Where is TemiDollFace?

There’s hardly a Nigerian won’t fondly recollect the cool moves, weird looks and catchy phrases from the 2013 pop song, Pata Pata. This was Temi Dollface’s chance; her way into the hearts of many Nigerians who’d previously seen her as a quirky doll-faced girl with more than enough clothes to play with.

She’d grown up in England and had even been signed on to Sony Records for five years from when she was 20 years old. Her quirky and even-more-unusual-than-Asa sounds were not about to be diluted by the same kind of things that saturate the  Nigerian music market.

So we waited. Moving at a pace she alone dictated as she received four AFRIMA nominations at the All Africa Music Awards for “Best Video”, “Revelation Of The African Continent”, “Best African Pop Song” and “Most Promising African Artiste On The Continent” all for her Pata Pata. We waited on her very colourful Instagram page as she teased us with her hat-making and sewing skills. With photos of her stylish aunts and mum and even grandmas and the gems they had passed on to her with which she styled her #WhatTemiWoreNext looks.

Our wait was finally rewarded with three Temi DollFace musicals in 2016. She first released her Just Like That (Story) which somehow did not garner as much attention as should have but her “SchollYour Face” released shortly after and did quite well. The video had a very military feel to it Temi has been reported to have described the song as her creative attempt to “play with contrasts and words in a similar manner to what I do with clothes”.

The song has over 12,000 views on Youtube and it enjoyed considerably wide airplay after she released it in March of 2016.

She then topped 2016 off with “Beep Beep” which almost topped off the attention that her first single, Pata Pata got. Beep Beep is a 1930’s love song that is nothing like what Nigerians are used to but still somehow resonates and fits into the pop movement currently shaking up the Nigerian music scene. VivaNaija’s review of the song stood out when they described it as “gorgeous. Strands of afrobeat mix with strains of Jill Scott. I hear nu-soul, I hear funk. Janelle Monáe sat with Erykah Badu in a burlesque cafe and had tea with Fela. I love, love, love everything I hear.”

Since Beep Beep, it’s been very quite from the Temi quarters. And although the song was released with the promise of an album in the offing, it is the quiet from the music side of things that is worrisome. It is the fact that we have not seen anything from Temi’s Instagram since last year. That Joy Division too has been silent lately.

The last Instagram post from Temi DollFace.

While we heard she was physically sited at last weekend’s Jameson party, her virtual absence means we have neither heard a new song nor marvelled at her #Awedacious sense of style from the #WhatTemiWoreNext series.

 

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cool good eh love2 cute confused notgood numb disgusting fail