Asake. Image Credt: https://radrafrica.com
You may have
noticed that the Nigerian music industry has been slowing down for some time –we
are having enough of the old artists, yet there are no new arrivals from behind
the horizon. Somehow, the industry has been all about Asake in the last year. It isn’t that no one has been active at all, just that the attention has drifted
to Asake such that the other artists have been forgotten. Davido, in an
attempt to save his career, chose to collaborate with Asake. His reason for
wanting the collaboration was because “Asake has scattered every place,” to use
his exact words. Davido said he was waiting for Olamide’s consent –Asake won’t
collaborate with you without Olamide’s approval.
Asake wasn’t
the cynosure until the release of his single, Lonely at the Top. That
single launched him to the top, making him the most sought-after Nigerian
artist globally. But then he released his Lungu Boy album. Before its release,
Asake talked about how the album would be in Yoruba and that he is more
comfortable singing in Yoruba. I cowered when I heard him say this –I believe
his success, following the release of Lonely at the Top, had to do with the
language switch –he chose to perform that song in English against his tradition
of singing in Yoruba.
When Lungu
Boy finally got released, there was a rush for it and it trended, especially on
YouTube and TikTok, albeit for an unusually short period. When an album is a
hit, it continues to trend for months, but Lungu Boy trended for a couple of
weeks only. Thus, all the plays were for the sake of reviews, people playing to
rate it. Now, the abrupt silence is their opinion about the album –it is as if
no new album has been released.
Most of what
I have heard from Lungu Boy is Amapianowish.
Plus, he added other elements that made the music so complex, leaving other
artists wondering how he did it. He moved so swiftly that other artists
couldn’t keep up. Following his success with Lonely at the Top, he became the avant-garde.
With this, every music executive became fearful of putting money on any artist
to avoid a financial loss.
With the
exception, of Ayra Star, who played around with Comma, Asake chose to
single-handedly carry the Nigerian music industry on his shoulders in the last
year. Now that he has tripped, the whole industry comes to a standstill.
When an
African-American man was asked why the Nigerians are the most successful
artists from Africa, he echoed my opinion: the Nigerians sing in English. The
question is: what is responsible for the failure of the new album, Lungu Boy?
For me, just the word “lungu” turned me off. I don’t know if it is a Yoruba
word or a word from another tongue or Asake’s jargon. In Hausa though, the
word, “lungu” means an alley or a hidden corner, a place where bad things
happen without people noticing. You can, for instance, trap a woman and rape
her successfully in a lungu. Furthermore,
the whole album turned out to be in Yoruba, as Asake had promised. It is
vital to note that while Asake sang in Yoruba, he failed to find that universal
appeal until the release of Lonely at the Top, which is in English.
The decision
to sing in Yoruba messed up Lungu Boy. People argue that music is a universal
language. Yes, but not absolutely. English in our contemporary world is
considered a superior language –everyone, including narcissists, wants to speak
it. If the music is in a tongue that others consider inferior, it explains why
its reception has been frosty. The success of any artist globally comes only if
he is supported by the Western world, the storeroom of the English language. It isn’t
by design but what Asake has done is to get the Nigerian music industry
befuddled.
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