‘Eeeyyysss, hold it!
Before some o’ y’all begin to talk
your dirty trash back at me, lemme
be clear that not all the photos
represented have a thing to do with
this piece. I just loved particular copies too much that I couldn’t but
stitch them up in a grid. Then again,
they must have slept or stank at
some point before the second
coming of the messiah. So really, mas
que nada! I watched the African remake
version of “We Are The World” and
everytime I saw a Nigerian, with
Tiwa Savage, Praiz and Yemi Alade
being the exceptions… oh Emma
Nyra too, I had to ask myself ‘but why?’
But why, Sean Tizzle why?
But why, Banky W… and why the
bazinga, Kcee why?
Even to the assemblage of what I’ve
chosen to term the M.U.M.U pack – not excluding D’Prince, Patoranking,
Mosa, Iceberg, Di’Ja and Reekado of
course (by the way congrats on your
convocation!) I asked why, why,
why? While these one were probably
too excited to have featured in one of the world’s most classic tunes, the
other Africans usurped the privilege
and showed off their impressive
music skill. It pained me so badly
that out of the mighty army of
Nigerians that stormed the recording, we had to be properly
schooled by the South Africans who
clearly possess better vocal skill and
musical appreciation than we do. Our faith and strength now lies in the
ingenuity of the producer to mask
our vocals with computer-aided
assists and studio edits. These guys
can’t sound nearly as nice and
melodious as they do in their studio records and they find it difficult
replicating the stunts they managed
to pull off in it. As if it isn’t shameful
enough that we pride ourselves on
empty nothings, we brag loud about
things that might only happen should we wake up one beautiful
morning to purple skies. Has anyone
wondered why our international
features are restricted to rappers
alone? Do we think we can stand
compete with well-bred, seasoned vocalists? That’s even reaching for
the stars. Let me come down to our
level. Can our vocalists stand a
healthy compete with themselves
not to now talk of the Grammy
winning kind? Is it by singing applaudise and sampulu that we
think we’re going to nail a spot on
the Grammy’s list? Each and every
one of us shares blame in this
menace that has become our
industry – from the dictating folk at the top, to the players and right
down to the fans. Let’s face it, our
industry may have grown in terms of
technology and software, but it’s
people haven’t evolved. We’ve only
succeeded in shifting base from one level of low to a new level in low. It’s become common place for our
artistes to claim certain levels of
versatility because they thought well
to revamp a stale craft. Take Banky
W for example, since he started this
his I’m not even a rapper something, he has eroded the true essence of
his powerful tenor and scampers
now for the lower octaves like
Mariah Carey (the great) sometime
did. At least he can actually sing
unlike Sean Tizzle who I’d always been scared to hear what his raw
vocals would sound like when
D’Tunes isn’t saving it’s ugliness with
all the power in auto-tune. So you
can imagine my villainous
excitement when I learned that he too can croak like a dirty frog after I
saw him in that video. Very scathing
stuff. Worse off, these are the things
that our generation up-comers
center their beliefs on. That if it isn’t
done this way or like this, then one wouldn’t make it. I wouldn’t hesitate
to point accusing fingers at talent
scouting platforms; those who have
swallowed their vision for birthing
new actual stars and short-changed
that for admission of a bunch of wannabes and conformists. Talent
hunts should be on a mission to
seek out the misfits, the rebels, the
radicals who are then groomed
vigorously through a becoming
process but instead, they’re after pretty faces, guys with nicely curled
or frisked hair and girls that look
good even in cheap makeup. Can we be liberal enough to draw
the line between hate and honesty?
If we can, then we’d have begun the
first step to solving one of our
people’s greatest problems – that is
heralding and patronizing mediocrity! So when I say Kcee
needs to pump all that money into a
men’s bespoke tailoring label
instead of music, nobody would say
I’m hating. And when I address
issues like Burna Boy, Lil Kesh, Iyanya, D’Banj, Ice Prince and Wande
Coal, people would reason first
rather than cast pebble stones that
date far back as my ancestral
heritage and all the way back to my
generation unborn. We need to open the eyes of our minds and see
that we’re a people full of nothing
but stinking shxt. The men who talk
a big game have been neck deep in
this dung for long and the women
have been sleeping on top of it. We’ve slumbered too long and it’s
time to wake up. Emma Nyra needs
to wake up and move past Ubi
Franklin in his role play of ‘the victim’
because those millions still won’t
bear him (or her) the desired fruits. Same thing for Eva, it mortifies me
that I haven’t got her totally figured
out but she needs to stop sleeping
and get her shxt in check. Times are
changing fast. We have the likes of
Yemi Alade already taking lead while some Simi chic is lowkey scheming
for a takeover. It’s in the same vein
that the Mya K’s, the Kolly Dee’s and
Barry Mayne’s have strongly
opposed to back benching or
playing second fiddle because they came to an early realization that they
are to make the industry, not the
other way round. Nigeria is supposedly the bedrock of
promotional music in Africa, so how
is it that we’re the ones doing the
major undertaking when it comes to
actual music affairs? Is chuking me
bad bad, iNo teh yhu lie! You shudda seen that video, how those other
guys (I mean the South Africans)
washed our hands clean and wiped
them dry the way and manner they
displayed their talents. This our
commercial style of music does nothing to advancing the creativity
of our music intellect – either by
prowess or skill. It’s like getting
trapped in a prolonged holocaust
and for us, success is measured by
who attains a newer feat in defining the peak of mediocrity. The pioneers
of this new music movement sought
to dodge a curve ball but ended up
taking a wrong turn and have
remained on a steady miss thence
on. The nature of our die hard spirit and hustler ambition has managed
to put the name of a few on the map
but let us not forget that the world is
like a jukebox, the music never
stops. Although it may seem
everyone is singing along, the hard questions being what exactly is
playing and who is singing to what? Written by Jim Donnett @jimancipation

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