Wale Oyejide: “AfricaHot! The Afrofuture Sessions”

Filed under: Music Reviews, Rap   

(Shaman Work Recordings)

Just a fact you may have lost in the shuffle here: not everything about the African continent is a maddening saga of militiaman battling militiaman between bursts of genocide. Wale Oyejide is living testimony to this, and these almost ad lib-sounding Afrofuture recordings look at urban life - not strictly in Nigeria either - through a stubbornly jubilant prism, celebrating an envious tribal environment colored with hypnotic rhythms and uncountable voices (in both English and traditional Yoruba) pressing for social change through peaceful means. Choirs are bolstered with both programmed and live drumming, bass, horns and the odd pipe-organ (”The Hunger pt 1″). “One Day Everything Changed” envisions a world free of Republican jingoism, and this is where Oyejide busts into a rap quanta more powerful and darkly terrible than any bling-blinger could muster no matter how many Benzes were at stake.

Posted on April 5th, 2007.

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