Singer Barry Jhay says fame has taught him a hard lesson. If he gets another life, he does not want talent and he does not want popularity. He just wants money.
The Aiye singer made the confession in an interview with Akin Abalade, where he spoke about growing up as the son of a legend, the cost of public life, fatherhood and the controversy that once knocked him off his feet.
“My next life I don’t even want no talent. I just want to be, I don’t want to be popular, I just want to be rich. Like bro, I just want to be thinking rich. Fame is very dangerous. It’s a drug to get in your head and take over, man. So just be careful how you handle it. I’m not your father,” he said.
Barry Jhay, born Oluwakayode Junior Balogun, is the son of late Fuji pioneer Sikiru Ayinde Barrister and the grandson of juju great I.K. Dairo. That bloodline opened doors. It also created a pressure he still carries. He described life as a musician’s child as sweet and bitter at once, and said his father’s death changed the course of everything. Barrister died in 2010. Years later, Barry has said the old man told him he might not survive if he walked away from music.
Asked whether he is a nepo baby or a “lappo,” he did not dodge the label.
“I’m a straight Nepo, but my reality is Lappo, man. The Nepo side is gone, though. I’m trying to get it back, but Lappo, the Lappo is in me.”
In other words, the surname is royal. The daily grind still feels like starting from the street.
He was blunt about why people work. Money, he said, is a major reason. Music is both a job and a responsibility. He also let slip that he can draw and paint, and promised to show that side if fans ask for it.
The dream in his head is not small.
“My dream is too big that it scares me, bro. If your dream doesn’t scare you, then your dream is not big enough.”
Part of that dream, he added, is putting money into mental health awareness because too many people still suffer in silence.
Fatherhood has sharpened the point. Barry said he has a three-year-old son and wants to build a better future for his children. That is the version of wealth he keeps circling back to. Not the noise. Not the applause. The kind that lets a child grow up without the same fear.
He also looked back, briefly, at the public storm that once surrounded him. He did not reopen every old headline. He only said the experience broke him and forced him to see people differently.