Yellow: Is Brymo Coming Apart?
The singer as whoever he portrays himself to be is a preserver of history and language, happenings and events, lingos and slangs, borrowed from the past, and traveling with it through time. As a chronicler, he archives the daily happenings of the people, and paths forward revolutionary thinking in dire times and even at the surge of death. The singer positioned on a high pedestal of cultural ideals doesn't diminish the elevated language, culture, and poetical style of the subject he represents.
Brymo- as this Singer, is known for his diatribe on social happenings, morality, philosophy, politics, and cultural maxims; but on what merit are these truths been projected in Yellow, his seventh studio album?
Olawale Olofooro's renaissance in the music industry in 2013 was followed by the relative success of his third studio album Merchants, Dealers & Slaves, Tabula Rasa and Trance. The singer had to put behind him what seemed to be a commercial failure of the pre-2013 era, and a colossal fallout with the Chocolate City boys, holding on to his ideals- a poetics of morals and philosophical teachings crafted into Yoruba and Lagos- street creole. He found his own voice by finessing ballads, alt-rock, folk, afrobeat, and soul which were neither here-nor-there during his early years. His mannerism of storytelling and genre is common among the class of 70s, with Segun Bucknor a closer of the proponent: this has gained him cult followership, a tag his fans regard elitist.
While Brymo has successfully lit this path with sprints of successes, like every other creative, he has gained from the ability to borrow from an influence greater than him, and to this point, graciously represented the influence. In March 2018, Brymo proved to have come in a full circle of Harold Bloom's theory, with his sixth studio album Oso, which is a testament of the singer's craft- influenced by a tribe, a group of urban bourgeois, street elites; what I feel is still the best album to his name. With Oso, he strings a near-perfect representation of this divide, creating utility at its peak, and doing no wrong with each track; but with Yellow, the Singer heads for an anti-climax. What changed?
When Harold Bloom said "Give a man of talent a story to tell and his partiality will presently appear", one thinks of Brymo. In Yellow, Brymo's interference with meaning and his complications with words reveals itself, as he tries to impose himself, his partiality, into the original context of which language might have been used by the tribe he represents, or make meaning and thematic concerns clumsy and ambiguous. The Album is grouped into three sections with an unequal numbering of six, five, four. Section A and B have Brymo with heightened language, and a pinch of shoptalk wrapped up in Lagos pidgin, while Section C shows his cultural identity and his desire to act as cultural custodian; sadly, Brymo falls short, with gaps in his chains and choice.
Espirit de Corp is a story of minions and pawns, with truth as scare commodity, a reflection of what entails in politics, business, unions, relationship, and life. 'Bitch', 'witch' 'snitches', 'blackmail', 'kiss and tell'- all appendages of the thematic concerns, this fairly done. But with Blackmail, the Singer makes the simple, complex; and underwrites the notion of love and blackmail. While the singer is free to manipulate language in pursuit of a story to tell, one begs and search for meaning as there seems to be a twist in the representation of blackmail within the lines of the first verse, the second, the chorus, and how the singer represents the victim of said Blackmail. If Ferdinand De Sasseur had argued that language and meaning is arbitrary; in the context of song as a text, Brymo should have considered that meaning shouldn't be difficult to find.
While 'Ozymandias' remains my album favorite, it is hard to shy away from the singer's clumsiness on the subject matter, confining metaphors and themes to fit his own vocabulary abstractions. Ozymandias could pass for political revolt between the subject and the ruled. However, the first verse leaves a lot to be considered: if this solely lies between the discourse of politics, hubris, or of love. Shelley as an influence had used Ozymandias as a metaphor for power, command, legacy, and how time humbles all, but Brymo once again leaves his listeners to search for meaning through his mind's eye, not through the lyrics of the song.
In the pop track "Heart Break songs are Better In English" one is left to bemoan at what the singer aims at achieving with his flamboyant title and the irony of him not writing in plain words. So many cut-and fix storylines in between the heightened piano sound, light drums, and electric strings. Obviously, Brymo needs another single to explain why Heartbreak songs are better in English.
The sentimental ballad 'Strippers and white Line' and the light pop sound 'Black Man and Black Woman' are metaphors for mental slavery, social misconstructions, and gender politics, but to what degree of metaphorical compositions are these expressed. It seems the singer has a zenith he keeps trying to attain, and at every attempt, he stretches his border lines, exposing his frailties and shortcomings.
With what seems to be one of the many cupid's follies and an appeal for true affection, Brymo redeems himself with 'Woman' and 'Gambu'. These two tracks assert Jessica's voice in Merchant of Venice 'Love is blind'
The singer as whoever he portrays himself to be owes his responsibility to the class or influence he borrows from. His anxiety lies in finding his voice within the tenets of the greater influence. 'Adedotun' and 'Orun Moruu' complement each other, on the dais of cultural conventions. Brymo explores the Yoruba folklore, Yoruba aphorism, and moonlight stories, with a rendition of light bata drums that foreground folk tales and ballads. These two remind us of the masterpiece Brymo created with Oso, and one only wonder what went wrong with Yellow.
While 'Adedotun' pitch the singer as a peddler of hope, with time being the only true revealer of things, 'Orun Moruu' a ballad, etch the singer as a storyteller; one who recounts a gossip between the King, his palace chief, and his wives. As Bloom said, the singer "has certain observations, opinions, topics, which have some accidental prominence, and which he disposes of all to exhibit. He crams this part and starves that other part"; this explains the singer’s deliberate injunction of ‘Olori loun rofo loba n sanra, Olori lo n roka Loba n sanra’, which could mean his interference with the role-play between the King and his wife. If Brymo’s attempt was to weigh the gender politics in Yoruba culture, then a lot was left undone.
'Rara Rira' and 'Brain Gain' shows the effect of Lagos lifestyle and city life on the singer. 'Brain Gain' tells the stories on the street: the hardship and hard life, while Rara Rira, a mix of alternative pop song and folk percussion, brings back his mantra from Tabula Rasa, living life a day at a time, cause nothing ever is promised
In Afeedu faana, the singer finds himself again. Falling apart, Brymo needs to put this song on repeat, learn from the aphorism in his lyrics, compare notes, and correct the mistake done in this album in subsequent works.
The singer's voice is still powerful as he has the ability to use language and cone philosophical sentiments as he sole pleases, but underwhelming to complicate language and meaning. Once the song leaves the final phase of production, the death of the singer is complete, and the birth of the listener is ransomed. With Yellow, meaning is fragmented and the listener is lost.
