Music is literally my go-to each time I’m down. It is a beautiful form of art that most people can relate to. The combination of vocal and instrumental sounds as a form of most times emotional expression or few times just for the vibes is something beautiful.
Music is so broad and so beautiful to relegate yourself to a particular artiste because the person is your favorite artiste. The fact that music sheds light into the social and cultural ways of certain people and how it makes us relate with people of other tribes, races, countries, just as movie does is a great thing that should be really appreciated.
Undisputed, as humans we find people we relate with and people we tend to give more time to and pay attention to everything they do. Their art aside, we fall in love with their lifestyle, we get somewhat attached with their families (in some cases) and everything that has to do with them.
Because of how drawn we are to them, we find any form of criticism of their art as an expression of hate by the critic. This is what ‘stan culture’ does to us. As a result, we become online nuisances, quoting people’s innocent tweets about an artiste, with hateful comments. Music is supposed to unite and not divide. Now, the supposed love we have for these artistes have turned into obsession making us deny ourselves the opportunity to hear beautiful sounds from other artistes.
I’ll be speaking from a personal stance now. I am the kind of person that likes the WTMG(upbeat) sound. WTMG is basically a sound that requires you to move your body at the very sound of the first key on that song. I’m not one to listen to slow songs because I feel or I used to feel that they were annoying and was simply not for me.
There are certain musicians that I grew up listening to, and then I must add that music choice could also be influenced by a person’s community or background. There is a tendency that if a person grew up listening to highlife songs, R&B and the rest the person will listen to the song first before others. The person will appreciate those songs first. l listened to a lot of rap songs growing up(local/indigenous rap) and that is why I really really love indigenous rap songs a lot. I used to go visit my grandma (of blessed memory) and my uncle would play some Rugged Man, Mr Raw, DMX, Dagrin and others. I always vibed with those songs, cause well, I didn’t have a choice. The songs literally play in my ears every single time. There was really no escape from them.
It was around one of these times that Olamide dropped his ‘Eniduro’ track. That was it for me. I never looked back. I started fan-girling Olamide.
I would sing most of his songs lyric for lyric even though most of them were in Yoruba. Because of my love for Olamide and his sound, I extended great love and time to other artistes that came on his YBNL crew. From Veektoh to Lilkesh to Adekunle Gold and most recently fireboy.
Lately, Lilkesh hasn’t impressed me much, but that love is still there. I mean I’m not giving up on someone that gave me Lyrically, shoki and many other fire tracks. I’m still stuck with AG BABY. Someone on Twitter once said he switched from King Sunny Ade to Bruno Mars and I couldn’t help but agree. I really love the switch up. I love it. It was really timely.
The Nigerian sound is obviously changing, and if you do know go with the flow, people will leave you at the river bank.
There are artistes finding it hard to switch up and I’m not faulting them. It is not easy, one bit. I’m quite certain that most have tried but according to Tolanibaj of BBN, ‘kobosi’. You know, it was quite easy, or maybe not so, for AG BABY to switch up on his sound because the slow-vibe kind of songs have been his style but my fave, Olamide did it with his most recent album UY SCUTI, but for me it didn’t really stick. Obviously, I love some tracks on the album but it was an entirely new ride. It was strange to me, coming from baddo. The album before this one, Carpe Diem was a perfect body of work. I feel he used Carpe Diem talk to launch us into UY SCUTI but I feel it shouldn’t have been too soon. There was an obvious adjustment of sound on Carpe Diem but there were still some upbeat sounds. I feel UY SCUTI came too early.
It is good that as an artiste or a creative, you try your hands on new stuff especially things you wouldn’t jump on, on a normal day. I am quite happy for him. Yeah I know I also noticed even as artistes change their sound, their looks change as well because obviously, they should. I’ve seen it with AG BABY and Baddo and it is a totally dope concept.
Now to fireboy, Damola as I always like to call him. That one has been a day one favorite. You know I feel if he had released LTG under a label other than YBNL, I might not have as much as tried to listen to it, but I did because of my bias for YBNL artistes. I listened to Laughter, Tears and Goosebumps and I was really blown away. What a perfect body of work!, I screamed as I was listening to it one day. LTG used to as much as get me in my feelings and I didn’t like it; so for every time I listened to any track off the album, I played a Naira Marley song to get back to reality. But here is the thing, I couldn’t stop playing the album, it was that Good! I played it so much and I fell in love with the artiste and his art.
Fireboy’s pen game is top notch. I am in total awe of his writing prowess. He dropped his second album, ‘Apollo’ and then I knew I had found the one. The boy is good, good. I can’t even explain how this young guy has really made me enjoy slow, well, not-so-slow songs. LTG really did a thing or two on me. I’m happy. There are really good songs that I’ve been missing out on. In his latest single, ‘Peru’ he said that the trifecta is coming. I mean, a third album. A third gift from this young man.
Now, there are quite some really young talents in the music industry whose songs I wouldn’t even be interested in listening to it in the first place if I had heard them randomly. But now, I have all their projects and I’m really really proud of them. From Joeboy, Oxlade, Buju, Omahlay, Ayrastarr to Liya and others I can’t remember in the course of this write-up. I can’t even emphasize how I enjoy these http://songs.As at now, I have their works arranged in my playlist from Ayra’s 19 and dangerous to Oxlade’s Eclipse, Liya’s Alari and then singles from Buju and features he’s been on.
I really would not want to make this piece longer than it already is, but I just wish youths like myself would just leave toxicity out of stanship/fandom and enjoy songs from all artistes. You see, it is a mutual relationship. It is quite symbiotic. They bless you with their gift and you help their career by streaming their songs and maybe go ahead to attend their concert, everybody wins. Coming online to fight needless battles isn’t what we should be doing.
There’s a lot of beauty in the art that is music. There’s no point in limiting or depriving yourself of a good time because you can’t listen to artistes that are not your favorites even though they are good.
I’m still trying to increase my tolerance range for certain songs and sounds and certain artistes. I’m taking them one day at a time.
I’m a big NF fan, lest I forget. I’ve always liked rap songs, so it was easy for me to like him when a friend introduced him to me. I don’t quite listen to foreign artistes and I don’t even know why. This could be because I love the Nigerian sound a lot. I was always exposed to the Nigerian sound as a kid, although there were quite a handful of foreign artistes I used to listen to. West life Shania Twain, Lionel Richie and a few others. As for the rest, I know their songs, but I’m not crazy about them. As for music stans, please stop projecting your failures and your insecurities on your favorites just because someone else clinched a top feat. You are talking about bragging rights, why don’t you achieve your own and talk about your own bragging rights? You don’t come and have bragging rights on someone else’s accomplishments. Just enjoy the art, support the artiste in your little way and move on with your life.
I’ll just end it here. If you’re still reading this, it’s obvious you love music and since you do please try to extend Grace to other artistes.
You might not give them all the love and go all out for them like you do for your favorites but please stop trashing people’s work as it has taken their time, brain, resources to put everything together. Give everyone a benefit of doubt. Loosen up, stop taking everything to your chest. Enjoy diverse sounds as this is why art was made. It is crazy how over 10,000 people re: artistes can be saying almost same thing but with different wordings and even more different forms of delivery. This is the beauty we are talking about. The world doesn’t revolve around your favorite artiste, take your time to discover and enjoy beautiful sounds.
Regards,
Benita.