Some wounds don’t just bruise, they brand you. For Majesty Lyn, that moment came not in the chaos of criticism, but from a man who should have believed in her. She had just come off stage, her heart still thumping with adrenaline and applause, when he said to her face that she would likely not make it in music.
In this As Told To, Majesty Lyn tells the story of that night and unpacks what it felt like to be dismissed before she even started, how the man came back into her life and hurt her again.
This is Majesty Lyn’s story as told to Marv.
I still remember the exact words. I had just come off a stage in Port Harcourt, buzzing from the adrenaline of a killer performance. I had rapped. I sang. I had done everything I knew how to do well, and the crowd loved it. A friend introduced me to someone in the crowd, someone they said could potentially be my manager. I thought, “Okay, maybe this is my moment.”
But the man looked me in the eye and said, “What you did on stage was fire. But I don’t think you’ll sell in Nigeria. Nigerians don’t listen to rap. And you’ll have to pick. Either sing or rap. You can’t do both.”
I was stunned. I remember thinking, “Wait, isn’t your current artist doing both, too?” I couldn’t tell if he was being dismissive because I was new, or because I was a woman. But either way, his words hit hard. At that moment, I masked my anger, smiled politely, and left the event earlier than I’d planned. My spirit had dropped. Before that moment, I’d been giddy with excitement. After that, I just wanted to get home.
That night, I did what I always do when I feel something deeply; I wrote music. I didn’t record the rap I wrote. I just left it in the book.. At the time, I was just a girl in 300 Level, studying Mass Communication in university, and going to rap battles, freestyling with instrumentals and turning my poems into bars.
You see, I started with poetry. My dad had this giant Shakespeare anthology that I used to go to his library to read. I couldn’t even understand half of it at the time, but I loved how it sounded. I loved how words could bend and breathe. My notebooks in school were filled with verses and sketches instead of notes. That was how I knew writing was home for me.
Rap came later. My mom ran a business that doubled as a restaurant during the day and a bar in the evening, and I’d help out after school. The music we played was those old Naija mixtapes. They were my first taste of Hip-Hop and rap. Then I stumbled on an M.I. project. I can’t remember which, but it had that talk-your-shit energy, and my brain exploded. That was the first time I felt rap deeply.
I wrote my first song in my uncle’s studio. My younger brother, a producer, had made a beat, and I asked if I could lay something on it. That was my first moment in front of a mic, not just a performer now, but a recording artist. Around that time, I also made a song called “Two Tablespoons of Lemon.” It was never released.
Years later, after I’d put in more work, more hours, more freestyles and different kinds of songs and rocked different stages, I saw him again—the man who told me I’d never make it by rapping and singing. This time, I had just finished performing at a UBA-sponsored campus event. The crowd had gone wild. I came offstage, and there he was. He looked at me, smiled, and said, “I guess you proved me wrong.”
He apologised sincerely. We even ended up becoming friends and worked together briefly at a campus radio station. He helped with playlist placements and show curation for my music. But it was a complicated friendship. There are things I still can’t talk about because of an NDA that I signed. But I won’t lie, some wounds don’t just vanish. Sometimes I have to train my mind to pretend it doesn’t sting anymore. And hope that one day, it actually doesn’t.
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I’ve grown. I’m no longer just the girl trying to prove something. These days, I’m focused, grounded. I know my sound as a hybrid of a singer and rapper better. I know who I am. I’m growing and making better music. I just dropped a single “Rover,” and my new EP, Situationship, is on the way. It’s a messy love story, but it’s honest and it’s me—a testament to my evolution as an artist and human being. He told me I couldn’t do both. So I did. And I’m not done.
I have learned to use the pain of being written off to do something useful. I have learned to use the hurt as a hook, turn it into fuel and use it to make the angry songs. This is what I am now because I know that one day, I’ll be too rooted in my power to care what has been said to me.
I’m not bitter about the situation anymore, but it may take a long time to forgive it. It’s just like when someone is in a toxic relationship. A lover says something hurtful to you and apologises so there’s peace, but you know what they had said is how they truly feel about you. Despite that, you take it to the chin because you love the person, but their hurtful words or acts cross your mind once in a while, and you still feel them.
I still remember that situation and statement and it hits hard every time. As long as that persists, it may be hard to let it go. I’m learning that forgiveness is a process, one that time might heal at the end. But there’s still that underlying feeling, and at this moment, I wouldn’t say that I have totally forgiven it when I have not forgotten about it.
