If you didn’t already know that the Soundcity MVP award show was held on Saturday, the 11th of January, then you probably live under a rock. On a more serious note, the event that had been talked about for most of the new year finally happened and it was anything but exciting.
The MVPs were no different than other award shows in the country who start their events hours later than the publicised time. The show scheduled to start at 10 pm, did not begin until after 12 am and it’s safe to say that the audience was already over the show. In case you doubt that all you have to do is watch a clip from the internet and you’ll see how dull the crowd was.
The choice for a host this year was a miss. While South Africa’s Bonang Matheba is highly talented and very beautiful, she may have been paired with the wrong crowd. At the very least, she should have been paired with a Nigerian host like Basketmouth or IK Osakioduwa. Her impact at the show was barely felt and she just did not connect with the audience. The only times are presence was fully acknowledged by the audience was after both of her costume changes.
They should have also paid attention to the length and difficulty of the speeches before every award presentation and carefully paired each presenter with these award categories. At the very least, during rehearsals for the show, they should have realised the errors of their ways and switched the presenters of certain awards. However, this little issue in the pairing of presenters, made talented actress, Mercy Aigbe, a source of laughter (and not in a good way) for the audience. When she was to present the ‘recognition’ awards, she kept making pronunciation errors and the audience was hell-bent on not overlooking those errors. The actress subsequently refused to continue with the presentations and left her partner, Honourable Akin Alabi to finish presenting the awards in that category.
Perhaps, the best presentation and one of the nicest moments of the night, was award-winning comedian, Basketmouth presenting the award for ‘Best Collaboration’. In his very hilarious manner, Basketmouth had the crowd cracking up. He brought some much-needed humour to the show and for that, we were grateful!
The performances of the night were also very memorable and note-worthy. A personal favourite is Tanzania’s Diamond Platnumz’s energetic performance of his hit songs. Other performers like Tiwa Savage, Davido, Tekno, Ghana’s Stonebwoy and Kuami Eugene also had amazing performances.
The ‘blaze of glory’ performances at the beginning of the show were also very fun to watch. However, Rema, who had been listed as one of the performers of the night was around for the show but missed his cue. He only got on stage a few minutes before his second song for the night ended. Other performers billed to perform during the ‘blaze of glory’ were present though. The performers included Joeboy, Oxlade, T-Classic, Q-Dot, Skiibii, Ghana’s Kwesi Arthur, Uganda’s Big Tril, and London’s Ms Banks.
The award show lasted for about four long hours with barely any laughter, long speeches and absentee winners. There have been more fun and interesting Soundcity MVP award shows and I was looking forward to one of those shows but this year fell short of expectations. Hopefully, when the award show returns next year, they’ll figure out other ways to make the event more fun, shorter and enjoyable!