8 months after delivering Ubi Franklin punch one out of the two-punch combo that rocked his personal and professional life last year, Iyanya is back.
The Made Men made music history and had an amazing run but of late, Iyanya has lost his top dog status not only in Nigerian music but even on the label he helped build. Now signed to Mavin Records, and being managed by Temple, there’s no telling what the future holds for him.
But Iyanya has been here before and he made a full rebound. After his critically-acclaimed but commercially so-so debut album My Story came and went in 2009, he was seen as a waste of MTN’s promo naira and was counted out. But D’Tunes came in and helped to deliver a slew of hit songs – “Kukere”, “Ur Waist”, “ Sexy Mama” – that turned the singer’s career around. This time however, he doesn’t need a slew, Iyanya is one hit song away from getting back in the A-list, in my estimation. That hit song has just eluded him for the last few years.
At Mavin, the singer now has producers at his beck and call who know a thing or 3 about hit songs. All of them, Don Jazzy and his lieutenants Altims and Baby Fresh, get involved on this EP but it doesn’t feel like either one is actively chasing a smash hit, perhaps this is the tee up for an official album full of them. Even the Jazzy-produced lead single “Up 2 Something”, at its core, is a precursor to something coming ahead and when listened to with the rest of the project, fits right in.
The emphasis for now seems to be on reintroducing Iyanya by producing an enjoyable, cohesive listen, which – for an artist whose last 2 projects felt like a mashup of his best singles at a particular time – is a significant departure.
There’s an underlying consistency to all 8 songs on this EP. There are records that stand out as potential hit singles – the highlife-tinged “Baby Answer” being one – but cohesion isn’t sacrificed in order to force them in. The aforementioned “Baby Answer” doubles as a a club song and a sweet appreciation for the special woman in Iyanya’s life. The song was co-written by Cupastonce, Mavin’s in-house songwriter and was produced by Baby Fresh.
They all did a splendid job but you will be hard-pressed to find a club-friendly, Afropop song this year that’s as carefully put together as “Bow For You”. Iyanya handles the writing for this one by himself. Again, Baby Fresh provides the kind of mid-tempo, percussive beat that the Kukere Master thrives on. He masterfully flips a popular slang into another dedication to his queen, and elevates his words for her from appreciation to near-worship.
I bow for you, I bow for you
If only you ‘gree to be my queen
Baby girl, I’ll bow for you
The record was purpose-built for Iyanya’s trademark pelvic thrust on stage. Even though he is facing uncertain times, there’s still no one better at activating the imagination of Nigerian women through the power of music and marketing sex to them. No one.
Sometimes, Iyanya is coy and clever, like on the part-R&B, part-Afropop record “Hold On”, where he utilizes innuendos to deliver a powerful message to encourage young women not to rush into relationships. But at other times, he just puts it square in their face like a bad pimple. Like on the slow-burning “Nobody Has To Know” where he starts off sounding whispery and provocative, like a young Barry White, before going into very graphic detail about his sexual desires for his woman and disclosing an even greater desire to keep things private.
For all his popularity and his status as a sex icon, Iyanya keeps his own personal life low key. Ghanaian actress Yvonne Nelson is one of a handful women that the singer has been romantically linked with. That backdrop would make “Odo Ye Wo” (Twi for my love) more salacious for gossip blogs who still link the two often but there’s no there there for me. The energetic record instead feels like a continuation of Iyanya’s experimentation from Applaudise to see how many African languages he can express love in – after all it isn’t only Nigerian women who find his music enchanting.
Another part of his life that Iyanya seldom sings about is his family. The singer has experienced tremendous lose in his personal life, having lost both parents and his brother within a short space of time. He addresses some of that pain on the Signature EP. I’ve always felt like in the long run, the most loved singers are the ones who are able to invite listeners into their personal space once in a while to share their pain as well as their joy. “Not Forgotten” is a touching dedication to the singer’s mum and a dear friend he lost. It’s a tearjerker. The song was wrapped up by the first Poe verse of the Mavin era and had an awkwardly-placed sample from J. Holiday’s “Bed” in between.
Altims produced the slower, more musical songs on this project, such as “Not Forgotten” and “Nobody Has to Know”. They’re the kind of bluesy numbers that might become more frequent in Iyanya’s catalog as the one-time R&B singer retraces his musical steps. Although, with that said, Iyanya’s last few singles before joining Mavin (produced by the talented producer Mystro) were already headed in that direction.
As he transitions through another uncertain time in his career, where sex appeal is no longer a sure-banker and hit songs are hard to come by, Signature is a reminder of how the supremely talented Iyanya is much more than those things he himself gave too much importance.