Famous Nigerian singer Crown Uzama, also known as Shallipopi, has disclosed that the Chinese kung fu comedy Shaolin Popey from 1994 served as the inspiration for his stage name.
The singer revealed that he tried using his birth name, Crown, and monikers like Drip Face as his stage name before deciding on Shallipopi in a recent interview with British media personality Madame Joyce.
He emphasised that his mother had purchased a Tom and Jerry CD for them, but when they put it in their DVD player, it turned out to be the movie Shaolin Popey, and he stated that he had discovered the film by chance when he was growing up.
“I was looking for [stage] name, so I was like let me coin something from the movie Shaolin Popey, that’s how I came up with my nickname,” he said.
Shallipopi also disclosed that his genre is not Afrobeats but “afro-talk”.
According to him, he is not a rapper but a talker.
