Former Buckeye Mekka Don Now Thriving In Music Business
From a young age, Chukwuemeka (“Emeka”) Nnamdi Onyejekwe, also known as Mekka Don, was destined for success in whatever field he chose. The former Ohio State walk-on went from being a football player, to a lawyer, and now a successful rapper.
In an exclusive interview with The Ozone, the Columbus native shared his story of pursuing music and sports, his licensing deals with major sport networks, and his thoughts on the Buckeyes this season.
He recently held a private listening party in Columbus for his new music, for a crowd that included many former and current Buckeye football players.
Mekka Don was the youngest of four in his family, and he came from a very educated family that instilled their beliefs in him. Growing up, he always made his education a priority in his life. His parents have a total of 10 degrees between the two of them. His brother is a lawyer, one of his sisters is a lawyer, and the other sister is a doctor.
“You can only kind of imagine where I was headed academically,” he said. “It was not just something that was important to my family it became something that was important to me as well.”
But he was also a five-sport athlete when he was younger.
“My passion was always somewhere else,” Mekka Don said. “It was always in sports and music mostly. So, I knew eventually that I was going to go and get my degrees but eventually I was going to jump out and pursue my passion.”
He began his career in sports as a star soccer player. As a junior at St. Francis DeSales High School, his team won the state championship.
Later that year he was diagnosed with the rare knee disorder Osgood Schlatter, that made it hard for him to kick the ball.
The football coach begged him to try out for the football team, so he then transitioned to the gridiron for his senior year of high school. He was a starter at the wide receiver position on a team that went on to win the state championship.
Despite the fact that he was still just learning the sport, Mekka Don found himself being recruited to play football in college. Ultimately, he chose a preferred walk-on spot with his beloved Buckeyes.
“I ended up walking on at Ohio State which was so fluky,” Mekka Don said. “But I think my path was a little bit different than the traditional path of those who come to Ohio State. I wasn’t the highest star coming to Ohio State whose only goal was necessarily to go in the NFL. I didn’t even care about the NFL honestly, I was just thrilled to be on the team, especially considering my background.”
Throughout his time as a walk-on wide receiver and defensive back from 1999-2001, he was still focused on his career in music, but also wanted to go to Law School. After practicing as a lawyer for six years, he transitioned to following his dreams of becoming a rapper. He did it by sticking to what he knew: football.
“One thing that I realized, through being an attorney, music licensing was a big way, a big outlet to get your music out there,” he said. “So anytime you hear a commercial, anytime you see a football game, anything else, you hear music. So, I was like wow that’s an interesting angle.”
Mekka Don’s career took off when ESPN licensed a number of his songs to be played throughout the 2010 college football season. The MEAC Conference also licensed his song “You Know I Ball” to be used for their basketball promo commercial on ESPNU. Shortly after that, in 2012, he was named mtvU FRESHMAN by MTV and won the mtvU Best Freshman Video.
It didn’t take long for word of Mekka Don’s success to reach the now former president of Ohio State, Gordon Gee.
“President Gee, who was the former president of Ohio State heard about it and was like wait, you’re doing all of this stuff with MTV and ESPN, we need you to do this stuff for the Buckeyes. So that brought me in,” Mekka Don said.
“That was a dream come true obviously because writing music for Ohio State. I already write music and it’s Ohio State, so it took me like two seconds to write stuff because I already had it in my heart.”
In 2013, Mekka Don released his song “Let’s Go, O-H-I-O” that led to a multi-song licensing deal with the Big Ten Network for the men’s basketball tournament. Later that fall, he released the Ohio State officially licensed song “Juice” which was to be played at all Ohio State home games. That song inspired Head Coach Urban Meyer’s mantra, “Bring The Juice.”
Entire article:
https://theozone.net/2018/07/columbus-native-and-former-buckeye-walk-on-mekka-don/
