Dear Artist, Congratulations on Evolving into ‘Mid’

Dear Nigerian artist, you can evolve as a person while your work remains mid. Just in case, that wasn’t clear enough, here it is again for emphasis: the fact that your music reflects who you currently are doesn’t translate to improved tastefulness. You can acquire a fresh perspective, yet all that’s created are melodies in opposition to Darwin’s theory. Your politics can soften into more progressive stances while your tracks harden like tepid noodles in food flasks. This goes both ways, as well. Horrible people sometimes make fantastic albums. Stars who abandon heavy themes for radio glory sometimes craft timeless projects. All of these things are true. 

Because artistic ‘eras’ of yonder were far from the rapidly alternating marketing sinkholes we see today, older evaluations of artists like Michael Jackson and King Sunny Ade had more to do with tracing stylistic changes and the occasional confluence of personal life and musical choices. Nigerian acts even had it worse off due to the volume of music released in short spans of time. In his book, K1 De Ultimate: A Legacy Secured, culture historian Jide Taiwo notes that K1 had released about 26 albums by 1993, just thirteen years into his career. In contrast, Olamide’s proclivity for LPs still sees him short by 13—relevant even if you account for the short nature of indigenous genre albums at the tail end of that century. Badoo’s run is emblematic of the segregation of album releases into eras. That YBNL (2012) to Lagos Nawa (2017) run lacks the experiental feel of projects from Carpe Diem (2020) upward: standalone musical events in a larger discography, rather than extensions of the Olamide Badoo story. Earlier projects here offer comparatively superior insight into the life and times of Nigeria’s greatest rapper. It’s not a matter of timing either, as late career Olamide has been equally prolific. Neither has the change in perspective been directly equitable to good music (Ikigai Vol. 1 was a stellar EP exhibiting his pop chops. Olamide was a bloated potpourri with more bars reflecting on status than on any other of his 2020s projects). When it comes down to making an evaluation, no critic worth their salt is going to praise Olamide simply because it ‘reflected where he was.’ It would be a disservice to the rapper, readers, the critic themself, and any editor who has to struggle with a thousand words of horse manure in shiny font. 

The problem didn’t begin at home. In his essay about how American popstars have segmented their careers into ‘eras,’ academic Mitch Therieau highlights just how much rollouts and concerts have been engineered to ensure consumers take albums as standalone events indicative of an artist’s state of mind. This is regardless of whether or not there’s any palpable artistic evolution, with poor albums being referred to as ‘flop eras.’  This obsession with overarching promotional concepts is responsible for the rise of the ‘gimmick’; a feature now quintessential to Afropop acts. Certain eras are colour-grouped—Ayra Starr (Starrgirl), Wizkid (More Love, Less Ego) and Omah Lay (boy alone) with purple. Others feature the introduction of distinct characters for accompanying visual material—think Rema’s HEIS and RAVAGE EP. The advent of coordinated stan pages has ensured that narratives take on the appearance of solidity, even when they’re not. Artists buy into this by explaining away growth that doesn’t always exist between projects. And so, threads of amateurish armchair critique prove pervasive, since everyone is simultaneously an industry insider and critic.

If pop has taught us anything globally, it’s that the personal can only bleed into music by so much. Evolutions aren’t proclaimed on podcast episodes. Listeners trained to pick up on changes can identify shifts in genre, departure from previous sources of inspiration, experimentation, thematic variance, and everything else that could indicate a ‘newer’ version of an artist, without any comments from the creators themselves. Also, because pop,  and Afropop in particular, isn’t as reliant on introspective narratives as, say, hip-hop, nor as abstract as soul or folk music, due to its fusion primordium, most mainstream projects are examined on their own basis. Rightly so, too. This, in turn, ensures that when an Afropop  artist has to be positively appraised within the context of a transformation, it’s from a place of objective subjectivity. 

When you mollycoddle an artist of the calibre of Seyi Vibez by refusing to acknowledge the steep drop in quality called FUJI MOTO and the better, but middling image-finding exercise that is SWAGUU, you’re essentially declaring his infallibility. An announcement to anyone listening that you don’t trust in his ability to attain new heights as an artist. In the weeks since its September 18 release date, Seyi admirers and some music enthusiasts have tried to legitimise resistance to SWAGUU’s ‘underwhelming’ verdict. They insist this is so because it represents who he is now and others have merely refused to accept the new Seyi. Like APC in 2015, clamours to respect change keep proliferating. 

