This twenty six year old late upcoming Hip Hop artiste was laid to rest on Friday 30th April, 2010. He was such a promising young man with a bright future anyone can think of.He had gone through stuff, his life was a rise from grass to grace. He was favoured also by the creator of universe who helped him.

Given what I read from the Newpapers, he came from a broken and never known what strong family ties meant. Dagrin left home early and hung on to a discovered music talent. He never had opportunity, advantage to pursue education to a level that most people in his age had. He was disciplined enough to give all it would take to excel in music and the universal being was kind enough to crown his efforts with such a resounding success.He also had strong dream.

Dagrin whose real name was Olaonipekun Olaitan was highly creative as exemplified by his work or at least may be he had good advicers and listened. Some people belive he had prophetic unction because he talked about his death even before death came calling. But alas at the time he was supposed to be getting the limelight and settled down dath came calling on this promising star. From Dagrin’s life, I have learnt great lessons that I think our community can also learn from.

Personal Background: Individual’s background plays a key role in what one becomes in life. A healthy and stable background can become a leverage that will stabilize us at every junction of life. That is why parents need to work hard first on themselves so that they can lay a great foundation for their wards.But given this, negative background should not be allowed to dictate the level of our well being. Despite a negative background that was not promising, Dagrin broke through the rank and strived for limelight.

 Education: education is good and it has its own leverage. Formal education prepares individuals and build in capacity to reason differently. But formal education is not all that is, street education and personal learnings can make up. Even though formal eduactions help if one can afford it. Dagrin’s level of educatin did not exceed senior high school. I also understand that the reason he rap in local dialect was his good  grasp of his mother’s tongue over English language. We must learn to improvise on what we have and not what we do have to build strong personal brand.

Dream: Dagrin had dream.To excel in personal barnding journey, a strong dream, aspiration for an achievable end. He made effort and put action into it. Had he lived long enough, we may have seen the achievement of some of his dreams. When you have dreams, you need to avoid distractions on your way. If Dagrin’s track ‘the dream’ is anything to go by, he had a lot of distractions and there was this manifestation of youthful exhuberance.

Talent discovery: To build a strong personal brand, we must discover our talents and work hard on it. Discovery of personal talent will help in making a head way in the journey. Discovery of talent is not enough, we must work hard on it. I understand Dagrin was coming from studio when death snatched him away(?). Work hard on your discovered talents, communicate it, promote it.

Prepare for success: many of us do not understand what success means. Success comes with limelight, fame, money and all the funfare. Success is also like a wild lion, if you do not know how to tame it, it can tear you. Individual on the journey of personal branding needs to develop capacity to manage success especially huge finance. Dagrin was favoured early with success. He worked hard for it though. But whether he prepared for fame before fame showed up at his dooor is left for reasonable people to assess. Is there anyone out there who has learnt lesson from Dagrin’s brand or the guy inspired you? He was just twenty six when he died but many people attended his funeral based on his impact and influence. Though Influence here may mean different thing to different people.Let me read from you, use the comment section.

N.B. I could not make it to the Facebook launch on Friday 30 April,2010 so i may not have update.