Mawazine sessions: Nigerian duo P-Square represent Africa’s rise in the pop world

In the fifth of our eight-week series of interviews with artists from the recent Mawazine festival in Morocco, P-Square chat about their big-selling career and Africa's growing reputation in the pop-music world..

P Square perform at the Mawazine music festival in Morocco in May. Fade Senna / AFP

When P-Square talk about keeping it in the family, they mean it. The Nigerian pop duo are not only twins who perform together, they also live and record together in a compound in the country’s capital, Lagos.

“It is a very good arrangement for us,” says Paul Okoye, 32, who is eight minutes older than brother Peter.

“We can be at home chatting or just relaxing and then when we suddenly have an idea or we want to try something, we just go to the studio in the house and play around. Paul and I have a great bond in that I know what he is thinking, so we just feed off each other.”

That sounds great, but as brothers – let alone twins – living and working together, do they ever feel stifled by each ­other?

“Oh, don’t get it twisted,” says Peter, who cuts a more intense figure than the laid-back Paul. “My brother Paul here knows exactly what to do to upset me and I can do the same to him. We argue like everyone else but we are brothers and we always know that family and music come first.”

It is clear that the Okoye brothers are all about their craft. Born in the city of Jos in Nigeria’s central belt, Peter and Paul first displayed their musical flair in high school by performing and dancing to cover versions of songs by musical heroes Michael Jackson and Bobby Brown.

This raw talent was augmented by some serious musicianship when the duo enrolled in local musical conservatories to develop their skills on the keyboards, drums, bass and electric guitar.

By the time they formed P-Square in 2001, out of the ashes of their high-school a cappella quartet MMMPP, the duo were a bona fide musical-production team and set to work crafting their 2003 debut album Last Nite.

That record, and the subsequent five (including last year's Double Trouble), displayed the brothers' enviable talent as hitmakers. Their string of Pan-­African hits included last year's peppy Alingo, 2013's electro-fuelled Personally and the sun-kissed reggae jam of 2011's Forever.

These tracks are the perfect representation of the P-Square sound, which is rooted in the Nigerian rhythmic musical tradition while being open to western influences.

Peter is not entirely comfortable with acknowledging P-Square’s role in bringing African pop music to the world, despite the fact they have sold more than 10 million albums and perform regular tours of Europe and North America.

He instead says the band’s success is part of a new-found global interest in music created on the continent. He points to the Senegalese-born pop star Akon and Moroccan super-producer RedOne as examples of African artists leading the charge in the pop world.

“Our time is now and people seem to be loving listening to African music,” he says. “As Africans, it’s our time to shine and I think we are taking over. Our sounds are original, new and fresh in the ears.”

Paul says he was confronted with the reality of the band's role and status in the music scene when artists such as Akon and American rapper TI offered to collaborate with the duo for 2013's Chop My Money and last year's Ejeajo respectively.

However, when the group received a note from a musical idol, things became surreal.

A fan of the 2013 Michael ­Jackson-aping video for Personally, Jermaine Jackson contacted P-Square saying he was interested in working with them on their next project. A year later, he was in Nigeria to record the ­reggae-1980s pop mash-up, ­Zombie, which appeared in ­Double Trouble.

“That was something I can never forget because I first listened to him when I was 10,” says Paul, laughing. “I mean, the man was not only in Nigeria, but he was standing in front of me in our own house. He stayed with us for four days and worked on the song.”

Peter adds: “I was thinking, if Michael Jackson was there, too, with him, that would have been the best thing ever.”

P-Square now want to work with Arab talent. “We definitely want to reach out and work with stars from the Middle East,” Paul says. “It has been one of our goals for the past few years. I think the blend of styles from Africa and the Arab world would sound amazing.”

While nothing has been set in stone as yet, Peter says the collaborations will come.

“Oh, it’s going to happen,” he says. “We have conquered East, West and Southern Africa but North Africa and the Middle East have been a problem for us. I want to work with the stars from your part of the world and even the ones who are starting out – as long as they are ­talented.”

Next week we talk to Amal Maher, the acclaimed Egyptian singer equally at home in the worlds of classical Arabic music and pop