Music can be used to mark moments in popular culture and musicians can allow themselves to be used as markers. In the last few years, social media has become an integral part of popular culture but the staying power of the individual networks themselves is very unpredictable. When a social network loses its cool factor, it doesn’t die a slow, melodramatic death like you see in Hollywood movies, its death is more reminiscent of an Ebola victim’s, and its outdated remains are treated the same way. Cool kids don’t touch obsolete social networks such as Hi5, MySpace and Naija Pals with a 10 foot pole and double gloves.

You’d think that that alone would be a strong deterrent for artists who try to ride the wave of a new social network, but not everyone making music today cares about the suitability of their records x years from now. So those artists inevitably accept the short shelf life that those records might come with.

There are 2 types of social media records –

  1. Songs like Naeto’s “Facebook” and “SnapChat” by MC Galaxy and Kid Connect, records that pick a social network and make it their central theme. You can add Fat Joe’s ill advised “Instagram that hoe” to this group
  2. Songs like Lynxxx’ “Ping!”, Essence’s “Facebook Love” and 2 Face’s “#Aproko” that use terms from a social network but the social network itself isn’t the central theme. You can also add Yo Gotti’s smash “Down in the DM” to this group.

I remember when I reviewed 2 Face’s Ascension album in 2014, I thought “#Aproko” lacked the subtlety required to catch on with the young crowd that it was so brazenly trying to appeal to. I was given dog’s abuse from his fans, especially the older ones, for saying it at the time but I believe history proved me right. Ironically, among the two types of social media records, history also tells us that the more successful types are “#Aproko” and “Facebook Love”, the latter group.

I would argue that the main reason why it’s that way is the opportunity for a more complex song to be made – the songwriter is not confined to one theme and can introduce a sub-theme and multiple layers to the record. On “#Aproko” it was online commenters and naysayers and on “Facebook Love”, it was the highs and lows of being in a long distant relationship. In contrast, songs like “Facebook” and “SnapChat” are often just a bunch of unimaginative lines that are forced to fit one narrow title. Thankfully, the public can tell when you’re forcing things, the Nigerian listener isn’t always as simple minded as they make us out to be.    

There’s nothing wrong with trying to use music to mark trends; social media records are trendy records, like records about a new dance craze or records about a new street slang. But unlike those records, the concept of a social media record is so corny and predictable that it is almost always a bad idea. History tells us that the vast majority of these songs will fail to connect with their intended young audience. An audience that is perpetually on to the next thing, and does not need a soundtrack to their social media experience as badly as some of their favorite artists think they do.