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vibings...

i'm the sort of person that doesn't have any favourite artiste. i just dig the songs and not the performers. so its often that i'd be hit by a single, and then proceed to buy the album and then realize it was a complete waste of my money.

and i'm so hooked to good sound, that i actually find myself checking out the billboard hot 100 almost on a weekly basis so that by the time all the radio stations are doing their lame top ten countdown shows, i can already tell who is number one. but until recently, nigerian music just wasn't cutting it for me. everyone was raving about different artistes at different times, but i just wasn't feeling it. even as a young boy i knew that the standard of music just didn't do it for me. truth is, the reason that michael jackson's music still finds a place on radio stations today, is that the quality was timeless. same with fela (ignoring the lewdness of his lyrics, which got me in the gut each time). i kinda predict that the same will eventually happen to stars like beyonce who are way beyond their time in the quality of their work.

in nigeria, there was the remedies (and everyone was crazy over them except me), then there was plantashun boys (still wasn't impressed), then the rash of kennis music artsites who just ran into a studio and coughed out meaningless rhymes with yoruba interjections for mass appeal (that was the dark age of nigerian music). i was more interested in sunny nneji, sunny okosun, onyeka onwenu, angelique kidjo...and then suddenly, ruggedman showed up. and i kinda saw the silver lining behind the dark clouds but we weren't quite there yet. as you all know, he too has been caught up by the commercialisation bug and has fallen off the radar. and then lagbaja and mode nine came along, and it got better and better till this point in time where p-square, dipp, weird mc and my 'right-now' fave - MI, are burning the mic.

truth is, that interest in music is fleeting. and the demographic often changes and grows with time. which is why artistes need to know who their fans are, stay within the genre (if we have any such thing in nigeria as everyone is a 'hip hop' artiste), and mature with their audience. trying to constantly appeal to the young crowd just for the purpose of selling more copies of your work, is a dead end. no matter how hard you try, the newer artiste gets more public sympathy and the critics get harsher on you till you eventually give up the ruse and fade away.

also, its not a good idea when artistes depend so much on a reigning theme. today, everyone is talking about girls shaking their arses. they never learn. truth is, this same tendency led to the death of reggae music in nigeria. all that the crusaders, ras kimono and the rest could sing about was freedom for nelson mandela and the end of apartheid. it made them tons of money just singing about something they knew next to nothing about, but that was such a global sore spot that people were bound to listen to. and they thought they had a fail-proof theme that will forever remain relevant...here we are today more than 10 years after the end of apartheid. even the nelson mandela has almost forgotten the issues involved and so all the reggae stars have gone to bed hungry. very soon they'll be wondering why government doesn't give them recognition.

so, to the new breed of stars like timaya, wande coal, banky w and my main man MI, don't make the same mistake. cover the field with your lyrics and themes and grow up as your fans grow or else you'll be lost to the sands of irrelevance. someday, girls shaking their arses won't be the rave of the music buying society so you better think fast and move on from there...a word they say...

See you tomorrow.

P.S: if anyone has the Black Eyed Peas single, "I gotta feeling"...please holler your boy.

Comments

Roc said…
Evolution..
The name of the game..

I did an album review for MI in one of my earlier posts..
9:26 AM, August 07, 2009
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