This one speaks to the times in a way that is fun and easy to digest. It has a message but does not come swing it with a sledge hammer. Ajebutter 22 and Falz recognise that as working millennials, they are in on the joke too and instead the send up the madness of students gone wild on campus and cast themselves as complicit participants, same as the rest of us. The brief verse by Falz probably elevates the song beyond its humble origins.
Saturday, 27 May 2017
Arsenal FA cup win over chelsea.
Arsenal lift the 2017 FA Cup! The club captain Laurent Koscielny shares the honour with Per Mertesacker, who was outstanding today. He hadn’t started a game in 392 days, and then played likethat. Astonishing! The ticker tape comes down on the parade, as everyone takes their turn in lifting the old pot. It’s just reward: they were all magnificent.Chelsea by contrast weren’t at the races, uncharacteristically outfoxed and outfought. Seems doubles aren’t so easy to land after all, and Antonio Conte still hasn’t won a final as manager. Still, their brilliant league season will keep them warm at night when today’s disappointment fades. But this is all about Arsenal, record 13-time winners of the cup, and Arsene Wenger: the greatest FA Cup manager of all time.
Arsenal FA cup win over chelsea was bad news for man united.
Amid all the euphoria for Arsenal, there are bound to be people who wonder if these might also have been the ideal circumstances for Arsène Wenger to announce he was stepping aside and assure himself of a happy ending. His team had won, thrillingly, against the champions of England, making Wenger the most successful manager in the history of this competition. It was his seventh victory and, whatever his faults, a man with that record of achievement surely warrants the opportunity to go out on a high.
Equally, these are the moments when Wenger must be reminded what it is about football that makes it so addictive. It is not easy kicking the habit, particularly on the days when everything falls into place and this for Arsenal was undoubtedly one of them. They picked a good time to put in their best performance of the season, denyingChelsea the double on a day when Victor Moses joined the list of players to suffer the indignity of being shown a red card in an FA Cup final. Moses had collected two second-half bookings and the fact the second one came from a choreographed attempt to win a penalty probably summed up the state to which Arsenal reduced their opponents.
The only question for Wenger’s men is this: why can they not reach these heights more often? Arsenal were quick to the ball, strong in the tackle and, defensively, they played as though utterly determined not to let the fact they were missing key personnel influence the outcome.
More than anything, they were free of the self-doubt that has often infiltrated their performances against Chelsea. Mesut Özil, for instance, seemed absolutely determined to leave his imprint on the final. Alexis Sánchez, possibly making his last appearance in Arsenal’s colours, shimmered with menace and now has 30 goals for the season. Danny Welbeck brought a mix of speed and directness and when Olivier Giroud came on as a substitute, just after Diego Costa’s equaliser, it was his first touch that set up Aaron Ramsey for the game’s decisive moment. The cross was delivered so expertly it would have been almost impolite for Ramsey, with a stooping header, not to accept the chance.
By the end, it was starting to feel like a trick of the mind that the winning team had actually finished 18 points behind Chelsea in the league. Costa’s bouncing shot did briefly conjure up the possibility of an improbable comeback for the team with 10 men. But this was a poor day for Chelsea and it was rare to see N’Golo Kanté, for instance, finding it so difficult to keep up. Ramsey’s winner arrived within two minutes of Costa’s equaliser and when it comes to the first half it began with possibly the most torrid 30-minute spell Chelsea have endured all season.
Thursday, 25 May 2017
MI Abaga and 2baba shine at lagos Buckwyld in Breathless concert.
This was mainly due to the hilarious showmanship of rapper MI Abaga, who was co-headlining the concert with frequent collaborator 2Baba.
The rapper, who’s the head of the Chocolate Citylabel, appeared in a shiny black suit at the Eko Hotel, Lagos venue, and as a band played the James Bond theme, MI fought a group of balaclava-ed criminals. He won each fight with the flimsiest of kicks and punches, and then launched into the thrilling ‘Action Film’.
The audience responded to the mock-fight with laughter. The crowd responded to the song with dance and video phones raised high. Many rapped his words back to him.
At some point, MI called upon a fan who was going with him word for word. Unfortunately, now onstage the fan couldn’t quite deliver the required verse. "Don't worry," MI said, "I get stage fright too."
As the show went on, several artists joined the rapper onstage. The singer Djinee came on for ‘Safe’. MI’s brother, Jesse Jagz, sang ‘Wetin Dey’,Ice Prince sang ‘Oleku. With MI, all three sang ‘Nobody Test Me’. With Djinee, all four sang the remix to ‘Overkillin It’. Chocolate City signee Nosa joined in, performed the chorus on ‘Brother’ from MI’s The Chairman album, and sang his own ‘Pray for You’.
