Happy New Year! It’s been a long time. I shouldn’t have left you without a dope edition to step to. No vex.
Here you are. Start the year with me. Previous editions here and here.
Six Top Cultural Moments of 2019
A lot happened last year, didn’t it? Nigeria had an election that feels so long ago now. #MeToo made the news abroad and in Nigeria, with stories highlighting abuses of power in our religious institutions and in schools. Rema and Peruzzi blew up. We all became Marlians (well, some of us anyway). Netflix produced a Nigerian film with Genevieve Nnaji. I watched a ton of really excellent television shows, from The Watchmen to Sex Education and Killing Eve that really spoke to the cultural moment and its demand for complexity, discussions on bodily autonomy and consent, and ruminations on intergenerational trauma and racial violence. I read a ton of books that spoke to me, and wrote about some of them over the course of the year for The Three as well.
There’s far too many cultural moments to talk about, but here are some we came up with. I got an assist on these from my good people Ayodeji Rotinwa (@ayodejirotinwa), Andy Obuoforibo (@AndyRoidO) and Tola Sarunmi (@AfroVII), who also shared their top cultural moments were for 2019 with me. Follow them all on Twitter and let them — and I! — know what your favorite cultural moments of 2019 were.
- Burna Boy Became The African Giant
I have written about the ‘African Giant’ album before, but that was before it was nominated for a Grammy and its incredible press run on pretty much every major American late night show. He more than deserves to win a Grammy (I’ll bottle my annoyance about the World Music category for later) and I actually expect him to win it, but it does not even matter. He means so much more than that, and is so much bigger than that.
The most amazing thing about Burna is that he has not changed one bit. He is still the guy who gave us ‘Like to Party’ and ‘Yawa Dey’, still the person who sang Soke and collaborated with D’Banj on ‘Won O Da Mo’, still the guy who did ‘Amorawa’ with Wande Coal and ‘Checks and Balances’ and ‘Smooth Sailing.’ He has just gotten better at being him, and has refined his sound over time. He did not need to change anything about his sound to be the artist he is today; he just needed to find that consistency, refine what was already obvious for everyone to see. And he has. Now, look.
Living in a country that somehow always manages to be at the brink of disaster while collapsing under the weight of its potential, how could I not be buoyed by the story of someone doing the work and shining like everyone who has followed him for years knew he could? Do we not deserve, just one time, to see what potential realized looks like? Burna gives us a most satisfying arc.
Imagine if all we had to do was get our shit together. Imagine if all a Giant had to do was get up off his feet and stand.
2. Davido Reminded Us Who TF He Is
The consumer mind is a fickle one, isn’t it? One minute, I’m singing along to ‘Fia’ in a slightly inebriated haze in a crowded club at 2am. The next, I’m are wondering if Davido has still got it.
In my defense, the questions were valid. Davido did not show up in 2018. I still don’t know what ‘Flora My Flawa’ was. I was no fan of ‘Assurance’. ‘Currency’? Come on. By the time ‘One Ticket’ came out, I was likelier to attribute my deep, abiding love for it to Kizz Daniel who had not put a single foot wrong (and still hasn’t) in a long time.
Also, not to compare, but Wizkid was kind of falling off too. Pretty much everything he dropped solo in 2018 was forgettable (‘Expensive Shit’, ‘Gucci Snake’, ‘Fever’). Same as in 2019, for that matter (‘Joro’, ‘Ghetto Love’). His features either needed to grow on you (‘Soco’, ‘Ma Lo’) or his collaborators did pretty much all the work to make it good (‘Totori’, ‘Fake Love’). With Burna burning everything up with ‘Outside’ in 2018 and ‘African Giant’ in 2019, not to mention people like Peruzzi and Rema doing their thing, 2018 left me thinking that the old guard we have come to love had run out of steam. If Davido was going to drop something, he absolutely had to pull something out of his top shelf.
And he did.
It’s not like Davido had not collaborations before, but collaborations between Nigerian artists and American ones have in the past been a mixed bag, to say the least. Davido collaborated with Tinashe, Rae Sremmurd, and Meek Mill on middling tracks from that US-facing Son of Mercy album that we can all agree was a mistake. His biggest mistake of all in that period, though, was losing his sound. The songs were strange approximations of afrobeats (yet another expression I hate), so Davido could not anchor himself anywhere. So far out of their own territory without a host to show them around, these guest artists did not seem to know how to put their stamp on it either.
As music from the continent has become less of a undifferentiated “world music” (God, I hate this term so much) mass over time, the quality of international music collaborations improve because each person now seems to know the other better and have an understanding of what they bring. So when Chris Brown and Davido collaborated on a song in 2019, we see CB taking to it like a duck in water (CB assimilates well, as he showed in “African Bad Girl” with Wizkid). Popcaan and Davido on ‘Risky’ also totalled to more than the sum of its parts. Davido certainly plays well with others, but his presence is an assertive one. Even in a song like ‘Sweet in the Middle’ with three other local collaborators, the song is very much unmistakeably his. Davido invited these artists into his world and shone alongside them.
By the time he dropped ‘A Good Time’, which had the 2018 ‘Assurance’ and 2017’s ‘Fall’ on it along with some other recent collaborations, the point had been made. And all possible questions about his staying power have been effectively silenced.
3. We Became Marlians. Well, Most of Us
Naira Marley is quite something, isn’t he?
I reckon we have never quite had a strong cult of personality around an artist in this way, and in such a short time. The closest I can think of is perhaps Da Grin, but then he died so we never quite saw how far it could endure. I am tempted to say Olamide, but I don’t think his appeal was quite the same. There is a difference between being popular and being an embodiment of something.
