Ask those who know, and they’ll tell you it’s foolhardy to change a winning formula. Once you identify what counts, just keep at it- that’s how companies replicate success. And it works for bands too! For years, it worked for Maintain.
That’s the same thing rave twins Peter and Paul Okoye used to their advantage. We all criticized their musical talents after they dropped their first album ‘Last Nite’ in the early 2000s. Seven, eight years after, they were still very much around, even after we’d predicted they were nothing but a flash in the pan. This was because they learnt to understand what counts. And they adhered to it.
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That’s why we bought millions of their second album. That’s why ‘bizzy body’ and ‘temptation’ were monster hits. That’s why their album, ‘game over’ sold over 2 million copies less than three months after its release. That’s why the unpardonably repetitive song ‘do me’ became more popular than ‘arise of compatriots’. That’s why they have stayed and will be here for a long time. Until the formula stops working, that is.
True, ‘game over’ is filled with P-square’s regular tricks: repetition, often meaningless poetry, interpolations, sampling and beats that get you off your seats. But, to be fair to the Anambra-born brothers, the album had a few cuts that passed the test. Try listening to the ballads ‘No one like you’, ‘Miss you die’ and ‘Ifunanya’.
Either you’re a fan or a critic.
This is certainly one album that was difficult to resist buying. It was even more difficult for one to get it out of their jukebox.