Singer needs a pop song to avoid becoming a pop music dinosaur

I don’t believe Ice Prince is gone. Whatever the public has said about this man, I don’t believe he is done and finished.

Everyone loves Ice Prince. He is one of those few Nigerian artists that people still dedicate a strong part of their hearts to. He is flashy and grateful. His humility has never been in question. When he gets in a controversy, he looks out for his own and stands firm on matters of principle.

Put simply, Ice Prince is that cooler older sibling that has your back, and he has yours, and that makes you love him deeply and forever. Everybody loves Ice Prince.

But Ice Prince needs more than love right now. He needs hits. He needs it fast. He needs them faster than they can come. Ice Prince needs a steady supply of hits.

The reasons for these are obvious. Ice Prince moved his business away from rap and domiciled it in the pop category. He is a pop singer now, who can also rap. Pop artists are musicians who thrive on making popular songs. They make songs which are massively accepted, become popular, penetrate everywhere and keep them relevant.

Pop stars thrive on pop songs. Ice Prince is a pop artist, he needs to have pop songs.

The last time Ice Prince had a hit song, it was his 2015 record ‘Boss’, produced by Tekno. That was 2 years ago. After that record, he dropped an album “Jos to the World”, which contained potential hit records. None of them went pop, including the promoted ‘Excellency’.

It didn’t work out.

The Nigerian music industry is designed to favor hot artists in the short term. Ice Prince is a big artist due to the amount of work he has out into the culture and the success he has experienced. That’s why he is rated and loved. But he isn’t ‘hot’ right now.

The ‘Oleku’ rapper is a ‘big’ artist. His name has household value and fame. And matter of fact, he has done enough, with three albums and a long list of his singles shining in our recent pop history.

But he cannot compare himself to a ‘hot’ artist. Ice Prince is big, but he isn’t hot. And as the industry goes, hot artists are treated better than ‘big’ artists. The only exception is 2face Idibia, who is everyone’s idol and mentor. And that’s because he is evergreen.

Being ‘big’ isn’t Ice Prince's only goal. He wants to be hot again, and that’s why he is releasing new music. An artist can go from being big and distant to being just a memory, or a forgotten whisper in a flash. No artist wants to be the subject of a conversation that goes “remember Ice Prince, the guy was hot that year oh’”

The term ‘That year’ is reserved for cultural and artistic dinosaurs. People who became extinct, relegated by time, change and the wave of progress. Ice Prince does not want to be a dinosaur.

His new song ‘Successful’ is out. Produced by Tefa, the record is an urban Highlife record which uses the prayer gimmick to connect. It’s one of those songs which tick all of the pop-quality boxes. What remains now is to release a visual to promote it, and then we wait for people to either fall in love with it or ignore it.

If they do fall in love, Ice Prince is back amongst the ‘wavy’ acts. If the public ignores the redcord, he has to repeat the process again.