Reminisce

REMINISCE; Alaga ibile is more than just a local rapper

by IfeOluwa Nihinola

It is difficult to determine what drove Reminisce to produce ‘Ponmile’ in 2017. But it can’t be mere coincidence that in the year of #metoo Remilekun Abdulkalid Safaru produced a song where he inches towards vulnerability, albeit reluctantly. Or is it? If we played a game of word associations and asked what comes to mind when the name Reminisce is called, the response should always be sex. The man hasn’t found a rap verse he can’t infuse with graphic descriptions of coitus, usually as a way to boast about his prowess. So, when the macho lothario was heard pleading and grovelling about love, the response of many was a mixture of shock and admiration. That the rapper who sang ‘Tesojue’ could sing ‘Ponmile’ was a sign that maybe there’s hope that the prototypical male Nigerian rapper with his veneer of hyper-aggressiveness will finally find value in vulnerability.

“When things no pure / Would you be my umbrella / When rain dey fall / If you no go dey there o / Je te te so / Kin ma lo pa ra mi si e l’orun,” he sings, telling his woman a lack of assurance that she’ll be with him will lead to his death. Manipulative? Yes, but a crack of emotion from a man who had made a career out of verses that sound like the masculine id in its basest libidinous form is always welcome. Consider, however, that in the song ‘If Only’, released in his first album Book of Rap Stories, Reminisce sings, “You’re all I want, you’re all I have, if you hurt me I’m gon’ bleed.” That emotion in Ponmile did not come out of a void.

Before he became Alaga Ibile, one of Nigeria’s most respected hip hop artists and a leading “local rapper”, Reminisce was an MC in the American mode of the word. His first single ‘Ever Since’ featuring 9ice was delivered in fluent English with smart punchlines and references to Americans Mick Jagger and 50 Cent. The aforementioned ‘If Only’ was delivered in the same linguistic mode. There was lyrical competence to Reminisce’s performance, which was already a requirement for stardom in late 2000s and early 2010s Nigerian hip hop. But that competence did not mask the irony of listening to a man shouting that he’s from the streets of Lagos in a language that is anything but local to his home. Thankfully, Reminisce had already met the men at Coded Tunes, as part of a clique of rappers called Yabtown Squad. The influence of working in a space where ID Cabasa was producing beats, Lord of Ajasa was rapping in Yoruba and 9ice was singing his unique Fuji-based sound was bound to produce something better than an American clone.

By the time Reminisce released ‘Kako bii chicken’ in 2011, the late Dagrin had already proven that a brashtalking, Yoruba-speaking rapper can be loved and adored. And Olamide, another product of the Coded Tunes pipeline, had shown that formula replicable in his ‘Eni Duro’. So, it should surprise no one that slim, bleach-haired Reminisce found his audience. “Mo n’awo ya, o n dun bi woofer” he sang in the first verse of ‘Kako bii chicken’, and it was obvious to Yoruba speakers that he wasn’t just moving on to greater things like he claimed in the song’s introduction but, with a line that is essentially translates to a boast about hitting a vagina till it sounds like a broken woofer, he was also settling for raunchier things.

Four studio albums, two-time appearance on the Billboard World Music Charts and a mention in Time magazine in 2014 as one of seven “world rappers you should meet”, among other things are a reflection of Reminisce’s immense success. But he, like other local rappers of his ilk, still raps like one who is an underdog. Maybe they need that status to fuel their ambition, but it’s dissonant to hear Reminisce, Olamide and Phyno, kings of the streets, embrace the moniker ‘local rapper’, while also reminding the world that it started as a term of derision.

For Reminisce, there’s a chance he subconsciously regards ‘local rapper’ as derogatory because the term’s associations—dexterous at rapping only in the local languages; more singing, less rapping— don’t circumscribe him. He may be popular because he raps in Yoruba, but he’s just as good— if not better—when he raps in English. He often ditches his mother tongue for whole verses just so he can stunt in the queen’s language as he does in ‘Asamalekun’, one of his most popular tracks. And this desire to be more than a label extends beyond his use of language. He may be the alter ego of boys and men with self-images nested in their groin, but when he raps in ‘Where I come from’ or names an album Baba Hafusa, he’s telling the audience to see him for just who he is— orphan of parents he loves, father of daughters he cherishes.

Reminisce is at his best when he’s rapping short verses on laid-back beats like he’s performing off the dome in a cypher. But short verses are also his achilles heel. An economy, according to critic Oris Aigbokhaevbolo, “that is the bane of the Reminisce rap track.” Reminisce released ‘Ajigijaga’ earlier this year, referencing a wellknown menacing character from Yoruba movies. It’s a quintessential Reminisce track: short, laid back and lyrical in Yoruba as it is in English. He says just enough to make you draw parallels between him and the famed character, but not more. Even if there’s a lot to be said, Reminisce never loses himself in the beat. Thank goodness for his acting debut in Kemi Adetiba’s King of Boys as Makanaki, where he plays a criminal character with panache, finally putting his everpermanent scowl to good use. We now have images to attach to his verbal menace.

There’s a chance we’ve been reading Reminisce all wrong. In singles and features released after ‘Ponmile’, he has returned to the comfort of his sexual word play. (So, pump the brakes on the vulnerability takes.) For all of his vocal myth making, however, Alaga Ibile’s life as a star has been largely free of sexual drama. Maybe it’s all just performance, or maybe it isn’t. But when Aga—chair(man), as he’s sometimes called— chooses to show the world that behind that scowl is a human being who hurts, perhaps we should just nod our heads and move it along. He may be local, but he contains multitudes, too.