On some of his songs, Reekado is sounding like WizkidTop positions in Yoruba music influenced pop are taken.
Wande Coal brought the sub-genre to the Nigerian audience.
Wizkid took it to Africa and, slowly, beyond the continent. Everyone else is condemned to working on a smaller scale.
The folks who want to do something else have to ransack genres other than fuji and juju. Prime example is
Terry Apala, who is doing new things with apala.
Adekunle Gold is perpetuating the tradition without overt nods to pop commercialism.
Orezi who is like the two W-men, as I wrote months back, is still not as popular as his hit songs.
With
Reekado Banks being an even more clearer copy of Wande and Wizkid, it seemed certain that a body of work might be an issue. And so it is on his debut album
Spotlight. On some songs, he sounds like Wizkid. But the real Wizkid still is making music so we don’t miss him.
What Reekado has going is the might, musical and practical, of
Don Jazzy. But these days, the producer doesn’t have so much time to expend on his younger recruits.
I’m not sure if this is a question of time or if it’s merely how the big-time producer sees his younger stars. Think about how
Iyanya got production work from Don Jazzy himself on his first Mavin song plus vocals by the man. You could say that is about the grand occasion of the Iyanya-Mavin partnership.
Minus bonus tracks, Spotlight has 18 songs; Don Jazzy receives production credit on five songs. And none of those productions is on the level of Ms Savage’s excellent ‘If I Start to Talk’.
Of those five songs on Spotlight, ‘Na Ur Boy’ has the most engaging beat. The rest aren’t awful even if you’ve heard better from Don Jazzy. They need a special songwriting talent to elevate them beyond passable pop. Reekado Banks doesn’t supply the goods in that regard.
Baby Fresh‘s work on ‘All Your Love’ is quite a tune. A few parties will groove to it. Yet it turns out that the album’s most misguided song, ‘Change’, is produced by Don Jazzy himself. The song wants to be political in the mould of
Fela by using horns and riding on
President Buhari‘s campaign mantra. It ends up very bad:
‘Dem no wan spend/But dem want get change, abi?’ he asks.
Wizkid and Reekado BanksIt’s half-clever and Reekado appears to be absolving the Nigerian government of responsibility and blaming the citizens only. But of course, pilfering from Fela is now routine—even for artists who can’t tell what he stood for.
Vocally, Reekado is inferior to Wizkid and Wande Coal, the people he calls to mind. And crucially this album is inferior to his own previous singles. So that it’s hard to listen to
Spotlight and not think about that Next Rated award he won on the first day of this year. As everyone knows his major rivals were
Lil Kesh and
Kiss Daniel, whose
New Era debut album I’ve reviewed here.
Awards are fallible and Reekado did win fair and square since it was via votes. However, if the category were judged much later, one has to think the trophy would have nestled in the palms of another artiste. As for which artiste that may have been, your guess is as good as mine.
Title :
What has Don Jazzy done with Reekado Banks’ ‘Spotlight’?
Description : While Reekado Banks seems like an even clearer copy of Wande and Wizkid, his first body of work has a major issue. On some of his songs, Ree...
Rating :
5
