Top 5 Nigerian music flops of the year

It’s still barely two weeks until the calendar year in music is over, but it’s not too early to shame the worst flops of 2016. After all, two weeks is not enough to change your fortunes in these streets.

In a year packed full with entertainment, artistic renaissances, musical changes and power moves, there are many people, record labels and places who failed to move with the times and achieve. This might either be their fault, or they are victims of circumstances.

But it doesn’t matter. The bottom line still shows that progress was not made, and where it was made, it was negative.

Seyi Shay

2015 was Seyi Shay’s greatest year in her career. Hit songs, a debut album and endorsement deals had the singer as one of the best performing artistes of the previous year. But the turn of the New Year brought nothing for her. Instead, the highlights of her year were all PR blunders.

The talented singer went hard in 2016 in terms of blunders. However, her biggest blunder this year was the E.P debacle.  Surely an artiste like Seyi Shay with international exposure would know that E.P stands for Extended Play.  To everyone's surprise, she didn't. Instead of delicately curving the question, Seyi Shay confidently said that E.P stands for "electronic package." The jokes were heavy and the trolling brutal.

She failed to properly promote her debut album, shooting a video for ‘Mary’ and ‘Pack and go’, some of the weakest songs off the project. Her other single ‘Juba’, featuring Niniola, failed to spark.

Oritsefemi

It seems like a long time since Oritsefemi was amongst the top acts of the year. Since his 2014 and early 2015 resurgence due to the success of ‘Double Wahala’, Oritsefemi has tried to generate as much personal value as he can for his pocket. A lacklustre album “MSN”, which contained some accepted singles helped him stay relevant.

But he has managed what gifts that were thrown his way poorly. After choosing quantity over quality, he voiced over 20 collaborations since his album dropped, petering out his worth as a premium artiste. None of those songs have become hits. And then there’s his well-documented beef with his manager Danku.

Oritsefemi and Danku had fought through the entire country, often over the most basic of things. From money to names, to imprint monikers, the pair had sustained a war via the press and found out new ways to go lower in status. The police had been involved, physical altercations were reported and accidents have occurred. All of these had affected the singer’s ability to sustain music. An artiste at war cannot create, neither can growth exist without peace.

These days, they are lovebirds, coming out to say the extended battles that had been fought. They denied to have ever been at loggerheads and new music has begun to flow. Happiness.

But is Oritsefemi ready for an album? No. Albums in Nigeria have to be teased, and anticipation built via the release of singles. The fans and public have to yearn for new material from you, and this can only be achieved via the acceptance of singles. None of Oritsefemi’s singles post-MSN have become hits. There’s only ‘Mr Gomina’ featuring Reekado Banks, that have been marketed immensely to little effect. He still has no single to propel this album.

And it shows on the project. Just like his previous album, “Corporate Miscreant”, unfortunately has, wrongdoings distributed all over the album. Twenty-one tracks long, “Corporate Miscreant” is a disjointed, boring and unimaginative album from a singer who intends to disrupt the music system via misdemeanours. He doesn’t disrupt the system, but he sure offends, which is what miscreants do.

After ditching his previous ghetto sounds on MSN, continues his blatant approach to seduce the mainstream audience, and that continues to elude him. Instead, what he succeeds in getting, is an album that sees him dumping his ghetto gospel genre of music for something without form.

Wande Coal

This year, there was no Wande Coal. After the lukewarm album of late 2015, where the pop music icon scored a comeback with the ‘Wanted’ album, he let 2016 peter away.

Nothing major happened for Wande Coal, other than meagre collaborations. Instead, he failed to shoot more videos from his album and succeeded in letting his momentum go to waste.

Although he did come back at the end of 2016 with two singles, no attention has been given to him and promotion is a distant promise that has so far failed to yield fruits.

Chocolate City

2016 started greatly for Chocolate City. Loose Kaynon’s “The Gemini Project”, opened the year in January. Ruby Gyang spread out her wings as she dropped “This Is Love” EP, while M.I Abaga took charge of the conversations surrounding Hip-hop as he released the concluding part of the “Illegal Music Series.”

More projects had already been announced. CEO M.I Abaga had planned the release of 7 projects comprising of EPs and albums.

But things went downhill from there.

The label lost 6 members of their roster; Ice Prince made his long-time split official, Jesse Jagz cut himself off from the group, Milli rebelled against authority and departed acrimoniously. Pryse had her contract ended, Kahli Abdu and VHS Safari disappeared, and DJ Caise silently walked away.

With the multiple exits came a constant reshuffle.

The label officially  had to reshuffle, with only Koker’s ‘Kolewerk’ and Dice Ailes’ suggestive hits (‘Machinery’ and ‘Miracle’) being the best thing they had done all year. Choclate City also signed on producer Ckay and a Kenyan artiste, Qritical.

The Music Industry

Yes, for everyone involved in the music industry, including myself, we flopped once again in the music business. We still haven’t sorted out the business end of things.

All year round, we have held countless seminars and conferences, where recycled speakers share the same data, studies and analysis about the loopholes in the business of music, and how much we need to plug it in. We are big on extensive recommendations and proffer detailed and lofty solutions to fixing our issues.

But we never fix them. All of our talk never translates into action.

Publishing and licensing is still in its dysfunctional state, while Alaba continues to loom over content providers. Our system still requires artistes to give out free music, and depend on lump sum payments from performance fees and brand engagements. Although income from the local telcos and sales from digital distribution has helped provide artistes with more revenue.

But we are bleeding via licensing and publishing holes, and that fact is a slap on the faces of our posturing executives.

Let’s all collectively take a huge giant L.