Nigerian music has always been a business which has been affected by the effect of fast growth. The industry has over the past a decade and half grown from being an industry that imported music and technology to an industry that exports music and talents. While that can be counted as a positive element in Nigerian Music, however there are some dark shades in term of the content of the songs released. Nigerian music has had high level of criticism because of the ill lyrical content of the songs which are made. In the wake of 2014, this trend of ill music was popularized by the Olamide led music label called YBNL.
In 2015/2016 when the likes of lil Kesh and Adekunle Gold was the biggest next rated stars of Nigerian Music, there was a dark shade to the songs made by Lil Kesh because of the vulgar language frequently used. The Yoruba communities who are the main consumers of these songs would tell foreigners that the songs they make had no sense to it. This reflected in the ratings of Lil Kesh because he was then beaten to the Hades awards by Mavin Records new boy Reekado Banks. Causing a lot of confusion and internet spat between both record labels, the final judge of the awards beef was the content of music made. Lil Kesh sang about explicit contents in all his songs while Reekado on the on the other hand had songs that could be played anywhere and in front of anybody. Although many fans of Lil Kesh music still have bad blood about what happened at that time; it would be understood that the musical content is an element of music which you cannot overlook in the making of good music.
Olamide a good musician and a wonderful mentor has not stopped raising people out of the hood where once belonged to and now he has signed the YBNL new boy Lawal Raheem aka Lyta. The 20 year old Kwara state Nigerian citizen was born and brought up in Ajegule (a slum part of Lagos state); found favor in the eyes of the YBNL Boss and his life has taken a new turn. When branding a new talent for the big stage, there are some basic fix that has to be done. One of such fix is the content of the artist songs. In this aspect, Olamide had failed before but with the new singles which Lyta has dropped, it is in order to say that they have corrected this. I have been Jamming to the song “self-made” by Lyta and I could not but give Olamide a toms up on the amount of work put in to make the song clean. I could easily play this for a group of Teenagers because of the rich content of the song. Lyta sings in thanksgiving to God for bringing him out of the hood. He sings about staying off drugs and bad friends in the street who would easily mislead you. He sings about handwork among young people which unfortunately is lacking in the world today.
In light of this new development in terms of talent grooming by the YBNL Label, it can be agreed that the direction of the Olamide led label is actually doing what needs to be done to take his record label to the next level. Olamide’s record label can be said to be one of the biggest label for young Yoruba Indigenous Musicians and at such should be a shining beacon to the world. It should be a record label that any child, teenager or adult could look up to for good music with valid sense because music is a form of mass education. It is so because songs have a way of sipping into the minds of people without forcing it; hence going the extra mile to clean up their music is massive for the Nigerian Music Industry and should be applauded.
