The Nigerian music industry has entered a new era. In this era, the audience are deeply interested in the psycho-social effect of the lyrics they hear, both on them, their wards and the society at large. This is a good thing. In the past, musicians were held to god status. Now, there is a thing as cancel. By cancelling an artist, audience are taking active effort to boycott the artist’s work. However, this can be counterintuitive, especially as this phenomenon is still in its nascent stage in the industry: and as a case in point, the premise for holding artists accountable can be obtuse, sometimes. “Logo Benz”, a new song by Lil Kesh and Olamide is one of those cases where the urge to hold musicians accountable has led to rash judgments at a mass scale.

Olamide, a familiar culprit, has documented social vices many times than any other of his contemporaries. His music is street music; the key characteristics of the street is the presence of vices. “Logo Benz” is the second time in 2018 Olamide would be caught in the middle of public ire. The first was his largely misunderstood lyrics on “Science Students”. Before that time also, his lyrics from as far back as 2014 were accused of glorifying sexual violence and other unsavoury things. While his earlier works such as “Story for the gods” and “Owotabua” did glorify something, “Logo Benz” did not fall in that category. Instead, it is more of a role play, common among so-called street artists. The misunderstanding of this role play therefore cannot be tied to the mainstream audience, who are mostly unfamiliar with the kind of directness in the lyrics of “Logo Benz”.

“Logo Benz” is a vivid journey into the state of mind of most young people in the South West of Nigeria. Lil Kesh and Olamide are both masters at telling such kind of stories. They grab audience by the hands and lead them through the crevices of vices in a cinematic way. A shortcoming of the artists’ approach to telling stories is that at the end, they leave the audience hanging: they don’t tell you what to do with what you have heard. Unfortunately, the mainstream audience favour absolute clarity. Even after the clarity, they still want to be told what next to do. Falz’s “Child of the World” took this approach in its delivery and it ended up taking away from its genuineness.

Listening to Lil Kesh or Olamide sing about vices, you immediately feel tainted, because the lyrics put you through more than you can stomach. But this is not so for their true target audience, street people who have probably seen more than the artists are describing in their songs.

In the opening lines of “Logo Benz”, Lil Kesh borrows heavily from the familiar message at public spaces: “cars parked at owner’s risk”. This time he warns “sa your pata at owner’s risk, won n ka pata o, won  n ka pata o!”, a thing meaning “hang or dry your pant at owner’s risk. They’re stealing pants, they’re stealing pants”. A few weeks before the release of this song, a few popular Twitter accounts were warning young ladies in the same exact way this song now does.

The conflicting part of this song is Olamide’s chorus where he says he would consider blood money if money does not come. “I dey pray to Jesu, ko wo wole o. If money no enter I go do blood money o.” Lil Kesh then accentuates it, singing “pata ni logo Benz”.

To be fair, the artists are rather altruistic with the lyrics than anything else. If anything, “Logo Benz” creates a picture of the breakdown of hope in the country. Young men are desperate than never before and when they see a lady, they do not see sex appeal as before; they see the key to their Mercedes Benz. And it is more worrisome that they do not see it in legitimate means of income.

In the early days of December, a leading tech professional tweeted that people in tech should “ball more” in 2019 to show others that they can do legit work and enjoy life too. Another leading sales professional, Ronald Nzimora has been providing business tips on his timeline to help people start up a profitable business. In one of his tweets, he wrote that ₦50m was small money, provided people change their mindset and do legit, profitable things. His statement was not well-received by people who deemed it impossible except through fraudulent means. This type of mindset is what “Logo Benz” put into public attention.

So, if you are not going to publicly condemn rituals and fraud, why talk about it? Well, a musician can choose to just inform, the way Lil Kesh and Olamide have decided on “Logo Benz”, and they can also decide to condemn in the strongest of terms.

Telling It As It Is

It is easy for songs to be misconstrued as glorifying a vice. It just needs to connect with the audience at just one level. This is why a song, which is as clean as Victor AD’s “Wetin We Gain” can be described as yahoo boys anthem. In the case of “Logo Benz” the common narrative against the song is “young children will hear it”, but this narrative does not hold water.

If the children heard the music will it have any effect? What is the effect on even adults? There is limited studies on how Nigerians react to lyrics by Nigerian artists and the effect on their daily lives. No one can conveniently say the society became big on fraud because, for example, Osuofia, a pop culture icon back in 2002 sang that he would “chop Oyinbo man” dollars. In the same vein, no one can say “Logo Benz” inspired them to go do rituals. Now, this is where talks of media theories come in.

Merely listening to “Logo Benz” is not sufficient enough to push the listener into crime. Instead, there are a lot of mediating factors which would come together for it to have any effect at all. The Reinforcement theory, which is a limited effect theory, exemplifies this. An audience is more likely to seek out information validating his own preconceived views. Where the individual finds contrary information to his, he moves on and continues his search for information matching his own. This theory may be more applicable to politics. But it is also helpful in understanding the possible range of effect “Logo Benz” may have.

The best thing about “Logo Benz” is the clarity of its narrations. Anyone can have an idea into how the average Nigerian youth mindset is during this harsh economics times.

Way back in 2006, the legendary eLDee released the song, “I’m Leaving”. “I’m leaving, I’m off to Yankee and I don’t know when I’d be back again” he raps on the song. Around the same time, an artist known as Bembe Aladisa released a song begging foreigners to give him visa because he was suffering too much in Nigeria. The song resonated Nigeria’s south west. While the songs are not the sole reason why Nigerians travelled illegally and legally out of the country, they sure provide clue as to why there was a mass desire to emigrate out of the country.

If you also want to understand how Nigerian men toasted women in the 90s, you also need to listen to Eedris Abdulkareem, then eLDee’s “African Chiquito”. These songs have unintentionally immortalised their area. This is what happens if artists are allowed to document reality.

In five years and above time, “Logo Benz” will be one of the go to songs for people who want to know why money ritual was a popular thing among youngsters. It will also help know how people from today spent the opportunistic wealth they came across.

Nigerian artists (and filmmakers), especially those from the streets, have done more to document everyday stories than the newspapers, bloggers, writers and any other person have done. It is in a disservice to the country to clampdown on artists making this kind of songs. These songs should rather be a reference point on the urgent need to solve societal ills. “Logo Benz” is a rallying call, except that the call to action is  demure.

—

The economic situation in the country has skewed the lens through which Nigerians understand things. In fact, reactions to things are more emotional than rational. If things were not already degenerating, it would be easier to understand things in balanced contexts. So, one can conveniently blame the shrinking mainstream for the tetchy reactions to “Logo Benz”. The streets did not encroach mainstream, instead the mainstream found street culture cool enough to embrace it, permitting a place for culture shock. Why, because mainstream artists have not done a good job at telling their own stories. For example, no one has released a song about the exodus of Nigerian doctors to Canada and the UAE; most are not talking of the economy and politics.

The street is relentless in telling its own stories.

The streets will continue to tell its own stories, unabashedly. It is this unabashed approach that has enabled street music crawl into the mainstream. Sadly, this will continue to be so as the mainstream continues to shrink largely due to economic reasons. And yes, more street stories will continue to be churned by its advocates.