You can agree that SWAGUU is the greatest Seyi Vibez album of all time—not true. Or that this is the best album released this year—also not true. But at least do that without conceding to an evolutionary positive which doesn’t exist. Pansa inventively incorporates Afrobeat call-and-response but the overall record is bland, buoyed by Dibs’ drums more than anything else. Back 2 U rules the charts, but just like Lil Durk and J Cole’s All My Life, it’s an ingratiating use of children’s choir vocals in a manner that makes HAPPY SONG sound even better in retrospect. The album leans into Afropop a lot—Burna Boy’s influence as executive producer, perhaps—and the resulting effect is that Seyi sounds muted. On Alubarika, he sounds like he’s been forced to sing into the studio mic. That entire run until the outro Swaguu is headscratching diet Seyi Vibez. That’s it: Diet Seyi Vibez. A watered down version of the man who wrote Lagos, who delivered his lines on Migos and Para Boi with aggressive panache, and whose laidback drawl on Cana holds many captive. Advocating for a reckoning with ‘this Seyi,’ yet refusing to reckon with the stasis of ‘this Seyi’ implies that when ‘this Seyi’ astounds us, you will be blind to the masterstroke. Mavo’s Business is another example of this downward trend. As were Burna Boy’s No Sign of Weakness, and D’banj’s D’Kings Men, before. We’ll interrogate two artist’s oeuvres to better understand this concept: Asake and Ladipoe.

Work of Art is of superior quality to Mr. Money With the Vibe which is itself superior to Lungu Boy. Musically, Asake elevated his songwriting chops on WOA, expanding on the Amapiano fusion sound and pseudochoral harmonies of his debut, but also exhibiting a fresher sense of style and arrangement. By Lungu Boy, his status as an all-timer was essentially sealed in stone. Two 02 Arena Shows—one while touring the album. Living in the US. MOBO wins. Headies, BET, Billboard, Grammy, and MTV VMAs nods. And yet, when it was largely criticised as a less cohesive, Western-facing project—gaffes like Skating at the fore—no sensible person pulled the “That’s his current state of mind so the music is fine” card. When M$NEY came around with its limited exploration of the titular subject matter, the sensible thing to do—and this is regardless of whether or not one agrees with that claim—was to appraise the album independently of his improved wealth. Even when this factored into certain reviews, it wasn’t to excuse perceived missteps or justify praise. 

Ladipoe’s Revival arrived off the back of multiple delays. His career had changed so much in the interval between 2021’s Providence EP and his sophomore album—we won’t call Talk About Poe a mixtape. That project’s exceptionality isn’t just because Poe opened up himself to the world. Palm Trees (Interlude) is a rare exposé into his relationship with his mother and wife but that’s not why it’s such a striking interlude. It is striking because it ties into the rest of the album well. Introspection on his career trajectory (Chosen) doesn’t take away from chest thumping theatrics on the Pa Salieu–assisted No Level. Factoring how long the album took to be completed into reviews would have been valid. However, making that the core of one’s case for an appraisal only certifies what has been generally accepted since music criticism rooted itself firmly in Nigeria: too many people need to shut it. They need to shut it expeditiously. 

At the risk of introducing excessive comparisons to art or generating unnecessary competition, these parallels to other projects are essential to understand why ‘evolution conquers all’ is a disastrous disservice to everyone’s art. Let’s not even talk about how disturbing it is that people consider this—essentially gentrified—album to be a true reflection of Seyi Vibez’s current state of mind. Because of course, Akpan Akpiri is the sound of new beginnings and Ilome, with its proximity to Edo people’s Obito and other Niger Deltan genres, heralds a new American dawn. Jokers! Such people’s illogical school of engagement with music is a key reason not everyone’s opinions deserve to be platformed. “This is the music you make now.” Well, the music you make now is mid. You do not have to return to your previous approach. But we also do not have to celebrate your supposed evolution. You don’t have to tell us that you’ve evolved. We’ll feel it. You can refuse. You can even insult anyone who dares dispute your delightful dictates. This won’t make your decline any less false.