There’s nothing quite as humbling as falling sick, it’s one of those great equalizers in life, you don’t have to be powerless to be overpowered by illness or be penniless before you’re unable to treat it. A billionaire like Steve Jobs who changed the world could get cancer just like the rest of us who are just happy to live in it.

It’s the same thing for the most powerful of politicians, you can win as many elections as you want in your lifetime or be as popular as Barack Obama was when he left office but when poor health is at your door in your villa, those votes, that power, that authority, that popularity, all that won’t matter anymore.

Rapper A-Q touched on President Buhari’s health issues this week, among other current events, on his new song “My President is Sick”. It was a remarkable moment but A-Q isn’t the first rapper to use a president’s state of health as a reference point to make a larger point. Almost 7 years ago, when Pres. Umar Yar’Adua was still alive but battling kidney disease, Jesse Jagz released “Jargo” off his debut album Jag of All Trades and changed the game.

“Jargo” featured Jesse’s alter-ego ‘Jago’ and it contained not only one of the most poignant lines in Nigerian rap history but also one of the most daring:

His flyness, highness is so evident

My flow’s sicker than my president

I insist I’m the one needing that dialysis

Just give me that cannabis

The play on words is slick – Jagz boasts about his superior rap skills, he tells us that he’s sick with it. He then likens his sickness on the microphone to Pres. Yar’Adua’s well-documented kidney issues. The President might have needed dialysis for his ailment but Jagz needs a different type of treatment, being that cannabis is a drug itself, just pass it to him for now, that’ll do nicely – thank you.

The internet never forgets, when the same calamity that befell our past president visited our current one, this line from “Jargo” was dug out of the archives in an unfortunate case of presidential déjà vu .

 

Here’s to hoping that Pres. Buhari banishes the ghost of Katsina president’s past and makes a full recovery, but this is yet another example of the potency of hip-hop as a marker of time.

Meanwhile, if you’re like us, and you’ve been starved of new music by Jesse Jagz especially since he delayed his new project Odysseus, the rapper will be performing today at the Jameson Connects Nigeria alongside Falana and Ajebutter22. You can register here. If, however, you’re unable to make the live show, you can still catch it on the radio, Jagz put the details on his IG below:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BQ2xyLlgy6x/?taken-by=jessejagz&hl=en

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