MUSIC VIDEOS I – JAILER, ROLL IT AND STREET CREDIBILTY

To do this, I had to get one of those pirated music video collection CDs that’s all over the place. There are so many of them that I had a problem choosing one, so I just choose three of them that’s mostly different from the other. With so many musical shows on TV these days, I wonder if people still buys them. But it helps, especially for people like me.

I was so stunned by how improved our music videos have become, except that they are still some loop-holes here and there. So, what I am going to be doing is pinpointing those flaws in the latest music videos of the Nigerian Music Industry.

Be warned, I may bad-mouth your favorite music video. You don’t want to continue reading this if you don’t have the demeanor to withstand criticism.

ASA’S JAILER
Many people may like this video partly because they liked ‘Fire on the mountain’. And that’s exactly the problem I have with this video. Why will a person who created an awesome video like ‘Fire on the mountain’ create another video that lacks concept and interest? Why didn’t she stick to her guns? Who cares about how you record your songs or how many people you had in attendance or what troubles you went through in recording it or how your studio looks like?

This video simply lacks concept. Frankly, I think she should have followed the storyline in the song. She should have created another video like ‘Fire on the mountain’ but not necessarily in the same vein. The storyline is very important. What makes the song a great one is actually the storyline and why did she (or whoever conceptualized that video) had to do something else?

P. SQUARE’S ROLL IT
This is a good video, no doubt. Good stage, nice costumes, and great dance steps – all produced a matching concept. I didn’t expect anything else from a P. Square video. The only flaw in this video however is at the beginning.

After already starting with the original song, why did they abruptly stop to dance to another song before actually doing their dirt? We know you can dance and all and we know you sang ‘Game Over’. Hell, that’s the title of your album, but please spare us. I see some Yankee-imitation there. We like to imitate them but we don’t ever seem to get it right. You bring in another song at the very beginning or at the very end of the original song in a video to give us a glimpse of the next video or remind us how the previous video was like. A case study is Bow Wow and Omarion’s Hey baby jump off and Hoodstar and Usher’s Love in the club and Moving mountain videos.

9ICE’S STREET CREDIBILITY

Either 9ice is dumb or he is just silly or both. I don’t see anything that depicts his (or 2 Face’s) street credibility in that video. You don’t do a video just because you have to do a video. I mean, there is no video for Gongo Aso are we are not complaining. I’m saying it and I’m gonna keep saying it, a video must follow the song’s storyline. A video that should be shot in a real-life setting should not be restricted to the studio and vise versa. It can have both, but it should not be restricted to either one.

In my opinion, that 9ice’s video should have shown how people love him; show screaming fans; show him singing on stage, signing autographs, dodging or attending to paparazzi and collecting awards, especially when he said ‘I go bring home Grammy’. That place, he should have been shown receiving a Grammy, even if it’s not happened yet. It’s only going to establish the fact that he is serious about winning a Grammy. But I guess that will be too much trouble compared to doing just one or two cameos in the studio. Their problem is that they don’t want to spend money on videos. I even heard a rumor that D’banj is helping fund 9ice’s 10 million naira Gongo Aso video since 9ice is practically bankrupt after his wedding ceremony. Dig that?

I’m going to stop here for now but before I do, I want to give kudos to Neato C for the kini big deal video and Olu Maintain for the Karma kazee video, (nice toys in that video, great directing and editing too, it came out fine) even though ‘karma kazee’ and ‘kentro’ are silly ideas. Those are my favorite videos at the moment. We’ll do this some other time. Peace.