56. Morayo: Wizkid's Homecoming

A review of Wizkid's sixth album, Morayo

Death is the ultimate leveler. It reminds us of our humanity. Whether you are a global pop superstar living in London or a prehensile bus conductor working the Lagos Mainland route, one fateful day, you will receive news from home that something terrible has happened.

On August 18, 2023, this happened to Wizkid. His mother, Mrs Jane Morayo Balogun, passed away at age 65. No one is joyous when a parent becomes an ancestor, but we know this would happen. When it occurs among the Yoruba, the ancestor’s life is celebrated. The Yoruba highlight this type of celebration with music and dance. It was the same for Wizkid’s mother. Her funeral ceremony was the talk of the town and blogs. The internet was awash with pictures and video snippets. Wizkid was the star celebrant of his mother’s life in public and in private; he worked through his grief in the best way: he made music. More on this soon, but first, let us do some digging.

Surulere is about five kilometres from Yaba, where Sunny Ade’s Ariya Nightclub throbbed as a major hub of nocturnal mirth and music until it shuttered its doors in the early 2000s. Surulere, a centre of Lagos cultural life, is also home to Nigeria’s National Stadium, highlife musician, and impresario Victor Olaiya’s Stadium Hotel, a favourite stomping ground for music lovers in the 70s.

Ayodeji Ibrahim Balogun, better known as Wizkid, was born in Surulere in 1990 to a polygamous father and Christian mother in an interfaith household. A precocious teenager with an inexplicable love for music, he hung around the late music producer OJB Jezreel's studio. By his own account, Wizkid watched OJB record iconic albums, including 2Face Idibia’s sophomore album Grass to Grace (released in 2006).

Wizkid’s journey into the limelight began with a feature on rapper MI Abaga’s 2008 album, Let’s Talk About It, a song about fair-weather friends. Wizkid sang the chorus of ‘Fast Money Fast Cars’ with his high-pitched tenor, a feat he performed offhandedly in a matter of minutes as a favour to MI Abaga. Although Wizkid began his musical journey as a rapper, he soon pivoted into his true superpower, singing, a transformation that was not entirely new since the American Hip-Hop artist T-Pain did this first. Wizkid was signed to Empire Mates Entertainment (EME) Records, an outfit led by American returnee Bankole Wellington.

In 2011, Wizkid released his 17-track debut, Superstar, an iconic album. It was a watershed moment in Afrobeats. It heralded the arrival of a new guard of Afrobeats artistes that I call the class of 2012, headlined by a quintet of musicians: Olamide Baddo, Davido, Tiwa Savage, and Burna Boy.

Superstar sold the boyish charm of Wizkid to court a younger generation, a crucial way Afrobeats continues to perpetuate itself. Wizkid sounded like what the average Nigerian teenager wanted to sound like—and he was particularly popular with the ladies. His musical style fused dancehall and R&B with an Afrocentric ethos, a template borrowed from older musician Wande Coal, whose debut album appeared two years before Wizkid’s. Wizkid occasionally courts local genres, such as Juju, Fuji, Highlife, and Afrobeat. He even attempted praise-singing on the occasional song like ‘Pakuromo’ replete with a music video set in a sprawling Owambe party (where Tiwa Savage first made her video vixen debut for Wizkid; her second was in the sultry music video, ‘Fever’)

Highlife and Afrobeat would feature more prominently on his self-titled sophomore album, Ayo, eventually released in September 2014, after the release date was “postponed twice due to difficulty in track selection”, according to the album description on YouTube.

Although Ayo, Wizkid’s last album with EME Records, received mixed reviews for its uneven quality, there was the standout track, ‘Ojuelegba.’ Ojuelegba translates to the shrine of Elegba/Esu, the trickster god in the Yoruba pantheon. It is also a place name for the rougher neck of Surulere, Wizkid’s hood. Fela Anikulapo-Kuti christened it the liquor capital in the 70s. Still, besides being the Mecca of booze, Ojuelegba is notorious for a crossroads that Fela obsessively sang about twice, first on his highlife tune, ‘Confusion’, and then on his more accomplished later masterpiece, ‘Confusion Break Bone(CBB)’.

