Please don't stop the music

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It’s amazing the amount of talent we have in the Nigerian music scene, we've been telling our own stories through music for decades now and we've become a force to be reckoned with in Africa and gradually, even globally. It’s been a conduit for us to export our culture and enlighten the world about our travails and triumphs as Nigerians and Africans. Music is as much an expression of our struggles as it is of our achievements.

I can reel out the names of a number of legends that have pioneered the music industry here in Nigeria but I’d like to focus on the contemporary scene for this article as there is a trend which I believe stifles the creativity of some of the most talented acts we have to offer.

The inspiration for this article came to me as I read a couple of blog posts on Linda Ikeji’s blog. One where she mentioned two of the songs she was really into at the time and another by a fellow named Emmanuel, that was written as a reaction to Linda’s post. I’ll break it down for you.

Linda’s post was about two songs she was obsessed with at the time, ‘Raba’ by DJ Shabsy featuring Kiss Daniel & Sugarboy where she mentioned her love for ‘Kiss', the second was ‘Confidential’ by D’banj featuring A list British actor Idris Elba, using the stage name ‘Driis’ and Shadow Boxxer. Now, Emmanuel’s post was on why Kiss Daniel was the next big thing and how he was grossly underrated by a Nigerian music ecosystem that undervalues talent and is rather fickle in their judgement and acceptance of music.

He claimed in his post that it took Linda Ikeji’s mention of Raba for the song to garner massive traction on iTunes the very next day. Whether this was true or not, there is a lot of sense in Emmanuel’s argument. Kiss Daniel is truly mercurially talented and while he is on a steady rise to mega stardom, he, in my own opinion, really isn't getting the kind of attention he deserves.

When D’banj and Don Jazzy split, it hit them both hard. They both had to re-establish themselves as it were. While it was easier for Don Jazzy to continue churning out hits through other artists, D’banj struggled to please Nigerians and give them the hits they had become accustomed to from the Mo Hits era. I personally feel Nigerians have been unfair to D’banj in how we have assessed his post Mo Hits career and this belief forms the crux of this article.

I have watched some movies in the past and couldn't understand for the life of me why they weren't box office hits. Why weren't people going out in droves to watch this movie I would think to myself. ‘Draft Day’ starring Kevin Costner is a good example. Perhaps the same reasoning explains why ‘we’ gloss over innate talent like that of ‘your boy Kiss’ as Kiss Daniel self announces on his tracks and even malign the creative efforts of an established act like D’banj, just because his new works weren't produced by Don Jazzy.

I have come across a lot of people that don’t even want to hear the first two seconds of a D’banj track as long as it is not preceded by ‘it’s Don Jazzy again’. This for me is an unbalanced point of view from which to assess his work. While it may be true that he has struggled creatively, he has certainly put out enough good quality work that should easily have been hits. ‘All over the world’, ‘Don’t tell me nonsense’ and ‘Feeling the Nikka’ were in my mind excellent tracks that a lot of us just shut our minds and hearts to.

Tekno is another amazing artiste working hard, putting out good stuff and clearly being bold enough to explore his creative dexterity. I can listen to ‘Duro’ all day, in fact, it’s next to Raba on my favourite play list. We need to recalibrate our minds and learn to appreciate good music and depend less on flippant popular sentiments from folks who really don’t know any better.