Rugged Man and Kelly Hansome also performed. Singer Waje, who maintains a friendship with MI, sang her own song ‘I Wish’ and later joined MI for their duet ‘One Naira’. MI closed his set with his highlife-meets-hiphop tune, ‘Number One’.
For his part, 2Baba gave a loose performance, in contrast to MI’s tightly scripted one. At one point, he went offstage abruptly. When he returned, he said he was emotional and then joked that he just had to pee. The concert experienced an emotional moment when 2Baba invited the son of the late OJB onstage. Together they performed the deceased producer’s ‘Searching’. 2Baba also performed with co-headliner MI, Tanzania’s Vanessa Mdee, and rappers Vector and Sound Sultan.
The concert was very well organized—yet it was the music made by these two greats of Nigerian pop music that emerged as highlight of the night.
Read the Music in Africa list of 10 of the best songs from MI Abaga here
The rapper, who’s the head of the Chocolate Citylabel, appeared in a shiny black suit at the Eko Hotel, Lagos venue, and as a band played the James Bond theme, MI fought a group of balaclava-ed criminals. He won each fight with the flimsiest of kicks and punches, and then launched into the thrilling ‘Action Film’.
The audience responded to the mock-fight with laughter. The crowd responded to the song with dance and video phones raised high. Many rapped his words back to him.
At some point, MI called upon a fan who was going with him word for word. Unfortunately, now onstage the fan couldn’t quite deliver the required verse. "Don't worry," MI said, "I get stage fright too."
Rugged Man and Kelly Hansome also performed. Singer Waje, who maintains a friendship with MI, sang her own song ‘I Wish’ and later joined MI for their duet ‘One Naira’. MI closed his set with his highlife-meets-hiphop tune, ‘Number One’.
The concert was very well organized—yet it was the music made by these two greats of Nigerian pop music that emerged as highlight of the night.
Read the Music in Africa list of 10 of the best songs from MI Abaga here
‘Bahd, Baddo, Baddest’, the new song from Falz, is perhaps the first time in Nigerian pop a song title (and maybe the song itself) was conceived wholly from alliterating nicknames. It’s an easy explanation:
Falz, who almost certainly came up with the title and chorus, begins with a verse not quite as impressive as the best cuts on his sophomoreStories that Touch. “They say know they his father,” he says at the start. Then he explains that his success is not connected to his well-respected lawyer father. Instead he has succeeded because of his skills at rapping, he boasts. Otherwise no one would know him.
With the self-justification over, he asks the question which he has clearly needed to ask for weeks now: “Which musician do you know has an AMVCA?” By AMVCA, he means the yearly African Magic Viewers’ Choice Awards, the award ceremony that last month rewarded the rapperwith a trophy for his role in a comedy. Girls, money, alcohol, acting awards—rappers will brag with anything. So Falz’s verse is a rapper asking that his success should not be traced to his well-off dad. Why? Because he really can rap and because he has an acting award. If the second reason makes you laugh, well Falz is part comedian. In any case, that entire story about his father is one he will have to keep telling.
In a key sense, all three rappers are sons seeking to escape a very familiar affliction: the persistence of the father. Two of them, Falz and Davido, are from famously rich families, with fathers they were never going to surpass if they stuck to the family business. Both were sent overseas to school, perhaps to continue that family business. Both broke out from that familial tyranny.
Davido, who finished his university education in Nigeria and at 23 is somewhat still a child by Nigerian standards, now has his own daddy issues since he has a child of his own. Unfortunately, he spends time on ‘Bahd, Baddo, Baddest’ belatedly addressing the uncle of his baby-mama, bringing up an old story long after Nigerian blogs and tabloids have forgotten the controversy. It does him no favours but boys will be boys. Until they become men, that is. And from this evidence that may be a long while from now. Like Falz, he brags, “I cover magazine, I cover magazine” - a reference to his appearance on the cover of US magazine Fader. Davido is hardly a rapper but by association it’s okay to add feature stories to the list of things rappers brag about.
As the sole artist on the song without a wealthy provenance, Olamide is focused on the new realities of his life: money and women. Apparently, every girl he meets wants to marry him. “To be a man is not easy,” he sighs in Nigerian pidgin and Yoruba. “I greet my father.” Naturally, he craves money more, a detail that sets up the song’s best sequence:
Money is all I know, all I know Money is all I knowIf you ain’t talking money, I can’t hear you. Your volume is somehow low.
Olamide is, of course, motivated by a fear of returning to the poverty of his early life, an area covered on the song ‘Anifowose’ from his third solo album Baddest Guy Ever Liveth (2013). Even if the man who has recorded five solo albums in five years greets and commends his father, the old man’s fate is what he is working hard to avoid.
