By Ayeni Adekunle
I was standing at the lobby of Villa Picasso in Lagos, chatting with my expatriate friend on BBM while waiting for the elevator, when a diminutive bespectacled figure approached from behind, screaming ‘your BB or your life.’
‘Who says that in 2012?’ I thought, turning around to realize it was W4 playing a prank on me.
Okay, so you don’t know who or what W4 is? Shame on you. You don’t know W4, the Lagos singer who has gone all radical on us, harbouring the spirit and style of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, and delivering Afrobeat (and hard-ons) with such a pop feel you’ll scream in wonderment?
Calling himself Mr. Wonder, W4 is wearing pop overalls for afrobeat, taking the genre back into nightclubs and radio, and snatching a community of fans that could have been the exclusive preserve of Femi Kuti and his less gifted brother Seun. Interesting that it’ll take a Satellite Town boy to excel where the likes of Ayetoro, Dede, Kola Ogunkoya and Alariwo have failed. Even Seun, who’s a pop-star and hip-hop apostle at heart, has yet to have ANY influence on the ‘pop’ularization of Afrobeat culture as far as Nigeria is concerned.
It beats me how a non-Kuti, a non-musician, and a non-shrine alumnus would be the one spreading afrobeat-influenced pop music to fans across the country; how a W4 could be the one to succeed in bringing back Fela’s fashion and style, where a devout disciple like Dede had failed.
The last time I saw the silhouette of a penis, or hard-on, on any performing musician was on Fela Kuti. In an industry that has D’banj and Terry G and Timaya, I’d never have imagined it’d take W4 to bring ‘the P’ back. Performing that night at Villa Picasso, he made it so cool, he could have gone back to his room with 27 ladies.
That’s how Linda Ikeji the model, who, at one point, was mostly known for her controversial affair with Dan Foster, has become Nigeria’s number one blogger – the queen of celebrity news and gossip, at a time when Moji Danisa and Stella Dimoko-Korkus are still living. Ikeji, an on-off magazine publisher, has suddenly built Nigeria’s pre-eminent destination for celeb gist, right under the nose of those who are the ‘grand-godfathers’ of that industry. Who would have expected a retired model to beat City People and Encomium in the online space?
These things cannot definitely be explained. Actually, they can. By those who claim to be intellectuals; adept at understanding the instability and inconsistency of various life theories. You know, those people who, long before Obama became America’s president, understood why he was the man, even while everything – except technology and an amalgamation of brains – seemed to work against him.
You and I are certainly not ONE of those people, so, the wonders of W4 and LI cannot and therefore shall not be explained. Let’s simply agree that ‘wonders shall never end’; the same way Christians will confidently tell you ‘it is well’ when confronted with situations that clearly show that all is not well.
Look at Nollywood and Africa Magic. Now, how do you begin to explain that? Africa Magic, a bouquet of channels built majorly on content from Nollywood, dominates the entire DSTV platform, which has big players like Movie Magic, Discovery and Supersport? Come on!
Call me lazy, or intellectually challenged; but I choose to believe in wonder. These things happen, and just like ‘biri biri lo ju ‘n ri’mu (don’t worry about literal translations, it’s basically saying ‘abracadabra’), the more you try to understand these things, the less sense they make, and the more you fail at demystifying what should remain a mystery.
It’s like trying to understand why David Oyedepo slapped a church member; why Tee-Mac could come from nowhere with his recent vituperation or why Chris Oyakhilome‘s signature Jerry Curl is yet to go mainstream, while Jimmy JATT‘s snap backs which launched like a minute ago have already gone viral. Like trying to understand how Cossy Orjiakor‘s mind (and brain, if any) works…
Now that you ask, I actually think it’s really WONDERFUL that we (we=PDP) are able to make a shoeless, clueless gentleman deputy governor, governor, vice-president and later president in a system where Julius Agwu and Eyimofe Atake have thousands of shoes; where the likes of Utomi, Soyinka, and Buhari possess enough clues to last generations.
Some wonders are worth understudying and understanding though; just so we make sure they never happen again.
14 comments
“Wonders” indeed “shall never end”.
Kudos Kunle, a interesting read indeed!
It is well!!!
Interesting read indeed. You wrote like a philosopher, minus where you believed the mystifying phenomenon to be abacadabra(so to speak). Some call it luck too, and some favor. I call it fate. It was meant to be. Some people are predestined to be greater than other. C’est fini
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