Dissecting Black Tribe’s Third Album

By Chiagoziem Onyekwena

While most crews who started their careers around the same time as the Tribe have either disintegrated or floated away into oblivion, Abdul and Daniel  (Abdumalik Usman and Daniel Nwankwo) have silently gone about building a credible career and amassing a loyal fan base in Lagos and environs over the years. Still yet to live up to their immense promise however, and over ten years since they first started making music as a three man crew in FESTAC, Black Tribe are back with their third album Addicted.

 Having found their greatest chart success crafting club bangers with more of a pop-feel, it comes as no surprise that on Addicted, the duo try to recreate dance floor magic with the up-tempo Won Da Lee. Long-time friend and collaborator 2Face Idibia provides a typically infectious hook, Abdul plays back up with some smooth singing, while Danny stamps the single with his trademark humorous, albeit slightly shallow, sixteen bars. It’s unlikely that the J. Sleek-produced Won Da Lee would match the success of the OJB-produced hits Bone Dat Thing and You Are the One, but it’s a decent effort nonetheless. Next up, the Tribe call on every weed man’s dream customer, Timaya, to pass some of his success, no pun intended, and push Ganja to smoker’s anthem status. But you really don’t need to listen to a second of it though; you could easily predict exactly what the song would sound like just by glancing at the title alone. The same thing goes for probably the most (ab)used song title in Nigerian music, the outro-ish Story. Both songs are painfully unimaginative and only skip-worthy.

 Addicted is the first album in the Black Tribe catalog to come without any production from former label head Nelson Brown. In his place, Black Tribe cast their net wide and dragged in new producers K.Solo, Dokta Frabz, Spankie and Jiggy Jeg and an old friend in veteran OJB Jezreel. While this is no indictment on the abilities of the boardsmiths, unfortunately for Black Tribe, the lack of chemistry is glaring. It just seems as though in general the quality of the group’s music has been on the downward spiral since their almost flawless but overlooked debut Past and Present came out in 2004, and they’ve decided to leave it that way. To their credit though buried among some truly forgettable music, are really exciting efforts I like Am and the engaging Addicted; while the laid-back Searching is a successful foray into reggae. That said the album as a whole just doesn’t prod you enough to hit the rewind button, the music is unremarkable and if anything the duo has dangerously slipped into cruise-control mode.

 By now, we should all know what to expect from Black Tribe: decent love songs, average pidgin lyrics and a bouncy production to back it up; they’ll give you exactly what you bargained for but don’t expect them to give you any spare change.

Don’t get me wrong though, Addicted wasn’t a step in the wrong direction, it just wasn’t any step in any direction at all.

ALBUM RATING – 2/5