Dear Sarz and BNXN, Did We Really Need This?

Afrobeats and Afro-pop’s hip-hop genealogy is a subject as extensively acknowledged as it is mischaracterised; the latter largely due to a knowledge gap between commentators across the Atlantic and our culture custodians on this end. In the genre’s early years, Nigeria’s Afro-pop artists experimented with sounds from New York, Atlanta, and elsewhere, flipping instrumentals into classics, forging amalgams of the flows and rhyme patterns of American rappers with indigenous sounds, in a manner that was novel to the world. They created hip-hop music in the American image, alongside our own indigenous hip-hop and street-hop. Along with the music, they also incorporated other elements that defined the Bronx-born genre: fashion, marketing, label set-ups, release formats, and so much more. You might notice the conspicuous absence of ‘beef’ on that list. It’s because we always had those, decades before Tony Tetuila thought of Omode Meta. 

As a release format, the collaborative mixtape or album is one of those shibboleths that also made its way into the industry. DJs like DJ Jimmy Jatt were at the forefront of these collaborations between artists and producers. Jimmy Jatt’s 2007 LP, The Definition Vol. 1, is notably the first of its kind in the industry, a curatorial masterpiece that houses the classic record, Stylee (feat. cultural luminaries, 2Baba and Modenine, and Elajoe), and the original Jump Off, a five-man posse cut predating Silverbird Television’s Jimmy’s Jump Off show. In the years that followed, not many producers and DJs followed in his stead, instead opting for production credits only. Most shunned putting out projects of any sort. Expeditions by a younger generation of producers and DJs arrived in 2015 when LeriQ (The Lost Sounds), DJ Xclusive (According to X), and DJ Spinall (My Story: The Album) released full-length albums. By the end of that decade, everyone from Sarz (I LOVE GIRLS WITH TROBUL EP with Wurld in 2019) to DJ Neptune (Greatness in 2018) had followed suit, with an influx of projects and the full emergence of the producer-artist archetype arriving in the early 2020s. 

In the midst of this renaissance, Sarz’s work stood out from the bunch. His collaborative projects, including the LV N ATTN and Sweetness EPs with Lojay and Obongjayar, respectively, were more in the fashion of projects hosted by producers like DJ Drama and Madlib, with one artist as the main collaborator. Also, all three collab EPs were experimental genre-extending efforts, with artists at the fringes of the mainstream (in Lojay’s case, the EP served as his introduction to the mainstream). They have since become cult classics in their own right—depending on who you ask, some might even call Sweetness a classic. When arguments are made for Sarz’s greatness, the avant-garde nature of his collab EPs always comes to the fore. Era-defining in every sense of the world. Essential to their respective genres. Projects the game did need, whether or not anyone recognised so, at the time. Sarz made projects that would fit right at the top of any curatorial lists of the continent’s best-ever EPs. 

Apologies for the detour, but it’s essential to know all of that context if one is to critique The Game Needs Us in full measure. You would expect that the next instalment in Sarz’s oeuvre, with none other than BNXN (fka Buju), coming on the heels of acclaimed album releases by both collaborators in 2025, and with such an audacious titular declaration as “The Game Needs Us,” would be a hurricane of seismic proportions. A project from melody and songwriting exemplar, the original Buju, and Mr Osabuohien ‘Sarz’ Osaretin, the OG innovator himself, father of the versatile 110 shakers that your favourite producer’s favourite producer uses, should at least live up to the claim and save the game. 

This is not the case. 

BNXN’s performances on this EP are regular, for the most part. He carries the toxic lover-boy persona that colours both his albums and the RnB collab EP with Ruger onto four of five songs here, exploring different aspects of the relationship cycle. The longing of Emotional High, a standout on the EP, is reminiscent of Captain’s intro, I Alone. BNXN’s voice is high-pitched as he sings over pop production, describing an ‘emotional high’ of slipping into love with the accompanying low of knowing its impermanence. Synths and a throbbing grand piano build up the atmosphere on this song, providing airiness for BNXN’s falsetto to accentuate the moment’s euphoria. On Rum & Soda, infatuation meets heartbreak. There’s barely any time to take the instrumental in before he enters with a confession (“Fi ìbàdí yẹn ṣe mí l’eṣe, so I had to open up”), acceding to the complicated nature of the break-up, and later on requesting that his lover doesn’t show her new man the thing he taught her. It’s like the Madonna whore complex meets a twisted version of Okafor’s Law, where our protagonist magically waltzes his way back to his lover. Rum&Soda’s mellow Afro-R&B picks up exactly where Sweet Tea (Aduke)left off on his debut album, Sincerely, Benson, half-acknowledging the singer’s role in the situation, but only barely so. 

