Ruggedman

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Rugged Man redirects here. You may be looking for R.A. The Rugged Man.


Birth name	Michael Ugochukwu Stephens
Also known as	Mr. Controversial The Diss Master
Born	20 September
Origin	Abia, Nigeria
Genre(s)	African hip hop
Occupation(s)	Rapper
Instrument(s)	Rapping
Years active	2004–present
Label(s)	Rugged Records
Website	ruggedmanonline.com

Michael Ugochukwu Stephens, known by his stage name Ruggedman, born on September 20 (year unidentified) in Ehem, Abia State, is a Nigerian rapper.

A graduate of political science from Lagos State University, Ojo, he started loving music in 1989. He had his own songs done in 1991 and released a CD, which had two tracks. The two songs got massive air play, but in 2002, Ruggedman felt Nigerian rappers (such as Rasqie, Eedris Abdulkareem, Maintain and many others) lacked talent and he needed to do something about it. He was the most controversial musician at that time and that won him a lot of awards. One of his controversial tracks is Big Bros. This diss track was attacking the CEOs of Kennis Music Keke Ogungbe and Dayo "D1" Adeneye. He also hit harder than anyone could have imagined when he said "the fact that you have (got) money doesn't mean you can toil with me" reasons being that he felt that the CEOs were politicizing the industry and barring other acts from proving their skills. He did not attack rappers such as Modenine, 2-Shotz, Freestyle, Six Foot+ possibly because he saw them as rappers who use words, because that was what he advised Edris Abdulkareem - "try use words, and u might sound nice, but not as precise as my guys you see ib front of your eyes". He is from the Igbo ethnic group in Nigeria. He was influenced by KRS-One, Dr. Dre, DMX, Eminem and many others. He released an album entitled Thy Album Come, and is now recording an album with Afro hip hop artist Faze . He is also been around the world including Dublin and Durban, South Africa where He says he had the time of his life hanging out with his old time friend, Deji of Soundcity at the 2005 KORA Awards. He is still considered by a larger proportion of Nigerians to be the best rapper ever to emerge from West Africa. On March 3, 2007, he released his second album, Ruggedy Baba, which includes the lead single Ruggedy Baba (featuring 9ice) and Club Rugged. It moved over 100,000 units after only three weeks of release ^[1]