Opinion: Fireboy and D Smoke are an interesting collaborative dynamic

Over the past 50 years, collaboration has become a core part of Nigerian music. While it used to mostly happen on stage and less on albums or bodies of work, the 90’s changed a lot of things in Nigerian music. With the impact of Hip-Hop/R&B, Nigeria’s contemporary pop sound found its earliest footing.

When Tony Tetuila released his debut solo album, Morning Time in 1999, ‘Omode Meta’ featuring 2baba, became an exemplary feature, which ushered in the era of desirable collaborations in contemporary times. By the 2000s, Nigerian collaborations had become so much of a staple, that Musiliu Haruna Ishola and Chief Dele Ojo featured rappers on a remake of their respective classic pieces.

By the mid-2000s, Nigerian artists craved more international exposure. First, the African collaborations started to pour in and become commonplace. Initially, it was Ghana-Nigeria collaborations, then it became Nigeria-South Africa collaborations, till it spread.

Nigerian artists had used Hip-Hop, R&B and infused Pop Fusion to capture continental attention. After moments like Eedris Abdulkareem’s globally publicized spat with 50 Cent or ThisDay’s incredible events fused with Nigeria’s rising profile as Africa’s pop culture hub, to create a need to conquer the world, the craving for international exposure got even bigger.

When 2Baba’s ‘African Queen’ got featured on Phat Girls, and international bodies like MTV started creating Africa-centric channels like MTVBase, Best African Act at the MTV Europe Awards or MTV African Music Awards, Nigerian artists started getting some major foreign collaborations.

Moments like 2Baba featuring Wyclef Jean, Bennie Mann or R.Kelly on the disputed ‘Flex’ courted major attention across Nigeria. When Freestyle then featured T-Pain, it went up a notch. But when D’Banj featured Snoop Dogg on ‘Mr. Endowed (Remix),’ we witnessed a new wave of international participation on Nigerian music, which was usually very nonchalant or passive, until that point.

Everything got bigger, after Ice Prince featured Gyptian, alongside many more examples. But as ‘Afrobeats to the world’ has gotten bigger, we have started to witness Nigerian artists get featured by foreign artists on foreign records. Thus, international collaborations became commonplace.

However, moments like Davido’s ‘Blow My Mind’ standout, and then there are impressive collaborations like Fireboy’s with D Smoke, which showcase mutual respect from two rising artists, with wicked depths of talent and beautiful profile.

D Smoke is the brother of SiR, a TDE artist. The Inglewood rapper was a Spanish and music theory teacher with a brilliant mind and a mind for words. After winning Netflix’s Music and Flow in 2019, everybody suddenly paid attention to the rapper with a diastema. Little did they know that he had written songs for major artists alongside his brother and that his debut album dropped in 2006.

The Kendrick Lamar comparisons didn’t take long to follow the UCLA graduate, after Inglewood High EP dropped in 2019. By 2020, he had released ‘No Commas’ and an impressive Grammy-nominated sophomore album in Black Habits.

On the other hand, Fireboy was DML until very recently. As a student at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, he was part of a generation of really talented artists like Blaqbonez, Cheque, Gbasky, Jaido P, Zamorra and more, who have since progressed into the Nigerian scene.

While he was underground, word on the street says that he wrote Mystro’s ‘Immediately’ during months of collaboration. Not long after, he was discovered by Olamide and Seyi Tinubu. He released ‘King’ and ‘Sing’ alongside Oxlade, to good underground buzz.

Like D Smoke, he was nominated at the 2019 Headies, but lost the category. At the 2020 edition, he went on to win five awards and controversially lost artist of the year to Wizkid.

To both artists, there are parallels. Both are products of university education. Although apart in age, they are both reclusive songwriter, that many might elevate to savant levels in pop and rap.

Initially, they collaborated on ‘Champion,’ the wrongly placed opener to Fireboy’s Apollo. While the song was rooted in pop, it seemed to tell their respective stories.

Fireboy was on his sophomore album and D Smoke had just released his. Yet, they were both riding high on acclaim and commercial success, after years of grinding. In the lines of those songs is a balance of creative effort and willful collaboration.

‘Champion’ also feels like the perfection of D Smoke’s records like ‘Morning Prayer’ and ‘Closer To God’ off the ‘Black Habits’ album.

The Pheelz-produced track, which is one of the album's standouts, is a narrative of what success and victory means to both artistes within their cultural context. For Fireboy, it means "Smashing & Killing everything from Ikeja to Ojuelegba bridge and to the many places he's never been". To D smoke, it's "buying a whip for his nephew and putting diamonds on his niece".

D Smoke’s verse audibly had layered vocals, to reveal the density of effort that went into his verse.

A little while before ‘Apollo’ dropped, D Smoke visited Nigeria. By the time his third album ‘War and Wonders’ dropped in 2021, ‘Sleepwalking’ featured - you guessed that right - Fireboy DML.

While Fireboy’s dexterity at delivering in Yoruba, English and Yoruba is already famed, only the latter parts of his opener seconds suggests that he is Nigerian.

The love theme was right off Fireboy’s alley. While his delivery wasn’t as energetic as D Smoke’s on ‘Champion,’ ‘Sleepwalking’ is a mellow record, which required a more methodical delivery.

On the Telz-produced song, Fireboy DML maintains his authentic style, infusing pidgin English and local language into his beautiful verse and hook, calling on his love interest to stop "Sleepwalking". D Smoke on his part doesn't try to mimic African languages or accents to deliver his verse, rather he creatively navigates through the afro-fusion sound with unique cadence and flow.

The record marked a circle of reciprocity, mutual respect and effort, the record was a huge signal to what Nigeria-international collaborations could be. Before this, we also had Davido and Chris Brown’s collaborations on ‘Blow My Mind’ and ‘Lower Body’ or Drake and Wizkid on ‘One Dance’ and ‘Come Closer.’

But Fireboy and D Smoke stand out. All the aforementioned four artists are superstars. Fireboy and D Smoke aren’t. Yet, they complimented each other and rode out the demand for quality.

David Olayiwola is a marketing and music business enthusiast.

He is a also a writer, content creator and artiste manager.