No Love in Lagos: Show Dem Camp, The Cavemen & Nsikak David Pull Apart the Notion of Love In Lagos. 

In No Love In Lagos, frequent collaborators Show Dem Camp, The Cavemen, and Nsikak David contribute their voices to the sea of conversations around the notoriously precarious Lagos dating scene. Over the years, the notion of love, in its numerous forms, has threaded the works of both The Cavemen and Show Dem Camp. Love and Highlife, their sophomore album, finds The Cavemen typically brooding as they explore themes of romantic love and camaraderie, over lilting drums and sinuous guitar riffs. Show Dem Camp on Palmwine Music 3 similarly attempts to decipher the inscrutable calculus of love. The two skits on Palmwine Music 3, ostensibly crafted to bolster this theme on the project, are framed as radio sessions where callers unspool the contents of their beleaguered romantic lives to the host. The skits are humorous, but they accurately portray the head-turning drama that has become emblematic of dating in Lagos. If Palmwime Music 3, casually riffed on Lagos’s storied reputation as a cauldron of fraught romance. No Love In Lagos aims for a panoramic view of Lagos love. 

Troubled romance is often imagined as isolated and singular. But No Love In Lagos exists to preserve a collective archive of the often bumpy Lagos love situation; it’s a warm arm, in an embrace, that says “you’re not alone.” On Intro, against the backdrop of Nsikak David’s warbling guitar and Benjamin James’ cascading drums, a female voice delivers a stirring monologue. “Does it even count, if I’m being loved, the way I don’t need?” The answer comes on the next track. The Cavemen open the song, No Love in Lagos, harmonizing the words “They no dey love for Lagos.” Tec and Ghost follow with fervid intensity; rapping didactically about unsavory romantic experiences. 

From the title, No Love in Lagos, coupled with the album’s titular lead single, and the thematic direction of Palmwine Music 3, one gets the impression that this album will rope in a passel of dramatic stories on strained relationships. But there are no rousing stories on the project; no interesting romance tragicomedies evoking Shakespeare’s Othello; or Brent Faiyaz’ Wasteland. No searing dialogues that build to a crescendo, rising up like tufts of steam, and then settling to a sedate state; like a deflating balloon; case in point, Kendrick Lamar’s We Cry Together. There’s a painful paucity of storytelling on the project, and outside the intro, and the two lead singles, they never specifically broach the subject of faltering romance in Lagos.

In fleeting moments though, they explore other dimensions of the anxious love situation in Lagos. In Fall, Ghost riffs on the elitism rife in Lagos. And Johni finds the Show Dem Camp and The Cavemen pulling apart the subject of treacherous friendships. Tec is laconic, and brooding, as he raps about friends who stay only when the going is good. “When power miss road, dem go long you again.” Ghost is more spirited but equally somber, as he raps about the machiavellian machinations that thread through social interactions in the city. His counsel is brusque, and direct: “Hustle for the soft life.”

Outside of these moments, they rarely, if ever, stick to any one theme. Throughout the album, there’s a sense that what is supposed to be the album’s main theme, Lagos’s fraught love situation, is no more than a trivial subtext. The album’s title, roll out, and branding, all feel like window dressing for a random collection of fun songs between friends. Why is emblematic of this trend. The song is admittedly a fitting soundtrack to a breezy evening of revelry with friends. Nonetheless, its cursory lyrics hardly advance the album’s theme. 

Sudden Day comes as Nsikak’s moment in the spotlight. Over slow-burning drums, he supplies spiritual guitar melodies that evoke the same transcendental atmosphere of his live shows. But Show Dem Camp, with rap that border on being vain bluster, ruin what could have been a perfect song. The song builds slowly. For the first minute and half, Nsikak’s ethereal melodies suffuse the atmosphere with a transcendental quality. Like a priest calibrating the atmosphere of a cathedral, before a liturgy, using incense. It’s the perfect alley-oop; the ball has already ricocheted off the backboard; all that’s left is a fitting dunk. Ghost enters abruptly and fumbles it with vapid, desultory raps that never seem to go anywhere. “We went from zero to a hundred..” Tec is even more disappointing. His verse is both lacking in purpose and substance. “No love in Lagos. My pen game is. The remedy. Ice in my veins. There’s no faking the energy.” Even in the amateur, impromptu ciphers typically conducted in the hallways of high schools, you’d be hard pressed to find a verse as lazy as this. 

This pattern of underwhelming delivery from Show Dem Camp is a throughline of the project. The Cavemen are characteristically spry over the album’s ten tracks. Interspersing the tape with shimmering melodies and slinky vocal inflections that ricochet softly, leaving waves of excitement in their wake. But at certain points on the album, they sound monotonous. It’s less an indictment on them than it is on the genre of highlife, which by design lends itself to repetitive compositions. The features on the album, curiously stacked end-to-end at the base of the album, bring some dynamism. But even the brilliant performances from Tim Lyre and Moelogo, could hardly salve the cracks in the album. 

No Love in Lagos takes on the herculean task of distilling Lagos’ storied messy dating scene. The album is interspersed with fleeting moments of transcendence. But there are giant portions of prairie which the album doesn’t venture into. This absence hollows out the album’s core theme, when it should be front and center. Without a defined target, much of the lyrics start to feel like bluster. Herculean tasks require commensurate attention to detail, and in this regard, the album falters.