A lot of us need to understand that when an artist is being criticized, it is for the general good of the art. Wizkid may not be my favorite artist, yet, I can never deny his influence on what we call our music today. The more reason the public's torch of criticism must always be on him. You can't set the standard and suddenly drop below the same standard you set as early as 2010. The whole industry looked up to you first. You are the game! You should not be found wanting during the harvest of the work you did.
Since release on Friday, I've played Morayo a total of 7 times so far, the most I have done with any of his projects in the first week of release since 2018. With this, I can comfortably say I love Wizkid. I can and will forever say Morayo is my Album of the Year for 2024, with or without Rema's HEIS. This is the first album of 2024 without any skips. Every song is appealing to me. Only Asake's Mr Money With The Vibe; Work of Art, Burna Boy's Outside and Davido's Timeless have produced this kind of reality in the past 7 years in Afrobeats. No single skip!
1. From the angle of critics who hold lyricism against Morayo, I will make this argument about diction, because whatever you think you understand about lyricism cannot be isolated from the said language the writing is delivered in. Now, compared to what Afrobeats has always been and the standard Wizkid has maintained in the last 7 years; is Morayo lyrically befitting of accolades? Yes! How? The choice of words! Every songwriter on the project (read "lyricist" and not "melodist") ensured the intention of the artist is properly communicated without verbosity or hyperbole.
Where Wizkid discusses losses, the choice of words is a cliche "pain". Where he reflects on life and tries to escape its harsh realities, the choice of words is "flex, vibe; cruise". These are the major highlights of the album, thematically — a sense of loss (Troubled Mind, Lose & Pray) which occasions meditation (Don't Care), escapism (Kese [note the use of 'marijvana' and 'cana' for escapism on this song & Troubled Mind]), and a reflective mind on growth, blessings and the past (A Million Blessings).
Wizkid literally quotes a Yoruba proverb on Pray; "àìgbófá là n wòkè," apprising the likes of him in the audience of his attachment to the ancestry. "You are just like me," He had earlier said on A Million Blessings, a song that very much feels like 'Superstar' Wizkid. Every opportunity he gets, away from the mandatory RnB edge of the album, he takes us back to 2011 with his struggle stories. Same reality some of us experience currently, giving us hope on Lose. Isn't this the same thing that attracted Drake and the whole world on Ojuelegba in mid-2010? This is the most realistic album from Wizkid since Superstar & Ayo.
Lyricism must be your ability to use any language you choose, to communicate your intentions to your audience. Whether you choose to make it verbose like a Soyinka, archaic like a Shakespeare or simple like a primary school English textbook determines nothing. It only selects audience and IQ. Failure to understand this as well as the theme of this project means you, who cry that the album is out of sync with the theme it proposed via the deceased's name inscribed on it, did not attempt enough comprehension exercises back in High School English Language classes. It's that evident!
2. Dunking on Morayo on the pretext that it doesn't highlight the realities of Nigerians under the current system is unreasonable. That submission is laughable as well. Firstly, "no be say I never suffer for this country," — if you had listened carefully to this album, you would have heard that on Pray, the last track. Secondly, John Legend is an RnB musician in the US. Bruno Mars is equally a pop singer. Lewis Capaldi too. Lukas Graham too. Late Avicii from Sweden too. Go to the discography of each of these artists I mentioned and tell me anywhere you have ever heard them include activism in their music. You do not understand that regardless of how beasty you are as a musician, you will always be 'niched' 90% of the time. You have your territories. Regardless of where you sail, you always find yourself sailing back to the familiar waters.
Fela, as much as he fought for the people through his music, was VERY "niched" too. If Fela would not be allowed to sing for the course of activism, Fela would never sing anything else people like you would have demanded of him were he still living. No artist dead or alive can fight any government. Fighting the government is a collective job of the people. If the masses are too docile to fight for their rights, then no one should expect any artist to shoulder the responsibilities of 200 million docile people on his back. Davido was abroad days ago to talk about how the economy is in shambles, many Nigerians back home lashed out at him because their sh!tty brains interpreted that truth as "demarketing" Nigeria.