Because it wouldn’t be a BNXN project without bragadoccio—and Sarz is evidently still in the mood of Protect Sarz At All Costs and songs like the Asake and Wizkid-assisted banger Getting Paid—we get Already, a playful mid-tempo Afro-pop number. Ambiguous shoutouts, prayers for wealth, and warnings against ọpọlọ eyes (greedy eyes) intermix. BNXN’s background in rap is visible as, for a moment on the second verse, he dons the “Mr Incredible” hat in a triple time flow, emphasising Sarz’s roles as music industry saviour. In the first verse, he employs shifting end rhymes to admirable effect, all the while singing about how new circumstances are a product of his work ethic. 

Elsewhere, the bad boy persona holds sway. Outro Frank Sinatra initially comes across as the embers of a dying relationship until the latter half, when BNXN sings about his love interest not following the rule she set. The rule in question? Playing along if he stops cheating  (“Was it not today you say if I block my hoes, you go dey normal?”). He’s leaving calls, regardless, expecting to hear her voice and possibly an explanation. All of this while Sarz layers the silkiest G-Funk whistle since Dr Dre’s Nuthin’ But A ‘G’ Thang over stabbing piano chords. It would be such a great song if BNXN didn’t sound so detached, as if the scenario being painted happened to someone else. He’s written this push-pull into being, yet delivers unfeelingly, a drop in energy from the preceding two songs, Emotional High and Already. Featuring someone like Fola might have elevated the track in this regard.

The bad boy persona comes off better on the EP’s lead single, Back Outside. It just might be more difficult to parse due to the warm tones of the chorus, which features a children’s choir rendition of legendary Malian duo Amadou and Mariam’s 1990 song, Ko meye mounka allah la (off their Vol. 2 album). The chorus translates to moving forward no matter what comes their way (BNXN and his lover). But in the same song, he insinuates that the distance between them was unavoidable; he was at work, she was chasing a rainbow. Back Outside feels better suited to a project with a narrative arc. There are gaps unfilled. One sees a potential for resolution, or otherwise, that is neither satisfied by the EP nor the official music video, which, by the way, is just a bunch of unrelated, slightly whimsical, colourful shots of the duo, a few ladies, and football-playing kids in open and enclosed spaces with zero links to the song’s ethos.

Like his other collab EPs, Sarz sticks to a core genre throughout The Game Needs Us (R&B, like the Wurld collab), only switching elements around with mild experimental flourishes. There’s an interesting recurrence of what could be the timpani or triangle on certain songs. Shakers prominently punctuate the undercurrent of Back Outside while log drums define Emotional High.  Sarz isn’t reinventing the wheel as much as he’s showing what he can do with subtlety. However, for such a bold claim, subtlety is far from what’s expected. Where’s our Monalisa? Our Mad? Give us our Gone Girl! We demand to speak with the man who gave us all that juice! More likely than not, the project’s name arose as a creative way to meet the market. It’s more relaxing to hope so. If it didn’t, and somehow both felt that the quality of music on here was enough to declare Eureka, listeners have a problem on their hands. 

Even if you take away the expectations placed by the project’s title, it still doesn’t change much. The Game Needs Us isn’t just another random EP, but it’s not great, either. It’s nothing different from what one would imagine a collaboration between the duo to sound like, at worst. This is 15 minutes of high-quality “Okay. That’s good. What’s next?”.  Whether because the EP is technically BNXN’s collaboration with Sarz—unlike Sweetness and ILGWT, which had the producer at the helm—or because it’s music that’s ‘just meant to be enjoyed, not overthought,’ it’s hard to say. But it certainly doesn’t fit in with the predecessors in the Sarz collab EP universe. On the flip side, one can appreciate BNXN’s growth as a songwriter—from his first project, 2021’s Sorry I’m Late, to today—by listening to this EP. 

The Game Needs Us is not something we ‘needed.’ But it is something we wouldn’t mind having. That no one says “No” to the likelihood of all-timer music doesn’t rescind us from acknowledging when said music doesn’t hit the spot. Dear Sarz and BNXN, the greatest have average days too. Quincy Jones permitted Soul Bossa Nostra (2010)to be made. 2Baba gave us The Ascension (2014). These things happen. And that’s all right.