Naira certainly embodies something, but I’m not quite sure what. A certain kind of working class Afropolitanism with a foot in the streets of Peckham and a foot in the streets of Agege who is recognizable to people in both places? Or did his court case with EFCC give him battle scars that catalyzed his popularity? Or maybe it is just as Seunfunmi Tinubu writes in Native Magazine, that “Not just because he ridicules the smoke and mirrors, that shapes our moral order, but because he represents the kind of entertainment Nigerians love best: raw, layered and at someone else’s detriment.” Who knows? All we know is that is that he makes great rap-inflected popular music. ‘Am I a Yahoo Boy’ is great, both in terms of the timing and his trolling. ‘Soapy’ is genius. ‘Mafo’ is brilliant. ‘Opotuyi’ is a bop. His work is irreverent and playful. What is not to love?
Naira Marley burns bright now but, like Eromo Egbejule also wonders here, I don’t know that he can keep this up. Compare with another 2019 breakout Zlatan who has songs like “Bolanle” and “Yeye Boyfriend” that show hints of range beyond his current ouevre, Naira is one-note (I know, I know) and does not seem to have the versatility to survive the inevitable post-zanku era. His flow is the same on pretty much every song, even on Davido’s “Sweet in the Middle” with WurlD and Zlatan. You can get away with rapping or singing mostly in your native language if you create melodies that people can connect with. I just don’t know if Naira has enough range to make him burn bright well into 2020 and beyond.
We will see soon enough.
4. Ayodeji Rotinwa on the Passing of the Great Toni Morrison
The biggest cultural moment for me — albeit a morbid one — was the passing of Toni Morrison.
Surely, this is not something to only peg as part of a listicle or only an event but it was and always will be, in perpetuity. Her life in itself was a series of extraordinary events. Her words an invitation to those like her, to learn, to fellowship, to reflect, to heal. I have obsessively been reading more of and watching everything I can find in which she wrote or uttered a word. I am bound to this well and I will keep drinking. I don’t think I will ever be full. I have since read a collection of essays, ‘Race’ that opened my eyes to what Ms. Morrison meant when she says we must do language. I watched a video where she said we are all called to love and doing so was more complex, more interesting, more demanding than not doing so at all. I have seen her say in an interview without any aspiration to false modesty that she has always known she was an incredible writer and the only novel thing about that was others agreeing with her. And how I marvelled at the power in that. And how badly I want to be so sure of my own self.
It’s not that I wasn’t aware of and read Ms. Morrison in life. I was. But in death, on 5th August 2019, when she passed, everything she has ever said has suddenly felt more urgent. And I feel myself on some kind of stopwatch to consume everything she has created. Of everything I have encountered so far, one mostly resonates with me, a Nigerian, on the fringes — in some ways — writing to the world. I came across this interview this year but it was recorded in 1988.
Ms. Morrison said, “I stood at the border, stood at the edge, and claimed it as central. Claimed it as central, and let the rest of the world move over to where I was.”
This moment must not pass.
Follow Ayodeji on Twitter.
5. Tola Sarunmi (AfroVII) on When Netflix’s Disqualified Lionheart as a Foreign Language Film Selection at the Oscars
Though overshadowed by a messy disqualification, the initial selection of (Netflix’s) Lionheart as Nigeria’s Foreign Language film of the year submission for Oscar consideration was my top moment cultural moment of the year. For the world’s third biggest film industry, it was a long time coming.
There’s much to be said for the film’s quality or otherwise. One would find plenty of support either way. Bigger than the critique of the film’s quality, though, is the acceptance that Nigerian films that have long entertained the African diaspora are worth investing in. Lionheart, produced by Nollywood “most marketable” star Genevieve Nnaji, looked the part — with its loving depiction Enugu both through culture and location. What the film lacked in substance it made up for in recognising the zeitgeist of its time — the rising profile of Nigeria female business people, including the sub-theme of promoting Nigerian businesses.
Cinema in Nigeria depends heavily on the overextended middle class at home, and the increasing number of viewers being attracted through Netflix (and other Digital Streaming Platforms) might serve to subsidise the cost of tickets and support the continued proliferation of cinema culture in the country. Or perhaps this is wishful thinking. Still, our film industry requires continued investment that’ll come only with reliable data vis-a-vis tickets sold and or household views. Lionheart had at least one of these, its very limited cinema release notwithstanding.
Even Lionheart’s disqualification from Academy Award consideration over insufficient use of a non-English language proved to be an upside — Nigerian film creators are now seriously considering the viability of films made in any of the countries many (but really the three major) languages and the un/fairness of non-English European Language African films passing muster for the category in question.
Ms. Nnaji, Netflix and the Oscars might have inadvertently forced Nigerians creators to do more than they realised they were “allowed”, and that is a win-win for all concerned.
Follow Tola on Twitter.
6. orwelliANDYstopia on “Watching Living In Bondage II”
I still smile when I think about “Living In Bondage: Breaking Free”. I remember how shocked and thrilled so many of my friends where when we saw the first tweet from the movie’s official handle. As more teasers and trailers dropped, the anticipation around me grew, and more people were talking about it, and watching the original “Living In Bondage” on YouTube. It occurred to me that Nollywood was finally in the nostalgia business. This industry had lived long enough that it had an audience old enough to yearn for something from its past. And it was now confident enough to give it to them and say “see how much better I can tell this story”. Well, I don’t think “Breaking Free” was as good a story as the original, but it was a fun movie, and the marketing campaign and the banter it spun were, for me, peak pop culture.
Follow Andy on Twitter.
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Agree or disagree with any of these? Hit us up on Twitter.
Until next time.
