The other day Mode9 mentioned he was on tour in Germany and it reminded me that I’d yet to post about the tour that I first heard about several months prior, on an episode of Nigeria International.

The Urban Africa Club: Lagos tour brings the “Urban sounds from Lagos” (albeit very much from the hip-hop/pop perspective) to Germany in a five-stop tour. Reportedly on the roster are, Eedris Abdulkareem, African China, Ade Bantu, Rule Clean, Ruggedman, Mode9 and One Kilo.

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It’s a little over a week until the release of the movie Phat Girlz that features 2Face Idibia’s hit song, African Queen. The trailers have hit the airwaves and for the first time the international community is hearing African Queen. At very least you’d expect Nigeria’s top selling musician and winner of MTVs African Musician of the Year to have his website up and running… or at very least to have his production company have some kind of online presence and contact information, but instead, what do we find?

Nkem Owoh recently expanded his repertoire, from acting in and directing some of Nigeria’s most popular films, to include singing as well. His first release provided the soundtrack to the notorious film, “The Master,” with the title track by the same name. Other songs on the release include Know me When I am Poor, Agreement and most notably Susana, where Owoh pines over the loss off his lover and draws the connection between his wealth an her love.

Susana, abi you no dey shame?
You no love me again
Money go, love go

As one of my favorite comedic Nigerian actors and I’m very much looking forward to his continued development in the field of music.

Nkem Owoh – Susana 14MB (quicktime)

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The article, “Free at Last” by Roger Steffens appeared in the Sept/Oct issue of Option magazine 1986. Steffens provides an introduction to Fela and follows it up with an in-depth interview. While the introduction fails to paint a complete or accurate picture of Fela’s life – rather focusing on particular sensational aspects, I left it in to maintain the integrity of the work (and provided clarification where necessary.) The interview portion on the other hand is a real gem that provides a unique look at Fela through his own words – enjoy.

Fela Anikulapo Kuti: “He Who Carries Death in his Pouch.” Black President. Band leader and revolutionary from Lagos, Nigeria. He’s lost count of the times he’s been imprisoned. His most recent bust put him behind bards for 18 months. The charges were blatantly false; eventually the judge who had sentenced him came to beg his forgiveness, after which the magistrate was kicked off the bench and Fela released unconditionally, all the charges dropped.

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Making waves through the Nigerian underground rap scene, Mode9 is a hero among the true hiphop heads. But if you’ve missed hearing about him, missed our interview with him, haven’t taken notice or never knew he was Nigerian (based in Lagos), his videos Formidable and Elbow Room get airplay on MTV Base… so nap time is effectively over!

Here’s a fresh earlier music video for the song, The Recipie. The video features mode9, fellow swat root members, a cameo by ruggedman & more! Unfortunately the video stops half-way, but thought it was worth showing anyway.

enjoy.

Mode9 – The Recipe 4MB (WMV)

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Check out the Mode Nine photos in the gallery

(link to photos)

http://www.modenine.net

(official Mode9 website)

I recently picked up the new Mr. Kool album Still Cool. While I haven’t had the time to listen to and properly digest the tracks, something that caught my attention was a little card insert in the album sleeve. I haven’t seen inserts of any kind in the recent crop of locally produced Nigerian albums, so I immediately took a closer look.

Approximately twice the size of a business card, the front featured a photo of Mr. Kool, while the back had a passage that read:

Music business is big money business, so the merchants will always set the rules. Profit over the short term will always be the overriding consideration. But there’ll always be special few to whom total commitment to the purity of the art is non-negotiable. In the forefront is the incomparable Mr. Kool. Long before it seemed feasible, the visionary helped to lay the foundation. And even now that the entire industry is on a frenzied “cut and nail” vibe, he’s sticking with his philosophy of uncompromising quality. Pretty soon, everyone else would fall in line.

– Efe Omorogbe

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