Once upon a time, an insane Christian book that claimed the devil created football as a tool to destroy humanity trended on the internet. I did the dirty work of actually reading and recapping it. The article was so popular that I decided to make my recaps into a weekly series named “So You Don’t Have To “, where I find batshit crazy pieces of media (books, movies, etc.) and recap them for your pleasure.
Nigerian music videos are…somehow. They’ve always been somehow. And over the years, they’ve just evolved into a different kind of somehow-ness. For that reason, I’ve always wanted to include them in the “So You Don’t Have To” series, and this year, I actually did.
Here are 5 of the funniest “So You Don’t Have To” articles about Nigerian music videos I’ve written this year.
I Watched The Music Video For Styl Plus’ “Call My Name” So You Don’t Have To
For those who don’t know, Styl Plus is an R&B/Pop group that burst onto the scene in the early 2000s with their hit single, “Olufunmi.”. They were so hot at the time that all they had to do was stand on a stage and sing and people everywhere would violently cream their jeans. In 2003, they released a song titled “Call My Name” or as I like to call it, “A Tale Of How A Bunch Of Guys Creep Out A Girl In A Restaurant Just Because She’s Sitting By Herself.” The song is an eternal bop but when you pointlessly dissect it like I’m about to, the storyline is kinda weird.
Read the rest here.
I Watched The Music Video For Daddy Showkey’s “Dyna” So You Don’t Have To
Daddy Showkey (Real name: John Asiemo) is a Nigerian singer. Super famous in the 1990s, he’s a veteran performer whose style of music helped popularise the dance, Galala — or as I like to call it: That one dance that makes you look like a Victorian-era child battling cholera and polio at the same time. In 1996, he released the smash hit titled “Dyna.” The story is straightforward and cliché. It’s about a woman stripper-ly named Dyna and chronicles all the shit she puts up with trying to get pregnant. The unintentional comedy here comes from the way the events play out in the music video.
Read the rest here.
I Watched The Music Video For P-Square’s “Senorita” So You Don’t Have To
For those who don’t know, Senorita was P-Square’s first single off their debut album titled, “Last Night.” It was a smash hit and immediately catapulted them to stardom. The song is about one (or both) of the brothers mourning the death of a woman he (they?) loved.
To quote the iconic Saturday Night Live character, Stefon, the 5 minute and 28-second music video for “Senorita” has everything:
- A love triangle.
- Insane early 2000s fashion.
- A dance break in the middle of the street.
- A weird celebrity cameo you won’t see coming.
- A grass to grace story with details shrouded in mystery.
- A beautiful, gold-digging young woman named Vivian.
- A poorly-filmed accident scene that’ll have you screaming, “How the fuck did that happen?!”
Read the rest here.
I Watched The Music Video For Seyi Sodimu’s “Love Me Jeje” So You Don’t Have To
This song was everywhere. As a human living in Nigeria in the late 90s, you couldn’t avoid the song or its music video. I heard about it for the first time in Sunday school where the teacher told the class — full of children less than 10 years old — that if we listened to this song or any others like it, we were condemning ourselves to an eternity of hot girl summer in hell, right next to other people who sang secular songs, like Fela and Michael Jackson (which is insane because it would be another 12 years before Michael Jackson died). But we’re not here today to talk about my Christianity-inspired childhood trauma. We’re here to talk about the music video for “Love Me Jeje.” I wrote about the music video’s plot a while back but I will be expanding on that today.
Read the rest here.
I Watched The Music Video For Peter Okoye’s Song “Look Into My Eyes” So You Don’t Have To
Peter Okoye — who now hilariously goes by Mr P — is one half of the defunct music duo P-Square. He and his identical twin brother, Paul, burst onto the scene in 2003 and ran things (things didn’t run them) until 2017 when they had a fight and went their separate ways. In 2018, Peter released the video for a song titled “Look Into My Eyes,” proving his determination to carry on the family tradition of violently ripping off Michael Jackson.
Read the rest here.
