The Problem With Naming Your Album “Love, Damini.”
After Spotify launched in Nigeria, eliminating the need for a VPN, my time on the service grew month-on-month till it became my go-to for music. Spotify has a solid recommendation system, offers a seamless experience across all platforms (Apple, catch this sub), makes sharing music easy, and produces a cool-looking PowerPoint at the close of the year. It’s a pretty good service — as long as you listen to music how it wants you to. Now, I have always been an album person. I find satisfaction in collecting and consuming a fleshed-out body of work. And there is always tension when I want to use Spotify that way.
Spotify imposes its ideals on you the longer you use it; It wants you to cede control over time. It wants to take care of what you listen to and doesn’t want you scrambling through Your Library. Putting my album (and anti-Spotify) propaganda aside, it’s worth noting that I’m also the person who repeats the life of a track I enjoy. And Spotify reinforced that behaviour.
A lot of other insidious things occur when you surrender to Spotify, but this is not about Spotify. It’s about Burna Boy. Bee Bee for short — I like BB. I’m sticking with BB. So, BB released an album recently. I woke up, listened to it, shuffled my feet to a few tracks and went back to bed.
I had the same level of expectation I would approach, say, a personalised Spotify playlist. I have nothing against those playlists, but I do not think they are generated to provoke thought; They are created to be liked. And I liked BB’s album. But then I read this. Then I thought about the album. And I realised the album could have been more.
The Man and His Music
Many Nigerians my age found BB through his hit singles “Like To Party” and “Tonight.” His sound (to my untrained ears) deviated from conventions held by the Nigerian music industry at the time. He was very much alté. Fast forward a decade and BB has: christened his sound (Afrofusion), gotten rich, won a Grammy, built an extensive body of work and a successful career. Somewhere within that timeline, he also garnered a reputation for being a dissident, speaking out against the Nigerian government. The problem with Burna Boy’s activism is that it has always been tone-deaf to various degrees; Sometimes he speaks like he hasn’t put much thought into it, other times it’s like he’s playing both sides of the fence. A lot more people realise it now cause he’s blown.
When Davido or Wizkid drops an album, no one digs into the political allusions made because, frankly, that’s not their brand. But it’s BB’s brand. So when he ends a track with: “Remember, Martin Luther King had a dream and then he got shot,” of course people will take umbrage with it.
The issue with “Love, Damini”
Names are important. They confer a lot of attributes. BB naming his album “Love, Damini” and releasing “Last Last” as its forerunner sets expectations. The whole preamble reeks of a personal story, one from depths yet explored, one that details his career till this point, and maybe, perhaps, answers all the recent scandals calling his character to question.
Instead, we got a Spotify playlist of Summer chunes.
Like I said before, there is nothing wrong with songs (or projects) that appeal to primitive senses. Drake does it all the time. And so do most Nigerian artistes. The issue with “Love, Damini”, is that BB tries (in vain) to come across as deep and thoughtful. A few glimpses of personality peep through the album, but they are not developed in any audible way. Of the 16 tracks, only 4 (Glory, Last Last, Wild Dreams, and Love, Damini) tell his story.
There are some good things about the album; All the tracks are fine except one (Vanilla). Production is good. No, let me rephrase: Production is really, really good. Nigerian production has come a long way and most artistes are undeserving of the quality they get. Anyway, this is me making up for nagging five paragraphs straight.
I listen to Burna Boy more than I’m comfortable admitting. He is one of few that have graced my Top 5 (according to time listened) for six years in a row (the others being Cold Play and Major Lazer). I will not tag the album as middling or mediocre; They connote a negative meaning despite their definitions. I still enjoy the tracks. And I still shuffle my feet while acknowledging the lack of depth, uniand introspectivity.
The product is not what it says on the package. If this were the mid-2000s, I would not buy a CD.
Extraneous notes (in a bid to be more correct):
- In the second paragraph, I use “collecting” to refer to the act of adding an album to your library. You’re not collecting though, you’re leasing.
- This is not a full-fledged review, so I did not bother quoting lines or referring to every track. For that, refer to the note that follows.
- Despite loving BB’s music, I would not have written about it. You have this OK review about the OK album to thank for that.
- This piece is about 4/5 shower thoughts merged into one hence the length. I guess BB’s not the only one guilty of misappropriating names.
- If you liked the article or thought it was OK, clap like the old days, like the primary school days.
- If you hated it, DM me saying why. I love debates.
- Fin
