By Bobby Nishimwe
There is this TikTok phenomenon where the minute a low key great restaurant goes viral on the app, the food quality automatically diminishes. The theory behind this development can be subscribed to the fact that said restaurant now has to cater to a much larger audience that is attending that establishment purely for social media hype instead of a genuine desire to indulge in the great culinary outputs of a given chef.
Well, Wizkid’s new album brought me the same level of disappointment that one would experience from the diminished food quality of a restaurant that has gone viral on TikTok.
I recently wrote about my expectations for Wizkid’s new album “More Love, Less Ego.” My expectations were one of excitement after hearing his two pre-leased singles, “Bad To Me” and “Money & Love.” I am sad to report that I am writing this blog with great sorrow, disappointment, and distraught. The degree to which Wizkid left me flabbergasted upon hearing this album is likened to when black twitter learned that Nick Cannon was having his twelfth child.
Okay, those were my initial thoughts after my first listen of the album but I allowed myself some more time to let it matriculate. After waiting for more than a week post-release, I think this album was mid or okay so not as terrible as I had initially thought.
I know some of you may think I am being a bit harsh but I really am not. This was an average project that lacked direction but one could still tolerate listening to it if they wanted.
This project was mostly produced by P2J who also produced “Made In Lagos.” There were three tracks that were produced by other producers, those being “Balance” produced by Kel-P & KDaGreat, “Pressure” produced by P.Priime, and “Special” produced by Juls.
The two pre-released singles mentioned above were probably some of the best records on the album. They were not as great as the tracks on Made In Lagos, but good singles nonetheless.
“Money & Love'' sounded like a continuation of his previous album, which had led me to initially believe that we were probably getting a MIL 2.
We definitely did not get a continuation of his previous album, rather something different that I believe I still have yet to fully understand as far as cohesive projects are concerned.
He started us off with “Money & Love,” which he had released about a week before his album. Pre-released singles most of the time tend to be the hottest tracks that listeners can expect to hear.
It is crucial for an artist to place the most eye-catching track at the front-end of a project. This is done to grab the listeners attention and convince them to continue indulging in the rest of the album.
Now, I will say that I am disappointed Wizkid did not include an intro on this project. I personally believe that at this stage of Wizkid’s career, he needs to up his production and creative story-telling capabilities by including an intro that can set the mood for the rest of the tracks.
A good intro will help listeners gain insight into the theme and motifs that are to be discussed in a given project. Wizkid did not seem to care much about giving us an intro with an imaginative construction of storytelling; a reality that follows his lackluster performances at concerts, I will get into this later in the article.
Having said all of that, Wizkid is not really known for his intros on projects as he did not have one on Made In Lagos and that album will easily go down as one of the most beautiful pieces of art to have been created by an African musician. Nonetheless, an intro on this recent project would have been greatly appreciated by those of us who like to listen to albums for their storytelling.
His record “Bad To Me” showed that Wizkid was ready to experiment with the South African amapiano sound. This song follows a trend of afrobeats artists making a fusion sound of afrobeats and amapiano; termed Afro-Piano. I tend to think that Afro-Piano works best for afrobeats artists who make fast tempo songs.
Well, that is not Wizkid. He falls more into the category of artists that make “soft life” and chill afrobeats. This is not to say that Wizkid does not have bangers, he definitely does but they are not the majority of his discography. Even saying all of this, Bad To Me was easily one of my favorite tracks on this album. I would not go as far as to say that Wizkid is good at this Afro-Piano subgenre, but this track did what it had to and that is make you want to hit some South African groove.
So, on one hand I was interested to see what more Wizkid could do with this Afro-Piano experimentation but also worried that his style of afrobeats might fail in producing quality songs within this specific sound.
On this album, he had at least four tracks that have amapiano instrumental elements to them. Those songs being “Bad To Me,” “2 Sugar (Feat. Ayra Starr),” “Pressure,” and “Plenty Loving.”
From the onset, I did not like the record featuring Ayra Starr. In some ways it felt rushed and not well produced, but all that changed when I saw Wizkid perform the song at MSG (I will dive more into this concert later). When I heard this track live, I caught myself grooving to it and actually enjoying it and I think a part of that had to do with hearing the piano beat drops in a large venue.
“Pressure,” was definitely one of the hardest tracks for me to listen to on this album. I can't seem to get myself to actually understand what Wizkid was trying to do on this record. This song can only be described as a disturbance to my ears. The record has underlying amapiano instrumentals and beat drops, but Wizkid was singing like he was on one of his afro-fusion jazz tracks.