Almost three decades after Fela recorded CBB, Wizkid revisited Ojuelegba, but his concern was not its perennial traffic bottleneck. He reminisced about his experiences as an upcoming artist and studio rat trying to break into a rigged music industry. His story is poignant and aptly explored in the documentary-like music video directed by Clarence Peters, whose father, Sir Shina Peters, is also a prominent Juju musician.

‘Ojuelegba’ shattered the ceiling for Wizkid, supported by a strategic remix featuring Canadian rapper Drake and UK’s Skepta. Building on the success of ‘Ojuelegba’ and consolidating the international acclaim from his duet with Drake, ‘One Dance’, Wizkid released Sounds from the Other Side (SFTOS), his third studio album (he called it an EP) and his first international album.

Afrobeats had waited more than a decade for that American crossover. Coming into prominence when Afrobeats began to favour a more Afrocentric ethos, Wizkid was the ferryman and Sounds from the Other Side was his kayak.

With the support of featured artists like Drake, Chris Brown, Major Lazer, Trey Songz and TY Dolla Sign, SFTOS was decidedly made for the foreign ear. Sounds from the Other Side should have been called ‘Sounds from Everywhere’ because this is what it was: Wizkid experimented boldly with Caribbean soca and dancehall. If there was a dominant sound on that album, it was an insistent dancehall rhythm that native Africans cannot lay claim to. When this album moved away from Caribbean influences and a punishing mid-tempo tedium, it found some wriggle room in Noughties-styled R&B.

In retrospect, SFTOS was a career dip instead of an international leap. But at the time, its reception was overwhelmingly congratulatory. Critics, pundits, and social media influencers reveled at the moment because of its importance: Afrobeats was on the cusp of an American breakthrough for the second time (the first time was the D’Banj via GOOD Music/Kanye West). If Wizkid had pushed those doors open, the benefits would have been significant for the genre.

In 2019, Wizkid released Soundman Vol. 1 under his sobriquet Starboy as a placeholder. Wikipedia describes Soundman Vol. 1 as a “market strategy to test the Afro-European market for Made in Lagos.”

Wizkid remained in the familiar territories of dancehall, reggae and afrobeat, but these mid-tempo songs were tempered for a slow dance, and the aural experience suggested that Wizkid may have lost his boyish charm. There was one instance of heady exuberance: the Blaq Jerzee-produced ‘Blow’ is a brazen scenario about fellatio in a Bajaj tricycle. What is astonishing is the power of persuasion; the song’s crooner fancies himself as devil’s advocate, daring the ‘baby’ to become a phallic trumpeter in Lagos traffic.

My review of Soundman Vol. 1 noted, "Despite its lofty ambitions, it still feels like a placeholder for that album that will have the massive cultural impact of Wizkid’s debut album, Starboy. The hype around Made in Lagos has raised hopes of teeming fans that Wizkid has at least one more great LP album to tuck under his belt.”

Comprised of 14 songs and spools 8 minutes short of an hour, Made in Lagos, Wizkid’s fourth album was released in October 2020 after being postponed several times. Wizkid was supported by Burna Boy, Skepta, Damian Marley, H.E.R, TEMS and Terri but stood alone on six tracks. P2J, the same producer who cranked out the phenomenal ‘Brown Skin Girl’ was the chief producer on the album, with additional production credits from Juls, Sarz, Legendury Beatz, Sammy made it, Blaq Jezree, Kill September, Honter, Kofo and Saint Mino.

