Ghana’s biggest anonymous content creator Headless Youtuber known for his exciting, humorous, and brilliant contents on YouTube stole the headlines within the content creation community in January when he announced his decision to embark on a face reveal.
Kicking off his content creation journey, Headless has steadily built a name and brand for himself from an unconvential angle of content creation based on anonymity. Despite a challenging start, he managed to rise within the ranks of the YouTube and content creation community in Ghana, becoming one of the country’s biggest YouTubers with over 100,000 subcribers. This comes after he lost his first account after building his account to about 1000 subscribers.
The news of his reveal came as a surprise to many who had either fallen in love with his anonymity or had been waiting to see the face behind the account. In the buildup to the big reveal, he had a series of contents where suspected people were lined up to be questioned. Eventually, the big reveal happened on the 25th of January, revealing Kula Gh as the head of Headless YouTuber.
Kula was one of Ghana’s budding artists who is no stranger to the limelight. In 2019, he won Unsung artist of the year at the 2019 Ghana Music Awards, now TGMA. In addition to his rap career, he was a presenter at YFm for a number of years before he quit it all to begin life as a content creator.
In a conversation with Ghana Music, Kula, now Headless Youtuber, shared life after rap and presenting, becoming headless, and what the future holds for the brand.
Ghana Music: Who is Headless YouTuber outside your career as a YouTuber and creative?
Headless YouTuber: I was a nobody. Because outside YouTube, I was a ghost doing basically nothing. No one knew what I was even doing. I used to be a musician, but because I had not put out music in four years and no one was reaching out—no interviews, no calls—some bookings came in, but I told them I could not perform because I was not making music anymore. I was just someone’s husband, somebody’s brother, and somebody’s friend.
Ghana Music: How did the idea of being Headless YouTuber come about, and how receptive was your immediate circle to the idea?
Headless YouTuber: The idea for headless was for a music video in 2021 for a freestyle where there are six people behind me and we can only see their body, just glasses, or their shirts, but just that. Once I realized it was something that could be done, I just transferred the idea to YouTube because I was already considering getting into content creation at the time, but do it anonymously. I just applied the idea to YouTube and moved on. The first person I told was my friend Sly, who I was living with at the time. He supported the idea and I just ran with it. I went online searching for the price of equipment and then I searched for a few tips on YouTube too. I tried other forms of being Headless, which gave me out, but I tried and tried till I finally hacked it. The final form of headless is what you have seen over the year where you can only see the glasses and the body.
Ghana Music: How challenging were the early days in your journey as HeadlessYouTuber?
Headless YouTuber: The early days were challenging with a lot of mistakes. I started with my real voice, and I was told that anyone who knew me could identify me, so I tweaked my voice. Then came the small views and the timing of production. Sometimes when news broke and I was not at home, I had to rush home to gear up, shoot, edit and post. The early days were very difficult, but as time went on, it got better. Additionally, I had to create a character trait to keep my anonymity. I created fake backgrounds, languages Headless could speak, and on some occasions even my gender. I had to also ensure my anonymity was secure.
Ghana Music: How has your career as a presenter and artist influenced your content creation process as a YouTuber?
Headless YouTuber: It gave me the ability to be objective and neutral in my content creation. When I am speaking on a situation, I don’t take sides. I present the things as they are so I do not come off as being biased. Especially when it comes to the rap beef, I react to it like the fan of that artist who had dropped the song.
Ghana Music: You’re known for your editorials, breakdowns, and reviews on music and its related subjects on your channel. Did your music background influence the choice of contents?
Headless YouTuber: Yes, they did. I needed to do something that I would be very comfortable and happy doing. People were doing reactions, but I do not think they were breaking down songs well. So, starting with that made it easier for me because of my music background.
Ghana Music: What, in your opinion, is the hardest thing about creating content around music in Ghana?
Headless YouTuber: The hardest thing would be copyright claims. You can react to a song, and once you upload, your video gets hit, but things are a bit better now. YouTube has become a bit lenient with revenue share.
Ghana Music: Your career has soared over the years, and then comes the big change: you revealing your identity. How long did it take you to come to this conclusion?
Headless YouTuber: My initial plan was to reveal my identity after hitting 50K subscribers. Ghanaian can be discouraging, and I felt if they knew me as Kula now venturing into YouTube, there would be a lot of negative reaction. If I reacted to something about another artist, they would just come for me, even if I was as envious of the person. But after hitting 100K, I decided to do the reveal because I did not want to get stuck in this character I had created. The longer I kept the identity hidden, the harder it will be to reveal my identity later on. My team and I discussed it, weighed the pros and cons, and how everything would affect what has been built. Ultimately, the limitations of being anonymous made us conclude that the best thing would be to reveal my identity. It took us about six months to plan and rollout everything. We got everyone we needed to show up to contents to use in the rollout. Which is why when the rollout started on 15th January, everything was back-to-back.
Ghana Music: What changes should viewers look forward to with these new changes?
Headless YouTuber: They should not try to push back the change. Change can sometimes be good, and this particular change is good. The personality hasn’t changed; it is still the same person. You can now see the face behind the voice, which means I can do more things now. It is going to get better, and we are also going to expand operations. So, anyone who really wants me to grow and wants this to grow should not be opposing this reveal.
Ghana Music: What advice will you give to anyone who you have inspired to venture into the YouTube content space?
Headless YouTuber: Don’t be scared. It may seem scary, but don’t be. It will not be easy in the beginning, but eventually things will pick up. You might get 2 views, 10, 20, sometimes on videos you have put a lot into, but it is all part of the process. Also be reminded that strangers will support you the most. At the end of the day, all that matters is your consistency and being focused on creating the best content.
