Of late, D’banj hasn’t been able to do music half as well as he has done it big.
DB Records promoted the heck out of “Bother you” and “On top of the world” but in truth, the label would have been better off spending some of that marketing naira on a good vocal coach and better songwriting for both songs. “Oliver Twist” peaked at number 9 on the UK charts in 2012 without a feature, neither appearances from Akon nor an extremely rare verse from Idris Elba could get any of D’banj’s follow-up singles to well, follow up.
Then there’s the curious decision to sign the enigmatic Nollywood actress Tonto Dikeh, presumably for the shock value. But then there’s the even more curious decision to allow the window of interest in her short but eventful music career to close up without taking full advantage.
Speed and scale over direction and skill.
Scale heightens expectations and every time D’banj has fallen short of them, the reaction has been vicious. That’s fair or at least it would have been if he got an equally vigorous response when those expectations are met or exceeded. Instead, it seems like D’banj’s failures are screamed out from the highest rooftops while his successes are merely whispered.
One of such successes is his latest single “Emergency”, arguably the singer’s strongest record since “Oliver Twist” and on course to become one of his most impactful. The single cracked the Playdata top 10 singles charts, peaking at number 3, while the video for the song racked almost half a million YouTube views in one month and is already the fifth most viewed music video of the Koko master’s post-Mo hits career.
It’s been slow, it’s been painful but the goodwill is clearly returning but is it too little too late?
It is getting increasingly obvious that D’Banj’s core audience isn’t as young as it used to be. Kokolets of 05/06 are now second and third time mothers and 2010’s Miss Endowed is being asked some serious questions by gravity. You don’t get the sense that age has made D’banj’s female fans turn off their sexy all together but you do get the sense that they no longer look to the Koko master like they used to to turn it on. There are younger, fitter, more mobile singers competing for their attention and most importantly, these singers have current hit records.
That’s the danger with building the foundation of a long-term career with more trendy qualities such as pop songs, street slang and a super-sexualized image. It’s easier for your core to shift when there is a pause in the supply chain because these aren’t qualities that are exclusive to any one artiste.
If they are lucky, sex icons could have separate peaks for their icon status and their musicianship. Iyanya, for instance, may have peaked musically but until he finally finds a shirt that is his size or catches arthritis at the hips, he is sure to be around for a while. D’Banj, on the other hand, might still have a lot of music to offer but it is getting harder and harder to hear it when the microphone is still around his crotch but the actual music isn’t hitting the right spots. That level of sexual aggression is more easily reciprocated by a younger audience.
The question is – how does D’banj continue to appeal to this audience that is getting younger and younger as he himself gets closer to 40?
It would be disingenuous however to say that all D’banj fans sit down to pee and that all his music caters to them specifically. In the drought years especially, there has been an actual attempt to appeal to a broader base. For one, he has a shown an increased tendency to collaborate with other artistes on big singles and potentially tap into new fan bases. This hasn’t always been the case.
There’s also far more D’Banj music in circulation at the same time than there was at most times in the regimented Mo-hits era. This presents the listener with more opportunities to find music that they actually like and not what the record label think they might.
Then there’s the greater experimentation within the music, D’banj has finally taken the “singer” part of his job description seriously and tries to fit his music into global formats such as electronic and house. The commercially overlooked “An Epic Journey” typifies this pivot and DB Records must now hope that all the attention generated by “Emergency” will allow people listen to the EP retrospectively and build anticipation for his first official album in 8 years.
Sean Carter once said “first they love you, then they hate you, then love you again… it’s the gift and the curse.” A career in music can be cyclical, especially the long ones and the greatest artistes with the longest careers have a way to keep up even when they themselves aren’t.
If he’s going to complete this upward cycle, D’banj would have to prove his greatness to a new set of listeners who doubt it and give greater comfort to an older set who just want to be reassured that it’s still there.