“Special” (feat. Don Toliver) had the potential to be a really good song, but the problem is that it has a kick without a beat drop. The song basically keeps you on edge waiting for a beat drop that never arrives. I had predicted that this was going to be Wizkid’s most experimental track, it turned out to be an experimentation of hopeless dreams. In fact, the ending of the record makes no sense like a partner who leaves you with unprovoked promises that never come to fruition.
Now you can still vibe to the song, but unlike its title there is nothing special about that record.
For far too long caribbean and afrobeats collaborations have just not produced hits or outstanding records for a majority of the time. I had high hopes that Wizkid could be the one to prove us wrong with this collaboration between Shenseea and Skillibeing.
This track “Slip N Slide” should have just been a Wizkid and Shenseea collab. Skillibeing sounded lost at times on this track, the tempo at which he was singing did not match with the rhythm of the song. The disoriented nature of Skillibeing’s flow made this song a difficult listen, but Shenseea shined as the natural fit for this record. Wizkid was okay, but there was really nothing new that he brought to this song.
Was this collaboration a success?
I would rather say that without Skillibeing it would have been a lot more enjoyable to listen to. My Jamaican readers I want to let you all know that mi like Skillibeing, just not on this record.
Wizkid released this album right before his debut MSG performance.
Usually when artists release an album right before a concert or tour, they do so as a way to encourage those who are holding out on attending that performance to go ahead and purchase a ticket. In other ways, the release date of a project usually acts as a pivotal temporal promotion for their upcoming show(s).
Had I not already bought my ticket for the MSG concert, this album would not have motivated me in any way, shape or form to buy a ticket. This project would have made me feel content in not attending the show. The simple reason for my statement being that this project was missing the “Je ne ce qoui” that we saw in Wizkid’s previous projects.
At his MSG concert, he had a small T-shaped stage that did not extend much into the crowd. He reportedly sold out the venue, but did not make the effort to make sure that he had a stage that would allow him greater movement and interaction with his fans. The stage also had no props, so nothing visually attractive to catch the audience’s attention.
He had zero special guests for a concert that was being held in the entertainment capital of the world. I do not know about you, but if I am one of the biggest artists in the world and I am performing in the entertainment capital of the world. Why would I not have a single special guest from that place or at least bring out Tems.
As one twitter user put it “I just have to believe that Wizkid does not care about his NYC fans.” And you know what, I myself have to agree with that statement. This was my second time seeing Wizkid perform in NYC, and I left this show as disappointed as I did the first one. He had extremely low chemistry with the crowd, all he did was move left, right, left, right like as if he was Major Wizkid of the thirteenth battalion. His stage presence was lacking to a point of leaving you wondering why you even spent your money to go see him.
Now, I am not saying this to discourage you from attending his upcoming North America tour or other future concerts of his. What I am saying is that you will not catch me paying for another Wizkid concert, unless he releases out some heat.
I will close out this review saying that “Made In Lagos” deserved to win the grammy for best global music album, but this new project is not award-winning material. That is not to say that I do not wish him success on this “More Love, Less Ego” album, but I personally had a much harder time connecting with it in comparison to his previous projects.
This album was not made for us OG Wizkid fans, it was made for the “essence warriors.” From a business standpoint there’s nothing wrong with that move, but from an artistic point of view he cheapened his craft.
It’s similar to a country’s central bank purposely devaluing their currency as a means of increasing exports.
Devaluing a currency usually makes it much cheaper for other nations to buy goods from a country therefore making it easier for more foreign businesses, entities and people to purchase that country’s goods. Now there is a risk with a central bank devaluing their currency; it can backfire if they owe a lot of foreign debt that was borrowed in dollars leading them to have a much higher debt burden than the initial borrowed amount (that is assuming that the dollar’s value stays the same or increases with relation to that country’s currency). In short, for every positive there is a negative.
The monetary dilemma described above can be applied to what Wizkid did on this album. He understood that he had already captured the hearts of the western audience from his “Made in Lagos'' album, so he decided to just quickly put something together to feed a global fan base that is ready to consume whatever product that Wizkid is willing to sell. Hence the increasing of exports (foreign music sales) by currency or in this case artistic devaluation.
You will not catch me willingly playing this album, but who am I to blame Wizkid for merely playing an algorithm and numbers game.
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