For Mode Nine and the company he keeps, hip hop is a sacred art that must be handled with care. Or how else can one explain how his discography has swollen with new material and his sound has remained the same? Masterful wordplay, poignant story-telling and effortless rhymes on beats lean on rhythms and heavy on percussion, Mode Nine has kept at it for 14 years and 5 solo albums, giving us a hip hop so close to the original recipe, you will call his music retro.
Modo, 41, and still rapping (shout-out to the American rapper The Game) is probably the most decorated lyricist Nigeria has ever known, with about 6 Headies effigies in his closest. Quite a pity that Nigerian music lovers never had the taste for the dense lyrical meal early 90s hip-hop offered. To win our fleeting attention, you need a little more than sassy word-play (except you are M.I). But then, even M.I had those memorable hooks and that cross-over appeal which initially scored him records sales—a bit too much and it sealed his fate.
I guess we should have a conversation about the economic viability of throwing out new material that sounds retro, but every purist will turn a deaf ear and buy the latest offering of Nigerian’s most consistent emcee, Mode Nine. It was in his reign as midwife that hardcore/conscious rap music negotiated its way into making a cameo in mainstream Nigerian music. It has since reclined underground to the occasional basketball court where ciphers hold.
Insulin is 21 tracks long with production credits from Teckzilla, Black Intelligence, Chordless, XYZ and stellar Malawian, Dominant One. In terms of musical accomplishment, at the risk of stating the obvious, Mode Nine’s rap measures way above your average Nigerian rapper. This album has no hang ups about asserting bragging rights or frolicking in the familiar terrains of hip-pop. It is close to traditional poetry, Modo being the street poet and polymath (he keeps calling himself this track after track) running commentary about issues from North-Eastern Nigerian terrorism all the way down to female groupie mentality.
Expectedly, the album starts with its title, Insulin, which begins like a cipher; a kid’s voice comes on saying, “Mode Nine is the best rapper”. Mode Nine claims both the throne and mic, with Jimmy Jatt in agreement with both claims. Next up is the Black Intelligence produced Open your eyes featuring Jeremiah Gyang (doing the mournful throaty Hausa chorus) which tells the story of the immigrant experience, of two brothers, flotsam playing out different scenario of moral choices.
My country features the female vocalist, Amuta, whose voice also graced the tepid Blind man’s symphony. She was assisted on the hook by Rockstar (also featured on the lukewarmWarriors) whose voice is reminiscent of Orits Wiliki. This incisive song registers itself as one of those sad-type commentary songs about that conundrum called Nigeria.
On The sound, something new happens: Modo raps on a female producer’s beat for the first time. The producer is the female emcee, Blaise and of course, his flows are as air-tight as ever. Hear Mode Nine basking on the chorus, “And I am at peace with the sound, never go back because my fan holds me down”. The chorus drawls in a manner reminiscent of Lloyd Banks, memorably subtle.
The next song is the Dominant One produced Same Girl which pays homage to those female fans better known as Band Aids. Mode Nine humorously brings that metaphor from the Almost Famous film home. Even underground lyricists have their fair share of female sycophants who yearn for that plush c’est la vie. Bye Felicia adapts Ray Charles’ Hit the Roadand whilst it is not quite Kanye West’s Gold Digger, Amuta’s singing makes it a scintillating listen. Standout female vocalist Maka, fresh from AQ’s Rose, jumps on No Matter What, issuing a hook that seemed to instigate the truth out of Mode Nine’s vocal cords.
Then, the album lulls. It lapses into the attitude of tarnished brass beats and formulaic rap delivery typical of every album with too many songs. The principle of less being better than more is lost on our quadragenarian with his myriad of vignettes mostly about his travails on the purist path he has chosen. Nasir Jones’ classic, Illmatic, lasts a little longer than thirty minutes and that was far back in the early 90s. We are more than a decade into the new millennium with the latest bug spread by the internet being inattention. At 75 minutes, Mode Nine’s Insulin Therapy could cause iatrogenic hypoglycemia.
The most outstanding song in the second half of the Insulin album is that song dedicated to the Police, the largest armed gang in the world. Through vignettes happening in different cities of the world, the widely travelled Modo describes the stereotype of black males which has sadly not been detached from violence or impending violence.
The music in Insulin is prescribed to combat societal ills. It is not quite the critic’s work to audit the potency of prescribed treatments especially the type doomed to the fate of an unredeemed prescription paper. This is the cruel fate of the fluid street poetry of underground rappers sidelined from the mainstream by songs about ‘waist.’
0 comments:
Post a Comment