Dxtiny’s Sound is Stuck on “Sweet Sins” EP

This is how to write and arrange a Dxtiny song. 

First, you search for a melodic yet rudimentary fusion —Highlife, soul, and R&B— chorus, and sing that on the first few seconds of the record. Ensure your vocals drip saccharine while doing so. Afterwards, write out an eight-bar verse with as many Afro-pop colloquies as possible. Reach for the early 2000s if necessary. And if you’re too lazy, just look up a bunch of mid-tempo pop favourites. Incorporate metaphors, similes, and personifications at will, regardless of how disjointed they come across. Blend that into a pre-chorus/bridge, where you reinforce commitment to your love interest with a question or two interspersed. Bring back the chorus. Ensure you make room for ad-libs and backing vocals. Repeat the same pedestrian eight-bar writing in the second verse but this time introduce a slightly more complex flow. Segue into the chorus again. Give space for an instrumental break. Sprinkle hums and falsetto harmonies. Voila, you have a Dxtiny song!

Absolution aside, this formula isn’t foolproof. It fails to account for the exquisite production and sound design that have come to define his records. Still, it represents the major concern plaguing the Sweet Sins EP. 

Released on Friday, 29 May 2026, Sweet Sins is Dxtiny’s update to the viral 2024 two-pack, Uncle Pele/Sew-Tape. Uncle Pele was a TikTok smash hit, introducing the world to the Uyo-born singer whose knack for catchy melodies and falsetto runs is in the mold of Oxlade and Victony, and similar to peers like Firstklaz, Chella, and Serotonin. In March 2025, he released Babcock, another viral track, with about 9.1 million Spotify streams as of this review. The lead single for Sweet Sins, NSA, was released in October 2025. This writer would love to be all glitter and sunshine about how the EP sounds. But that would be a disservice to Dxtiny’s obvious talent. 

The itch is not so much that 4 of 5 songs are structured similarly as the dwindling quality of effort as you move down the EP. Genres notably utilise basic sectioning principles, and so it’s common that artists—deliberately or otherwise—find themselves in the same pockets. That’s why interpolations exist. The alarms instead wail when this is done so frequently and without compensatory uniqueness in production, songwriting, and other factors that it sounds like the musical version of Groundhog Day.  

Temptation, the EP’s intro, and one of the better songs on there, serves us a pastiche of tired colloquies: Cristiano Ronaldo, Eminado, Uche Jombo, Poundo, and Omalicha. Dxtiny sings about his lover’s body being such a grand temptation, with the atmosphere of lust to boot (German producer group, 255’s blend of highlife guitars and their signature drum patterns—Victony’s Ba$tard, Don’t Be Silly and Minz’s Shadow—take the cake here). Yet, the height of that lust is an exchange rate worthy of the chauvinism gods: showing her off, so she can show him ass. 

Abandon whatever knowledge you have of how metaphors function. Abandon your knowledge of the Old Testament. That’s the only way Jericho’s chorus of “Come use your body make my Jericho capsize” makes sense. On Fine Lady, he clarifies that the ass from before is “so solid e dey clarify my mood”, whatever the hell that means. Before that, beauty is equated to the Mavins posse cut, Dorobucci, which isn’t all too bad, except for the fact that afterwards the same beauty is called a busy body—like the PSquare song, but without the requisite knowledge of what was implied. On the Shoday and Blaqbonez-assisted Arizona, “bum bum bigger than something wey dey for solar” somehow makes the cut. And then, following in Davido’s footsteps (“Eyes close like a Chinese man” on Odumodublvck’s GROOVING), Dxtiny equates his love to—wait for it—the stink of an aboki on NSA. No, you didn’t read that wrong. The singer who was somehow able to write a fun pop record about the everyday lives of Nigerians on Uncle Pele can’t avoid corny, sometimes offensive one-liners in writing every single Sweet Sins verse.  

Surprisingly, the EP sounds tired by the third track, despite being a mere 12 minutes long. There’s a section of Jericho where Dxtiny breaks into a Flavour-esque delivery that would delight even the most anhedonic listener. Fans of Victony would swear that his delivery on the chorus was influenced by Jolene, with inspired vocal choices that, in turn make for inspired listening. But he fails to carry those fresh melodies and vocal choices through the final 3 tracks. Calls of “I’ll not let you go” ring shallow in Arizona, almost like a mirror image of Dxtiny gained sentience. In fact, the song’s best moment arrives when Blaqbonez croons a baritone “Níbi ló má kú sí, bóyá ló má délé”—proof that melodic rappers don’t get enough credit. No risks. No dramatic pockets. Not even an accent change or something aligned with the songs’ sugar daddy subtext. 

Sweet Sin is a picture of Nigerian pop’s trajectory, where the fusions sound like they could be meteoric if only artists dared to switch it up. What’s the point in pressing play on an EP or LP when every other song sounds like one has heard them before? A formula works, and so the next step is to water it down and churn out a substandard product. It’s unfair to the artist who’s capable of producing high quality work, unfair to fans rooting for their growth, unfair to the concept of albums and EPs, unfair to enthusiasts cultivating taste in good music, and unfair to readers who have to engage with appraisals of said music.

Philistines claim that these pedestrian arrangements aren’t such an issue since Afrobeats and Afro-pop are about the vibes. Yet, they wonder why the  brightest young talent don’t seem to produce EPs with lasting records. Or deep cuts worthy of retrospective appreciation. Sweet Sin’s cardinal bitter sin is that it makes poor meals of some particularly profound production picks. For all the generic lyrics, this writer wouldn’t mind a live performance of the Puffy Beatz-produced Fine Lady. And  NSA might as well be the most un-Alhaji impersonation ever, yet there’s still joy in its soft bass line. Dxtiny inadvertently proves, yet again, that production alone isn’t sufficient in Afro-pop. Producers can incorporate fantastic guitar chords —Jericho’s sound similar to Tems’ Crazy Things— and samples all they want, digging through crates of older music to flip into mind-bending rhythms. If the artists do not match up, nothing grows. 

Drawing from the Sweet Sins EP cover of a young man in a cowboy hat and black leather jacket, standing against a backdrop of the desert landscape with abundant cacti, Dxtiny looks every bit as confident as he sounds on this record. His gift of melody is evident, though the EP is suboptimal. If he does produce a stellar follow-up, he wouldn’t be the first young star with an underwhelming EP who goes on to create all-timer magic. For now, it remains to be seen whether he can find that striking sonic identity.