed out, “I think those who are against miming don’t really understand or have any knowledge about it; that is why they always make such comments.”

Slim Buster, the creative dancer, has both Krobo and Fate parentage. He was named Ebenezer Asare. He started exhibiting the act of dancing when he was in Form One at the Junior Secondary School through to the Senior Secondary School (now Junior High and Senior High Schools respectively) in 1982.

He represented Accra Academy in a dancing competition and won. But what brought him into the lime light was when he became the winner of the Embassy Double-Do National Dance ChampionS in Accra in 1984.

According to slim, in 1989 he joined the music industry after meeting Nana Kwasi Agyemang, popularly known as Geeman, who helped him to produce his first album entitled, ‘Medofo Bra’.

Since then Slim has endeared himself to many entertainment lovers in this country especially ladies, who enjoy his romantic songs. His stage craft is very interesting and touchy like that of Michael Jackson. Till date Slim Buster has come out with ten albums without any awards.

On why he hadn’t received any awards as yet and how he felt about it, he said “I feel Okay about it. Maybe I don’t deserve an award or all the works I have produced don’t deserve any awards either. It might also be that my time hasn’t come so I’m still waiting for the appropriate time to come.”

The 40-year old handsome-looking man, who still looks like someone in his early 30s, was once married with three children but divorced her. According to him, he intended to marry again soon.

The most fascinating thing that cropped up in the course of the interview about this man was that gossiping is what he does in his leisure hours.

Asked why he chooses to gossip instead of engaging in other games to have fun, he replied, “I choose to gossip because I want to know more about life and the people I don’t know as well, but then I gossip on the positive side and not the negative.”

On his new project, Slim Buster disclosed that he was about to release a peace song for the December 2008 elections. In addition, he was also working on a single album in the English language for both the local and the international markets

Slim advised the youth and the entire citizenry as a whole to stay away from any form of violence.