MUSIC: Mr. Eazi's "Leg Over"

Leg Over is a great piece of music, with vocal and instrumental cords finely weaved and even more tastefully pitched. The two (voice and sound), heard so seamlessly as one, deliver a delightful audio experience. With his distinctive and powerful voice, Nigeria's Mr. Eazi is one of Africa's leading pop stars. His voice is a veritable 'tool' for cultural innovation.

While the dancers whom we see in Leg Over give just as fine a show (and even look happy doing so), in harmony with the voice and the sounds, the video's overall mood rings somber to keen ears. It is not uplifted, and yet seems to invariably uplift. The fans don't appear to tire listening to it day-in and day-out.

WATCH: Leg Over Video

If you don't understand pigdin, the message (the 'content') packed in Leg Over plainly 'flies' by you. No matter. Settle instead for the universal 'form' of the song, any song. And jienjoy! There's lots to savor in the 3:24 minutes of that video; and, of course, Leg Over, released in February this year, continues to be a hit across sub-Sahara and within Africa's many language 'boundaries'. Thanks, clearly, to the expanding networks of electronic and related social media.

Despite the obvious language barriers for many -- neither Eastern Africans nor Southern Africans, for example, speak the pidgin in which Mr. Eazi sings -- the lyrics provided below do allow for greater scrutiny of the message, especially upon translation. 

READ: Leg Over lyrics. 

Q: When did you last (or ever!) see a priest cringe in the confessional, as we see in the video?

READ MORE: 
1. Lawrence Burney, "Watch Mr. Eazi Confess His Love in His 'Leg Over' Video"

2. My earlier commentary: Mr. Eazi's Uneasy Confession 

A Thought ~ 16: The Music Ramrod

Renaissance:Music must surely be a/the ramrod by means of which Africa will gain/regain its glorious place in the cultural world. And if not the world, the universe.

Spetxa One by C4Pedro                                                                

Kelele za Chura by Chege ft. Nandy                                                               

               

Leg Over by Mr. Eazi                                                                                                                         

King Kong Remix by Vector ft, Phyno x Reminisce x Classiq x Uzi                                                           

Nana by Diamond Platnumz ft. Mr. Flavour                                                                                          

Dorobucci by The Mavins (Don Jazzy et al)                                                                                  

Dance For Me by Eugy and Mr. Eazi                                                                                                                                                                                                         

Dance for Me by Eugy ft. Mr. Eazi

Dance for Me is sung by two superb artistes from West Africa: (a) Ghanaian-born Eugy, who has lived in the UK for a long while; and, (b) Nigerian-born Mr. Eazi, who lives in Ghana, where he has blood relatives, and graduated with a degree in Mechanical Engineering! The duo has clearly leveraged its 'all mixed-up' background to outperform, already, in the often treacherous music industry. Dance for Me will always be for me the best AfroPop song in 2016. Indeed, it was, shall we say, "one in a billion."

READ: A short biography of Eugy

CLICK: A bio of Mr. Eazi

Dance for Me (produced by Team Salut and directed by Alexx Adjei) starts with Mr. Eazi's alpha voice bellowing and drawing all the attention, in a most dramatic fashion. "It's yo boy Eazi," he declares, "Eugy official. Music so sensual." There's the theme, for this 2016 theme-song of dance videos!

You sense you're on to something spectacular here. You are. And yet the only images you see of both singers in the first video below -- which was produced earlier, and which the TV channels usually show -- are Eugy's pleasantries as he walks by the leading lady (at 0:15 seconds), and Mr. Eazi's still picture (at 0:17 seconds). You don't see either Mr. Eazi or Eugy sing, or dance. Their voices, which after much temptation (one supposes) even break into a bit of rap, are all you hear throughout the song's 3:29-minute run. To see the duo in any sort of action, you have to watch the second video below. It is included here in order to keep faith with a dictum I see no reason to violate: that for a dance video, as for the more common music video, consideration for purposes of rating (or ranking) should not be given to any track in which the singer, or singers, appears only in 'canned' form (for more of this argument, click to read this post). This stance leads me to a point that is at once more fundamental and more self-evident: You can have a song without dance, but no dance without a song -- heard, remembered or improvised.  

Dance for Me is, as Mr. Eazi suggests, a sensual [very sensual] dance video, with an addictive beat that's used sparingly here, since the voices dominate. Good overpowering vibes course through it all. We see the 'glow' of all this in those agile female bodies -- those who dance, who indeed become dance itself, with so much finesse and such refined attention to a sensitively detailed choreography. 

The lyrics are truly tailor-made for smart, vigorous and athletic dancing. And every dancer, as good as the next, adds to the marvel that is the totality of this track -- nothing of which escapes the camera's eye. 

Incidentally, we are informed that Shoki and Alkayida (note the spelling), which are showcased here, are two popular dancing styles in Ghana right now. So sing along -- and dab -- if you please:

"Shoki shoki me say alkayida
Baby dance for me and dab."

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Video 1 (Published on April 18, 2016):

Video 2 (Published on September 2, 2016):

CLICK HERE: Dance for Me Lyrics