When Giftty teamed up with Mr Eazi in 2017 for his first major introduction to the music scene, he showed how risqué he could be. Lori Okada, the result of that collaboration produced by D’Tunes (Kukere, Sho Lee), has Giftty pining for a nymph who is also a femme fatale. A frightening prospect, no doubt, but it scarcely dissuades him as he matches his desire with raunchy language: recalling the title, he likens the posture assumed on mounting a bike to a certain sex position. Giftty can be risqué, but, as his new EP shows, can be so much more.
Released under Fascino Entertainment, Giftty’s five-track sophomore EP, Golden Boy, shows him in his feelings. He is also raunchy and at one point philosophical, but the dominant tone is of one who has not only fallen in love but has been made vulnerable by it.
If he sounds mushy on the record, it’s because he has been made mushy in life. Giftty tells The Culture Custodian that, in the few months before the making of the EP, he was “in a dark place.” Despite investing his all into music, he wasn’t yet reaping the dividends. The proverbial light at the tunnel’s end, however, would come in the form of a woman, his current partner. Steadying his steps, she helped him reclaim his self-belief; and it is to her that he has dedicated Love Is Blind, the EP’s lead. He hails her for enduring penniless days with him while promising a reward for her loyalty: “na only you dey for me when sapa hold me for neck/ so Imma always put you first,” he sings against an EDM-esque production.
The sentiment is the same in 4 Life and Odoyewu, where he promises her eternal fidelity. The title of the first is self-explanatory; the second is a Ghanaian expression that means “everlasting love.”
His risqué side re-surfaces in Anaconda, with the title, a common phallic metaphor, giving it away. He boasts about his sexual prowess: “All night long, I got you screaming…” But that assuredness is replaced by an uncertainty in Where Do We Go? where he contemplates the aftermath of death: “Ever wondered where we go when we sleep at night?” After suggesting it’s an unanswerable question, he advises that you surrender yourself to fate: “Quit being so in control, Life’s a mystery.”
What is not a mystery is the song’s origin: as with the love songs, it was also inspired by an event in Giftty’s life. “Where Do We Go? was inspired by an out-of-body experience that I had. I wrote the song immediately after that experience,” he says.
Mr. Eazi aside, Giftty has also collaborated with Yung L, Dammy Krane, Raybekah, and Reekado Banks. Born Godsgift Afele in Ekpoma, Edo State, where he was also raised, he has since moved to Lagos in order to be at the center of Nigerian music. That center eludes him still, but the EP is a step in that ambitious direction. His first major record may have cast him as the typical Afrobeats artist, for whom casual sex is an ever-malleable subject. But Golden Boy reveals him as layered; he is a lover and philosopher, too, but mostly the first.