Review: With “V” Asa aims for the Contemporary

Asa’s new album, V, would have one reflexively think about Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta. But Asa’s V more likely stands for Valentine. And truly, Asa is smitten with her lover throughout her fifth studio album. She is nothing without him, she says, and in the second track, likens him to “the ocean,” a rather wan metaphor when measured against the more gripping coinages that she’s served up in previous albums. In the penultimate track, she is wary of her lover and wants to call it quits. But just as she pushes him away with one hand, she pulls him back towards her with the other one.

This is textbook Asa. Since her debut album Asa (2007), she has left behind a long roster of love tunes. The only difference between this love-strewn album and the previous ones is that Asa is very much unlike Asa in this one. Where Asa’s voice — a nasal peculiarity that it is — is often full of brio and easily recognized in the previous albums, here it is subdued and alien, even to stans who have listened to Asa through two lifetimes. In All I Ever Wanted, where she features American singer Amaarae, it’s hard to tell Asa’s singing voice from the guest artiste. Only when the words “pussy” and “fucked” are sung does it become clear that it’s not the French-Nigerian who’s singing, as she’s possibly never uttered those words anywhere in her oeuvre. Asa’s voice, it is clear by the third or fourth song, is buried and lost under her very deliberate intention of sounding contemporary in this album.

And what is more contemporary than making a song with Wizkid, the Fresh Prince of Nigerian pop music, who makes an appearance in IDG, a song that will not be remembered for very long? What is more contemporary than Amapiano, which Asa samples in this album? And what is more contemporary than lean and unpoetic lyricism, by which Nigerian pop music is known, a minimalist style that Asa brings to V? This is hardly the Asa we fell in love with in 2007, who wrote her lines with the flourishes of a bard.

Besides its sparseness, lyricism in Nigerian pop music is famed for its inflexible lexicon. Because Nigerian pop music is wedded with hedonism, its lyricism comprises stock expressions that often hint at the sensual. These expressions are so overused that you’d be hard-pressed to find a pop act who doesn’t throw in one or two of them in his songs: Amaka. Caro. Wine am. Wine your waist. Omoge. Sugar. Banana, this the go-to phallic euphemism in Nigerian pop. In Mayana, Asa steals from pop music argot, promising her lover that, when they are alone, there will be “plenty fish and banana.” Because she pairs banana with fish, creating incongruous sexual imagery (and an even more unusual culinary combo), it’s hard to say if she is talking about a literal or figurative banana. Also look at the track’s title: Mayana. It’s the first song in an Asa album that’s neither titled in English nor Yoruba nor in any readily discernible language. It more likely is glossolalia, another strain of Nigerian pop music (and Nigerian Pentecostalism). At this point, there’s no doubt that Asa craves mainstream cool.

The only pop music box that Asa doesn’t tick is the beats. And perhaps in the way that she handles her themes, seeing as she mostly deals with love in V sans the overt eroticism that seethes through, say, a Tekno or Peruzzi love song. The songs in V – slow-moving, introverted, and frugal in percussion – will not cause feet to shuffle on the dance floor. But they may inspire a gentle chassé, especially when Good Times, featuring the ever-hoarse The Cavemen., comes through the speakers.

With this experimental album, Asa leaves her comfort zone. On the one hand, it’s refreshing to see the singer try her hands, or lungs, at something new. On the other hand, because it’s not familiar territory for the singer, it is not a particularly remarkable outing. There are no bad songs in this album, but neither is there any that seize the day. There’s also little to persuade one to give it a second or third listen.