And so we have it that three of Nigeria’s swaggering male artists come together to record a song. You would think they will emerge as men. Instead we get boys, sons preoccupied with daddy issues. Bahd, Baddo, Baddest? Not quite. 'Fath, Fatho, Fathest' sounds about right. All of these words are misspellings anyway...
- The moniker Falz (real name, Folarin Falana) is fully, 'Falz the Bahd Guy'.
- Baddo is Olamide's other rap name. It is the first semi-coherent thing you hear him say on 2012’s ‘Stupid Love’.
- For a while Davido has called himself the Baddest, although on the 2014 hit song 'Aiye' the word refers to his beloved.
Falz, who almost certainly came up with the title and chorus, begins with a verse not quite as impressive as the best cuts on his sophomoreStories that Touch. “They say know they his father,” he says at the start. Then he explains that his success is not connected to his well-respected lawyer father. Instead he has succeeded because of his skills at rapping, he boasts. Otherwise no one would know him.
With the self-justification over, he asks the question which he has clearly needed to ask for weeks now: “Which musician do you know has an AMVCA?” By AMVCA, he means the yearly African Magic Viewers’ Choice Awards, the award ceremony that last month rewarded the rapperwith a trophy for his role in a comedy. Girls, money, alcohol, acting awards—rappers will brag with anything. So Falz’s verse is a rapper asking that his success should not be traced to his well-off dad. Why? Because he really can rap and because he has an acting award. If the second reason makes you laugh, well Falz is part comedian. In any case, that entire story about his father is one he will have to keep telling.
In a key sense, all three rappers are sons seeking to escape a very familiar affliction: the persistence of the father. Two of them, Falz and Davido, are from famously rich families, with fathers they were never going to surpass if they stuck to the family business. Both were sent overseas to school, perhaps to continue that family business. Both broke out from that familial tyranny.
Davido, who finished his university education in Nigeria and at 23 is somewhat still a child by Nigerian standards, now has his own daddy issues since he has a child of his own. Unfortunately, he spends time on ‘Bahd, Baddo, Baddest’ belatedly addressing the uncle of his baby-mama, bringing up an old story long after Nigerian blogs and tabloids have forgotten the controversy. It does him no favours but boys will be boys. Until they become men, that is. And from this evidence that may be a long while from now. Like Falz, he brags, “I cover magazine, I cover magazine” - a reference to his appearance on the cover of US magazine Fader. Davido is hardly a rapper but by association it’s okay to add feature stories to the list of things rappers brag about.
As the sole artist on the song without a wealthy provenance, Olamide is focused on the new realities of his life: money and women. Apparently, every girl he meets wants to marry him. “To be a man is not easy,” he sighs in Nigerian pidgin and Yoruba. “I greet my father.” Naturally, he craves money more, a detail that sets up the song’s best sequence:
Money is all I know, all I know Money is all I knowIf you ain’t talking money, I can’t hear you. Your volume is somehow low.
Olamide is, of course, motivated by a fear of returning to the poverty of his early life, an area covered on the song ‘Anifowose’ from his third solo album Baddest Guy Ever Liveth (2013). Even if the man who has recorded five solo albums in five years greets and commends his father, the old man’s fate is what he is working hard to avoid.
And so we have it that three of Nigeria’s swaggering male artists come together to record a song. You would think they will emerge as men. Instead we get boys, sons preoccupied with daddy issues. Bahd, Baddo, Baddest? Not quite. 'Fath, Fatho, Fathest' sounds about right. All of these words are misspellings anyway...
News on falz & simi-chemistry
In the months leading to, and days following, the release of their EP, Chemistry, much of the chatter around Falz and Simi has been about the perceived romance between them.
This suspicion is what they’ve both mined, in what should be acknowledged as a fantastic PR/management move, to keep their names relevant in a Nigerian music scene that runs like it’s dependent on the attention span of a toddler.
With the focus on the speculation of a romance, it is easy to forget that the chemistry alluded to in the title of their EP was at first professional, following Falz’s appearance in the video of Simi’s 'Jamb Question' remix, before it became anything else.
Falz and Simi both fall into that constricting hip hop and pop class of young Nigerian artists who have gained a large following without actively courting the "streets". The dominance of local artists in the hip-hop and pop genres of Nigerian music has been noted by Oris Aigbokhaevbolo in his essay on Falz, who owes his popularity to his comedy act and the success of his debut album, Stories that Touch. Simi, however, owes her rising popularity to her covers of songs that spread via word of mouth, her girl-next-door image, which has been well cultivated since the 2006 release of her album, Ogaju, as an independent artist, and the success of her singles 'Tiff' and 'Jamb Question'.
