Collaborative albums have become a way for budding music talents, looking to etch their names on the music industry, to work together in a group audition of their talents and dexterity. The newest graduating class of The Sarz Academy is one more reason to be grateful for these sorts of projects. Sometimes this shared platform is a record label or distribution company, where these artists might even be called classmates, with Sarz the proud principal, happy to see his trainees take wings and fly just like stars like Dunnie, Tempoe, and P.Priime did in the past. For Sarz, these projects co-created with recording artists have become a key part of his discography, having put out EPs with Wurld, Lojay, and Obongjayar showcasing his quality in the production booth and his keen eye for superb vocal talent.
All this is to say that there’s been an abundance of precedence for Memories That Last Forever 2 to sonically excel. Fifteen creatives were selected from a large pool of entries to make the cut, with seven artists and eight producers spread across fifteen tracks. It is therefore telling of Sarz’s influence to bring a healthy sense of coherence to a diverse range of artists. Production is excellent yet noticeably mellow—his proteges here do not require the harshest horns or the biggest log drums to draw your attention; they prefer instead to embrace you warmly in measured beats that may draw a little from RnB or Hiphop, but carry an unmistakable Nigerian seal.
By way of themes our creatives have kept things uncomplicated, sticking with familiar Nigerian pop topics like love, which frequently strays into lust, also familiar to the average Nigerian listener, or tales of hustle and the grind it took to get to the top. You hear the latter on the more reflective tracks like Inside Life, where Fxrtune speaks on the struggle to make a name in an industry that gets dark and carnivorous, especially for upcoming artists. He speaks on the dual nature of friends, “I’ve seen this before, no matter the love, na still for your back they go dey talk”—but it is not from a place of hurt; the best revenge is to outpace them in time. Pxrfect, too, takes a trip down memory lane of humble beginnings and the effort needed to escape them on Breathe, the album opener, and an insight into the journey of his come-up “we started hustling at a very early stage”.
Blueszn’s stripped production provides Perfext ample room for expression, which he needs, for this 3 minute track is an intimate cry for help. “I just wanna breathe, I just wanna live/With all this on my neck, heavy load for my head”, he says, speaking to the burden of making it through music while carrying baggage of kin and kindred. It is a rare, poignant perspective to see artists from, such that can only truly be provided by ascending stars on a project like this, before incoming fame and wealth confers them with a more luxuriant mindset. But, Sarz would not want the Memories That Last Forever 2 to dwell too long on murky waters. Not when there’s fun to be had by taking a spin down the streets of romance with the occasional detour into sex.
And so the album will take its time balancing business with pleasure, but like oil and water, never quite mixing them. Each track is therefore a random draw of different fates, but the sheer number of luscious songs suggests the balance is tilted. One of these songs, Jam One Kele, was the first tease of the album and was released back in May. There’s a full house here, with Gimba, Fxrtune, and Millymay_pod providing vocals while the trio of Twitchpapiii, BomboCat and Oddwave contribute behind the boards. Seven men including Sarz, and the topic for which they have gathered? “I jam one kele yesternight when she dey come around”. Each of the artists gets a turn to have their say, while the producers work to make sure the song sounds neither bloated nor disjointed.
There is a lot to pick from, but as expected, Memories That Last Forever 2′s most appealing quality is in Sarz’s talent identification. It helps him pick a selection of vocalists of which there is hardly a weak link—if anything, their honeyed voices could prove difficult to tell apart. For the first iteration in 2020, Memories That Last Forever, then an EP, Sarz relied on stars like Wizkid and Tiwa Savage for both artistry and marketing power. Here, while there is no one that can even remotely match the latter, it can be argued that some of the acts here replicate the former.
Fxrtune is one of several revelations here, and he shows this in the cool resplendence of Resemble and Ready. He dabbles into the sensual, proving as he does that lewd material need not be a hindrance to very good writing. His partner on Ready, Pj Starr, is given little to do, but between this and his contribution on DPWMH, the next song, he more than earns his keep. Millymay_pod on Body Wicked is more of the same: slow, sweet and sensual, with 16-year-old Thekidfuzzy providing a slinky, low-tempo production to match.
Charmalaine ‘LA and Syntiat are the only female vocalists on the album, but their contributions, placed side by side, are polar opposites. The latter’s brooding at the end of a toxic relationship on Rude—“Married to the bottle, fucking with my ex”—starkly contrasts the former’s role as a romantic foil to Gimba on Steady.
The album’s tracks rarely exceed the 3 minute mark, with each act allowed only a couple of tracks to make their mark, so every single second is an opportunity. You can tell that the creators know this. It is not very often that underground artists get some share of spotlight like this, so the genuine eagerness of Sarz’s class of 2023 to impress translates abundantly into quality both behind the boards and in the booth. Sarz is already the name behind some of the biggest and most impactful hits of Nigeria’s music history, it remains to be seen if and how he can now shepherd this bunch of youngsters to similarly high echelons. If this album is anything to go by, they deserve it.