The first time I heard this song, I was lying on the twin bed of an AirBnB in Ibadan. It was a hot afternoon (aren’t they all?) and Twitter was the only thing to fill my time as I waited to meet up with friends later that evening.
I opened a video of Benin singer and I see songwriter, Rema, drifting on-screen in a boat, a thick curvy wake behind him and two thick curvy women beside him. The women obeyed the lyrics of the song and put their all into making their supple booties bounce, while Rema alternated between performing the song and steering the boat. The caption of the tweet promised one of the two women to Rema’s mentor and record label head, Don Jazzy.
As a fellow disciple of the temple of yansh, I’m immediately hooked on the song. I sharply ran to my YouTube Music app to find the track and connected my phone to my Bluetooth speaker. Yes, I am a fan of Rema. My personal playlist is full of my favourite works from him; the half-political, half-sexy Rewind, the 2020 anthem to the more beautiful half of the human race, Woman, followed by a lamentation, the relaxing jam aptly named Peace of Mind. I’m always eager to add another Rema masterpiece to my altar of his discography.
I found the song on my music player soon enough. The album art looks like the artist was tripping on LSD when he created it: there’s a giant teddy bear with a curvy babe you want to die for until you see her face; a skull with pink attachment. A thousand Remas are fighting all around, too. Basically, it’s something out of my malaria nightmares. It represents Rema’s cartoonish, quirky style which he’s always had since his Dumebi days.
Booty Bounce starts simple enough, immediately announcing to us listeners that Don Jazzy was responsible for this mad beat. It’s the kind of beat you find yourself dancing to even before the lyrics come on. The beat rolls on until Rema proclaims, as he always does, that this is “Another. Banger.” He’s rarely ever wrong, and definitely not on this song.
The synth, drums and violin strings join the sweet beat and make you want to jump off your seat. Rema jumps in with the sentence that’s repeated perhaps a hundred times through the song.
“Girl, I’m in love with your booty bounce.”
After you hear this line 47 more times, Rema informs us that he has already weighed the bum-bum, and it weighed an astounding 1 000 pounds. That’s 453.592 kilogrammes if you prefer using the metric system. Like a Fast and Furious movie, I’m not exactly interested in the physics and biology of this claim. If Rema says it is so, then it is so.
The Bad Commando also tells his woman with the jaw-dropping posterior that he would put in a total of seven rounds of knacks. Nigerian men are often found making boasts like this. They end up putting in seven pumps and calling it a day, so I’d advise this babe to take this claim with a pinch of salt.
Meanwhile, the Iron Man singer and songwriter, which was selected by former President Obama in his 2019 Summer Playlist, worships her posterior, praising it for being “original, no be that kind black China,” a witty double entendre playing on China’s reputation for substandard exports and at the same time, making reference to American model Black Chyna and her surgically-enhanced body. Omo.
Rema decided to do away with the normal knee-on-the-ground, diamond-ring-in-hand proposal, instead directly imploring the babe that is scattering his head to “be my wife, make I be your nnanyi.” “Nnanyi” Igbo of Nigeria is a nickname for one’s husband.
Before we know it, Rema takes control of this rollercoaster again by driving us to the kitchen. He then lets loose a string of lines that came straight from a cookbook. See below:
Chop you like kilishi
Pеpper me, girly, odeshi
Odeshi which translates to “there’s no pain” is a black magic ritual used to repel bullets, hailed by hunters, security forces and unknown gunmen.
Rema isn’t done feeding us:
“Shey you wan chop Italian
Shey you wan chop Chinese,”
Source: Classified
The verse winds down to my favourite lines of the track:
“And if you open your Pandora
I go give you everything wey you need.”
If you’ve read Works and Days, by the ancient Greek philosopher Hesiod (I can feel you rolling your eyes), you’ll understand this reference.
Pandora’s Box is the mythological artefact in possession of Pandora, the woman given to Prometheus’ brother by Zeus in order to punish Prometheus for stealing his fire – you know what? Let’s move on.
Right after, Rema lets loose a steady fire of lines, mixing in some of his signature gibberish lyrics to a melody that will move your body without your permission. Don Jazzy’s synth remains audible in the background, distinct without overwhelming Rema’s endless chant of “booty bounce.”
Another part I loved is the line where Rema quips: “Baby girl, no go play me like Woody.”
Here, Rema is begging not to be played like Andy’s pull-string cowboy ragdoll from Disney’s famous Toy Story movies. As a big fan of the animated movie series (don’t shame me), I immediately understand, and love, this line.
After, this synth beat drops off suddenly, leaving Rema’s rapid-fire verse chopping, like Wile E. Coyote running out of cliff in a Roadrunner cartoon, while the previously steady beat starts to gain momentum. The verse ends with Rema begging Blessing not to killi person, abeg o.
While it is truly “another banger,” this bop also serves to show that Don Jazzy’s production hasn’t been impeded by his new skit-making hobby or philanthropy. I strongly believe that the duo of Rema and the former Mo Hits producer might bless us with songs that remind us of the Don Jazzy and Wande Coal hit-making era. I’m super excited about all the things Rema and Don Jazzy are cooking in the Mavin’s Headquarters. With Rema merely at the start of his career, we can expect to hear many other bangers. I’m super excited about this. We can only watch and wait.