Their fan bases collide more than they diverge. It’s the kind of fan base that can relate to the humour of 'Foreign', the first song on the EP, which playfully mocks the tendency of many Nigerians to pretend they’ve lived or grown up in the West, while they make statements that are the opposite of the experience in those countries, like travelling to the northern hemisphere in December to avoid winter.
The apparent artistic chemistry between Falz and Simi is also a result of the blend of their musical styles. They’ve both risen on the back of songs that were light-hearted, catchy, easy to sing and follow. They’re not given to the brooding melancholy of the many young Nigerian alternative artists whose fan demographic they both share. Even Adekunle Gold, who rose to fame around the same time as these two, sings his love songs with an earnestness that isn’t found in Falz and Simi. Gold takes love to heart, whereas they are quick to make self-referential jokes about it, as they do on 'Soldier'.
It is this symbiosis of Falz’s bad-English-speaking Baba Taju act and his laid-back rap, together with the teenage naiveté of Simi’s voice that they both play to, with sweet results on Chemistry. A song like 'Cinderella', with the opening of the chorus, "Cinderella, sugar, sugar", a sonic play on, "jingle over like a motor", a popular playground chant familiar to Nigerian millennials, is a product of this fine mix.
Chemistry is, for the most part of the seven-track album, a fan service, or more accurately, a troll of their fans and the will-they, will-they-not of their romance. Songs like 'Want To' and the titular 'Chemistry' are an overt play on this. All of the songs stick to the love-me, miss-me model. Even 'Shake Your Body', the obvious party song on the EP, is sung like a wedding reception jam.
None of the songs on Chemistry is potent enough to make Falz and Simi fans out of people who aren’t. Nowhere on the EP do they stray from their familiar musical territories, instead they dig in to sing songs that are sure to catch on with their fans. Nor do they do anything to make fans doubt their taste in music.
This suspicion is what they’ve both mined, in what should be acknowledged as a fantastic PR/management move, to keep their names relevant in a Nigerian music scene that runs like it’s dependent on the attention span of a toddler.
With the focus on the speculation of a romance, it is easy to forget that the chemistry alluded to in the title of their EP was at first professional, following Falz’s appearance in the video of Simi’s 'Jamb Question' remix, before it became anything else.
Falz and Simi both fall into that constricting hip hop and pop class of young Nigerian artists who have gained a large following without actively courting the "streets". The dominance of local artists in the hip-hop and pop genres of Nigerian music has been noted by Oris Aigbokhaevbolo in his essay on Falz, who owes his popularity to his comedy act and the success of his debut album, Stories that Touch. Simi, however, owes her rising popularity to her covers of songs that spread via word of mouth, her girl-next-door image, which has been well cultivated since the 2006 release of her album, Ogaju, as an independent artist, and the success of her singles 'Tiff' and 'Jamb Question'.
Their fan bases collide more than they diverge. It’s the kind of fan base that can relate to the humour of 'Foreign', the first song on the EP, which playfully mocks the tendency of many Nigerians to pretend they’ve lived or grown up in the West, while they make statements that are the opposite of the experience in those countries, like travelling to the northern hemisphere in December to avoid winter.
The apparent artistic chemistry between Falz and Simi is also a result of the blend of their musical styles. They’ve both risen on the back of songs that were light-hearted, catchy, easy to sing and follow. They’re not given to the brooding melancholy of the many young Nigerian alternative artists whose fan demographic they both share. Even Adekunle Gold, who rose to fame around the same time as these two, sings his love songs with an earnestness that isn’t found in Falz and Simi. Gold takes love to heart, whereas they are quick to make self-referential jokes about it, as they do on 'Soldier'.
It is this symbiosis of Falz’s bad-English-speaking Baba Taju act and his laid-back rap, together with the teenage naiveté of Simi’s voice that they both play to, with sweet results on Chemistry. A song like 'Cinderella', with the opening of the chorus, "Cinderella, sugar, sugar", a sonic play on, "jingle over like a motor", a popular playground chant familiar to Nigerian millennials, is a product of this fine mix.
Chemistry is, for the most part of the seven-track album, a fan service, or more accurately, a troll of their fans and the will-they, will-they-not of their romance. Songs like 'Want To' and the titular 'Chemistry' are an overt play on this. All of the songs stick to the love-me, miss-me model. Even 'Shake Your Body', the obvious party song on the EP, is sung like a wedding reception jam.
None of the songs on Chemistry is potent enough to make Falz and Simi fans out of people who aren’t. Nowhere on the EP do they stray from their familiar musical territories, instead they dig in to sing songs that are sure to catch on with their fans. Nor do they do anything to make fans doubt their taste in music.
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