Wizkid’s tenor was modulated on Made in Lagos for a low-pitch delivery. Wizkid presumably sings low and slow, awash with dutiful rhythms drawn from afrobeat, calypso, dancehall, reggae, and other Caribbean rhythms. With Made in Lagos, Wizkid led Afrobeats out of the dancehall to the bedroom. The music is lush and sultry. Insistent on a slow grind at best, most songs were lyrically obsessed with foreplay and auditing sexual experiences, like that timeless record, Sweet Banana by King Sunny Ade.

Since Made in Lagos, Wizkid has yet to update his sound. His 2022 album, More Love Less Ego, was hugely derivative of the sonic advancement accomplished on Made in Lagos. Unexpectedly, he dropped the 4-track S2 EP at the end of last year. This left us with déjà vu. With standout tracks like ‘Ololufe’ featuring Wande Coal and ‘IDK’ (propelled into classic realms by Zlatan’s verse), S2 felt somewhat safe sonically. Despite its excellent production values, pundits have been critical that Wizkid serves more of the same: variations of love songs mired in sultriness, exquisite materialism and faux humility.

This criticism might be unfair if you have been following my brief excursion into history. With more than fourteen years in the limelight, it is a big ask for Wizkid to attempt another major shift in his style and sound. In any case, it took him more than five years to find his current sound, and with a safe pair of hands like P2J in his corner, I am satisfied to get more of the same from him.

Folks who have approached Morayo thirsting for a sob-laden, grief-stricken vibe have met with pleasant-sounding, primarily upbeat, sex-drenched music. Although the album begins with ‘Troubled Mind’ featuring a self-referential live session from Fuji Royalty KWAM1 The Ultimate, ostensibly from his mother’s funeral reception, the moody song pivoted into a rationale for his preferred escapism. It is one of the two moments (the second is on the gratitude-drenched song, ‘Pray’) where we get close to the inner meaning of his loss.

Instead, Wizkid wants to have a good time. He wants to dance and catch a whine from beautiful curvy women with Yoruba names like Soji. On ‘Karamo’, the production leans heavily into Afrobeat horns, and Wizkid talks about drug-addled partying. Another standout tune is the album’s second single, ‘Kese(Dance),’ which opens with the waah sound ostensibly from a Hawaiian guitar. ‘Kese’ also spotlighted the talking drums, another nod to juju music (specifically King Sunny Ade), and it is one of the more decisive moments when Wizkid upped his lyricism, a notch to match P2J’s legacy-defining production.

Asake reunites with Wizkid on the tepid ‘Bad Girl,’ which is inferior to ‘MMS’ on Asake’s Lungu Boy. It is one of those tunes that would grow on you if you can get past its brazen misogyny. Lyrically, the album veers into the familiar territory of R&B with ‘Time,’ while P2J continues to spotlight vibrant guitars from juju music.

Brent Faiyaz does all the heavy lifting on the album’s first single, ‘Piece of My Heart’. Spoiler alert: watch out for an unexpected switch towards the song’s end. Wizkid yields the steering wheel to supporting acts like American Jasmine Sullivan and French singers Anaïs Cardot and Tiakola of African descent to do all the vocal acrobatics on ‘Bad for You’, ‘Après Minuit’ (‘After Midnight’) and ‘Slow’ respectively. Call it “the essence effect”, but since Wizkid scored that serendipitous magic with Tems, he knows to foreground superior vocalists. He is so zoned out of these songs that his introspective verses on these supposed love-learning R&Bsque, alte-sounding tunes appear to be a perfect vehicle for him to find language for his grief. R&B, as a genre, has a long history of prioritizing strong emotions. It is usually all the variations of being sad and lonesome. Wizkid keys straight into oedipal mode on these tunes, refuting all claims that Afrobeats can only offer an escape. Yet, there is much escapism in the faster-paced Afrobeats bops. With 16 songs and P2J helming most of the album production, the sameness is sometimes trite. Perhaps a more disciplined A&R may have served the album better.

Wizkid’s Morayo may not be sliding across the genre map like Micheal Jackson, but it is an accomplishment and his late mother would be proud!