By Henry Igwe
January 2014 ushered Simi, a young, petite, cosmic-sized talent, into my playlist. At the risk of being comparative, I think Asa may have found new competition.
It took eight days for me to get around to listening to the RESTLESS EP that had had the Nigerian Twittersphere afire for a minute. It was well worth the listen. It had me on some soliloquy trip as I began to ask myself: ‘Who is this lady? How did she come up with this combination? Where did she get her abilities — the blood?’
On ‘Why You Forget’, she goes hard but her singing doesn’t quite match the heights of the song. Still, the mojo doesn’t die.
In a genre-bending move, she plunges into some new high with ‘Range Rover‘, a song highly suggestive of the Marley-type vibe. She waltzes on the piece, spewing some reggae-induced lines as she reworks Rihanna’s ‘Man Down’. The seamless infusion of Nigerian lingo here and there works well; it enters almost unnoticed and unexpected, something like Santa in February. She goes: ‘…don’t mean to hurt you now/but me I gats to break am down/dunno what you are thinking, you wey you be Pikin/me wey I be queen of the town…’, delivering what is perhaps her best effort at versatility all EP-long. And she doesn’t go wrong, for as chimerical as waiting for Dangote’s son is, Simi gets away with building her story on fresh energy.
Gather the chills of a foggy harmattan morning in December in your lab and you won’t get a cooler feel than ‘Not Okay’. Well, except your thermometer is broken or something. It’s that much a sick song. Her character is building bridges with a lover and there’s a degree of urgency when she goes: ‘e be like fire wey dey blaze, no water wey go kill the flame/I done try, I done try, it just wouldn’t die….’ It’s a song replete with emotional anxieties, love and plea. It creates something pleasing to the senses; moving slowly but purposefully — it is easily my best off the project.
Simi is good, so good I would hand her a record deal if it were within my means.
She goes the whole nine yards: her singing is top-notch as is the production of the EP. The rehashing of hit sounds plus her lyrics earn the entire EP an adaptive ease — it grows on you almost from first listen. This adaptive ease staves imbalance, bringing structure to the music like a skilled bass player, and allowing Simi and the music swap between lead and rhythm.
