How Yemi Alade Becomes Biggest Female Artistes in Africa with Lack of Deep Lyrical Content
In the last few days of the year 2016, Nigerian music lovers and pundits fired shots at Yemi Alade over her poor lyrical content in her music which led her to be on top of Nigeria Twitter trend chart for several days, despite been the biggest female artiste in Africa in 2016.
Sometimes in 2014, Yemi Alade rose to limelight with her blockbuster smashing hit single ” Johnny “ which launched her into the Nigerian mainstream market and her rebranding packaging, well executed plan and smooth promotions for her brand gave birth to her debut album ” Kings and Queens “ which received positive review among music lovers, but in early 2016 she releases another album titled ” Mama Africa “ which is a diary of African women.
Although, the album received mixed-reactions among Nigerian fans but was highly welcomed in some other African countries, however the reason for naming that album ” Mama Africa ” wasn’t far-fetch but it was due to her traveling around the African continent which gives her inspiration of new sound for that project.
Putting sentiment apart, Yemi Alade‘s Mama Africa album majorly provide us with continental dancing vibes, and in fact Yemi is a product of her environment, though the criticism she got gradually deluded her from reality.
Yemi Alade did not start her career with an Afrocentric style of music, but she was then seen as an R&B and Urban Pop chick with high dose of sex appeal. While checking back on her 2012 single ” Ghen Ghen “, Yemi was seen singing the kind of music she love in her comfort zone with bouncy, urban and a lot of melodies you will love to dance to.
The outcome of those years effort can simply describe as fruitless effort, because her music was unable to move pass the wishy-washy music of that of Davido and Wizkid that Nigerians consume then which has fast beats, sweet hooks but totally lack lyrical content. All this fruitless effort led Yemi Alade to rebrand her style and her music to the one that can be easily consumed by mainstream market.
After several years of hoping that her music will be welcomed by Nigerians, Yemi Alade and her team went back to the drawing board to re-strategize on how they are going to push her brand to wider audience, and this brought her back to the re-emergence of Yemi Alade in her breakout hit single ” Johnny “, and ever since then she has majorly worked on her selling point of less deep lyrical content alongside with catchy beat that will make you to dance.
The re-emergence into other Africa markets started when she released the French and Swahili version of her songs, in order to tap into other markets. I can vividly remember when one of my friend was in Tanzania and she told me that when she told the Tanzanians that she’s from Nigeria, the response was help me say hello to Yemi Alade and also tell her that we love her music. This strategy of converting her music to other country local language works wonder for her, though music is a global language but giving the consumers in their local language bridges the gap and also help you in buying more people to your style.
No doubt the war between Yemi Alade and Tiwa Savage among Nigerians will continue to go on Twitter, but let not forget how many times we have crown Boogey as best rapper in Nigeria but all those media mentions on Twitter could not convert to shows for him or at least acquire the wealth, fame, awards and veteran status MI,Ice Prince and Olamide has recorded in the last 5 years.
Yemi Alade is a fantastic and talented singer with so much potential than what we are seeing from her right now. Though music is an art and we might be seeing her changing her style in the nearest future because diversification is the greatest thing in life.
Lesson Point : Never change your selling point for society opinion.