What Nigerians mostly look for are sacrificial lambs. You who have no money to buy two cups of rice and an artist who has the money to buy a full truck of rice, who should be on the street or TV troubling the government? "No be say I never suffer for this country/At the same time, sapa no fit touch me." Same thing Portable said when asked why he doesn't protest. Na we dey suffer, no be them. So na we suppose protest, no be them. We wey dey suffer no do anything, na them wey suffer no fit touch wan protest? You people are not serious. If na struggle music dey hungry you, you better go stream Fela. Una love struggle music, yet no single Fela song get 50 million streams online. Burna Boy wey bin dey sing about una problem, weytin una do am last last? Wizkid no put anything for the album to represent rural folks. Maybe make rural folks sef sponsor one upcoming musician for their community enter studio sing about Fire Lord Tinubu. At least, that should settle this wahala.
It's like telling John Grisham, a crime writer, to write on science fiction. Maybe he can write perfectly on it. Maybe not. Does it make him less of a writer? If sci-fi is what you crave, why don't you explore other writers of that genre of fiction? Why force a horse to embody the pace of a snail in your bid to make it prove it is a living thing? Why demand Amala from a bakery because, after all, a bakery produces food, so it must produce any type of food you want? When will you people leave Afrobeats artists the fkkk alone and go listen to something else that whets all the insatiable appetite you express in the wrong places?
3. I read somewhere that the album should have been made to have a side A and side B instead of lumping both the foreign Wizkid with the inbuilt Wizkid. I laughed! Hey! This is not an Apala radio cassette tape. It is neither Fuji. Safe for cases where such intentions were necessary as seen on Brymo's all English 'Harmattan & Winter' and its side A, all Yoruba 'Esan'; I'm not sure any Nigerian album of modern music has ever been commercially successful on that note. Not Peruzzi's Rum & Boogie with two sides. What I know Wizkid did on this album was to correct the mistakes he made twice in the last couple of years.
Firstly on MLLE where his thoughtless rigidity made him abandon the core recipe in our music to dish out a pack of boring music begging for saving. Worse still, mixing that boredom with House Music and everything there is on Soundman Vol. 2 which originally started around 2018 as a proper Afrobeats project accompanied by the finesse of saxophone in the hands of Black Jerzee. He did realize this error and refused to commit it the third time by simply allowing these two sounds (both his original sound and the new wave where he hopes to struggle it out with the actual inhabitants of the territories he is sailing on) to enjoy an unchallenged autonomy that doesn't infringe on the musicality and expressiveness of each. To demand for a side A and side B for this project is to:
(a) Make it unnecessarily incoherent, making it "feel" long and lazy.
(b) Cause an unbearable boredom. Cause, I will listen to Kese, Karamo, Soji, Pray and Bad Girl on one side and go down to Slow, Bad For You, Break Me Down and Time? And you believe I will not get bored? The music is not boring because of how both "paces" were interwoven on the tracklist.
4. The side with the RnB sounds will need only a miracle to be independently successful. With them in-between the others, it makes the album whole. Hence, any success brought by any other track is seen as a collective achievement by the album. Brymo's Esan being separated from Harmattan & Winter is why the latter is nowhere to be found in his popular projects online. All the success of the project came through Esan and because Harmattan & Winter was isolated, it couldn't share from that success.
(a) Check the diagram attached to this post, the album began at mid-tempo and immediately shoots up to uptempo from Troubled Mind down to Karamo (1-3) and back to mid-tempo on Bad Girl. Note that the sound Wizkid explored throughout 2021, 2022 and 2023 did not get on the album until track 5 (Time). That shows Wizkid knows how nostalgic Nigerians can be when it comes to sound. He did not plan to bore anyone on this album.
(b) The slowness Time introduces is maintained till Break Me Down (track 7) after which Bend sets in with the pace the album originally began with on track 2. You wonder why Bend is in-between 3 slow songs to the left and another 3 slow songs to the right? It's because Bend is the climax of the album. The middle! This arrangement alone is genius. Wizkid should handsomely reward the A&R team that arranged this album. They did excellently well. After Bend, what we have is one slow song, one fast song in that sequence competing for the listener's attention till the album eventually grinds to a halt. This is the most lively Wizkid album since 2014. This is art! And this will age well.
5. My prediction is, Morayo will mark another significant shift in the soundscape in the next 5 years of Afrobeats as a sound. Please watch the albums that will be rolled out starting from 2025. You will see Wizkid's impact. Just as Asake's sound has been in every other artist's art between 2021 and 2023. Please observe. Morayo is a pop culture! I'm not done with Morayo by the way, I'll see you on the next post.
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