by Uche Briggs

You pray for the artiste before you pray for yourself; you check all the blogs each day to find out if there is new material. You rationalize their failures explaining that it was simply a bad day at the office. Every thing they touch becomes gold; and the normal bland statements made in their songs become scripture, patterning your life after them.

I am a Chocolate City fan

While the word ‘fan’  has attained some banal status due to its overuse, one is compelled to explain to the team at Chocolate City what it really means. What indeed does it mean to be a fan? In simple terms, it is when the lines blur between what you want for your self and what you want for your idol. Your life becomes interwoven, unable to extricate it from the one thing you believe completes you. You pray for the artiste before you pray for yourself; you check all the blogs each day to find out if there is new material. You rationalise their failures explaining that it was simply a bad day at the office. Every thing they touch becomes gold; and the normal bland statements made in their songs become scripture, patterning your life after them. You know you are a fan when you may forget your To-Do-List at work but remember every line MI did on Illegal Music 2.

You remember vividly the first time you saw Ice Prince perform at a FAB Magazine’s MoCheedah launch event. You came only to see the Choc Boi and immediately after he is done, you take your leave. You remember the performance with the lucidity of day: Ice Prince waltzing to the stage performing MI’s verse from Somebody Wants to Die with Brymo tagging behind him. You remember vividly as the Oleku beat comes on, with Ice Prince saying: “I’m about to introduce the new Choc Boi signing…” You remember with certainty the look on his face he starts to chant: “I’m about to explode.” You go home with those moments etched eternally in memory; some magical experience that indeed makes everything seem better. You remember MI’s performance of Safe in 2008 at the club opposite Mega Plaza, standing there transfixed while this miniature sized man kept reeling out line after line, wordplay after wordplay, full beast mode activated. You step out of those places hoping to God that the efforts of the stars pay off. This is what it means to be a fan. This is what it means to hold a person in so much esteem that he can do no wrong in your sight.

Ultimately, this engagement by the audience that consumes the artiste’s body of work is what builds up to become his/her brand value. This is what makes up MI’s 400,000 followers on Twitter and this is what becomes the marketing bargaining chip that is brought to the table when endorsements, shows and sponsorships are being negotiated. The love of a fan is earned not demanded. For us to put ourselves in that place where your music constitutes a unique part of our lives, you need to show us how much you merit it. You need to let us know how much regard you have for us. It is in many ways; work ethic, discipline, attitude, your attention to the little things, and a clear commitment that you are working very hard to be better. The entire rant brings me to the crux of this matter: Chocolate City needs to work on their tolerance of dissent.

If anyone should be a huge fan of Pryse, I should be the one. I mean, what else do I expect from an MI recruit nigga? I remember streaming the NOTIS video online. The aftertaste was wrong. So this was it? This is the person we had all been waiting for? However one could not be too critical because there must have been something MI saw. After all this is just a mixtape, she would come correct on her tracks. So it is very amusing when we are tagged as haters because we think that the young lady needs to sit down for the next two years and build on her lyrics, delivery and image.

For an artiste signed on a huge label like CC, the first songs are huge statements of intent. 50 Cent’s In Da Club, The Game’s How We Do, Wizkid’s Holla at Your Boy and Wande Coal’s Bumper to Bumper are cases in point. Let us look at the antecedence of the CBN team: MI (Crowd Mentality & Safe); Ice Prince (Oleku & Superstar); Jesse Jagz (Greatest & Wetin Dey), Brymo (Ara & Good Morning). What are Pryse’s first two singles as a CBN flier: Eleto & Niger Delta Money. Only someone who is mischievous will tell this lady that she is doing great music, to be honest. There is no benign way to tell someone that a song is dead. Her songs are a cry for help and sadly the mentors that she should help are urging her on in the eternal glorification of ineptitude. If there is one thing that has come out of this episode it is that these niggas deal with emotions like bitches and it is a sad sight to see. The same fans that uphold you, that tell you how good a verse is or how impeccable a delivery was, give you one negative feedback and they are suddenly haters? This is very interesting. You’re here screaming your head off on how great Illegal Music 2 and MI2 was and the moment you tell dude Chairman was a weak song, he recoils and lashes at you as a hater? Good God!

While the 360Nobs post was a bit personal, do we want to discard the baby with the bathwater? The response from the label loyalists betrays the deeply flawed thinking. It is almost as though they are compelling us to enjoy something that is so inherently uninspiring. First impressions count the longest and sadly these two songs from the act leaves a lot to be desired. There is no mistaking the fact that the top dogs at CC know that these songs are not that good enough but the belief that they can push them is what drives the release. That itself is unfair to the development of the artiste.

Dear Pryse, the perfect response to critics is to put out a hit and not to get at them on Twitter. Shut me up with decent material not the harrowing work that you have put together so far. The CC team can either work very hard to ensure she gets better or revel in their own ineptitude, pat her on the back and tell her: “You are the baddest Femcee that ever liveth.”

One!

 

PS: CC may want to take another look at the positioning for Pryse. Trying to market someone who is that painful to look at as the Nicki Minaj of Nigeria will fail horribly.

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Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.