Effects of the “Blow Mentality” on the Music Industry in Nigeria.

The blow mentality is a mentality that many up-coming and well known music artiste who have no concrete foundation have towards their career and their music. All around the world, we have scores of talents all trying to be heard, trying to get support, trying to better their crafts and also pave a way to feed and get paper from that craft. The achievement of this purpose is what is referred to as BLOW, we in this work will try to see how it affects the overall quality of the Nigerian Music.
But before we rush to the reason for this work let me bore you with a little histroy of the Nigerian Music Industry. Before the coming of the Europeans according to works on wikipedia.com we see carvings and arts depicting instruments of music far back as thw 16th and 17th century. this time Music was majorly for Agricultural purposes. people sing when they are in the farm so they can feel their strenght together, then music grew to be a cultural and societal tool, and a huge religious tools, from the Harcourt hymns to the Shina Peters juju music. Juju music is a very spiritual cultural tool, within it was wrapped the cries, the pains, the joys, the happiness of the people. This evolution occured in the early 19’s. After the various political happenings and the zig-zag nature of the lives of politicians and leaders in that time. Music lovers always played a role that were seen as the mouthpeice of the people, creating music that had a huge collective agreement with the cries of the people.
Fast forward to the late 19’s when music started to be a lucrative venture, we had musicians like the group Sway Roots, with emcees like Mode 9, Overdose, Six foot plus etc, we also had Maintain, with the likes of Olu Maintain, Eldee the Don, Kaboom, these set of emcees started mixing the lingua franca which is pidgin to the normal rap which we knew in a time when emcees like mode 9, were murdering beats with lots of lyrical intelligence. lots of other groups, then Ruggedman made a track titled ”Ehen”. that started the trend of music that has evolved to what we have today, but of all the different emcees of that time they had one thing in common, they made quality contents that made impacts on the wellbeing of society then, if you are reading this, i have a questio for you, do you still remember, Eedris Albukareem’s Jaga jaga, do you remember 2face’s African Queen?.

Then chocolate city came with a more
inter-twined kind of music that mixes the Ehen vibes with the lyricism of the rap lords and then fans loved him for that, as these progressiveness was going on in the music world, people began to see the lucrative-ness of the music industry and loved that life style that comes with it. So the menace begins

Artistes chasing the Blow, has caused a lot of negative and a few positive effect on the Music industry in the Nigeria, lets rush down with these effects.

1. Drug Abuse
You have to agree with me that 70 percent of artist abuse drugs and they make it look cool in the pictures they upload, the codeine cups and the videos they put up for fans to view, and this has led many upcomings to follow suit and this circle has left any home with a mobile phone, a tv set and data to risk the addiction due to the pressure of inclusion. Drug abuse has also been portrayed in the content of the music, lets give an example Olamide, when Olamide started his career, his first hit song Eni Duro which was done in CodedTunes in 2010 contained a rich set of lyricism that his later fans loved and accepted but evolving with the era his career is set in, he also started promoting drugs with songs like Science Students just to keep the blow level.


2. Reduction Of Musical Content.
When a musician is more inclined or is forced to be more of a brand than an artist due to the way artiste in the hgher parts of the industry has been dropping garbage and his expectant fans are excited or are without a choice of refusing these musics. he is forced to do what works. drop garbage too. In 2017 Olamide made a song titled “WO” and this was the best song of 2017. the song had repeated bridge and chorus with 2 verses that were 8 lines each and these lines were not more than 6 words in one, and there goes the best music of 2017, i dont want to get started with 2018.
Artiste np longer work on thier self or craft, all you need to blow now is a good producer, a good app to record, maybe vocalign and then you can be a star.

3. Promotion of Fraud and Cultism.
I will be short and precise in this, its no longer news that most African artiste are arrested for drug peddling, internet fraud, or pilfering outside the country. well we got to eat. Its also no news that most of these artiste fake life online for they views, they defraud people (yahoo yahoo) and they promote this even in their music and fake lifestyles just so they can be seen as artiste that have blown.......


https://www.vibesclan.com/effects-of-the-blow-mentality-on-the-music-industry-in-nigeria/

>:

You're on point about olamide, I don't even understand what he sings these days, all he does is promote drug abuse and other deviant behaviours

He denies it though.