I take pride to being the first to put someone on to some good music but I seem to be really late to this Wizkid party. Don't get me wrong, been a big Wizkid fan since "Holla At Your Boy" (and if you don't know that track and consider yourself and Wizkid fan, you need to revisit that thought). But when his latest album dropped last year called "Made in Lagos" I thought it was too slow for my taste. You see, I'm used to Wizkid providing those amazing Afrobeats club tracks that make you want to dance. So when he dropped this Afro-Swing style fused with R&B, I can say I didn't give the album enough runs to appreciate it. So when Essence took the airwaves by storm late last Summer, I started to pay a bit more attention and ever since then, the tracks just keep popping up and I have social media to blame. I've heard this song come up on my feed and every time I hear it, it puts me in that nice, chill mood. You know, the ones where you just vibin' with a glass of wine, in my Clutch hoodie, reminiscing on good times pre-pandemic...ah the good ol' days. That amazing thing is, it is not Wizkid that provides that vibe, it's Afrobeats heavyweight Buju (not Banton) and his vibe on the chorus just provides the right serenading for the entire track. He provides the cool singing using broken english (pidgin) and West African vernacular that makes this song hard not to like, even if you don't know exactly what he's saying. Sometimes, it is not what you say, it's how you say it!
The switch up on the second stanza on the chorus is everything:
Make we go dey sempe
But some liquor dey do me jeje
Get somethings wey dey bother my head, I swear
Na you dey cool my stress, oh yeah
Basic interpretation:
let's go away somewhere quiet,
with some alcohol that will calm me down.
There's lot of things on my mind
And you help release the stress.
That was your lesson on Nigerian culture for 2022, many more lessons to come :) All I have to say is this song puts me in a big "mood" and makes me want to feel this vibe all 2022! Take in the full track and let us know what you think.
STAY CLUTCH!