by Alexander O. Onukwue

If you don’t talk money, don’t show up. I’m a Hitler, I’m Abacha.

We’ve been fed constantly by the flows and rhymes of often not-so-tasty lyrics of music for as long as we can all remember. It did not begin with “Living Things” and it sure won’t end with it.

For good reasons, Falz has criticised the lyrics of the club banger released by 9ice in March. Club goers are rocking to it, as they have always rocked to other good beats straight outta the studios of all our ‘wicked producers’.

Falz’s comments have been received differently by different people, with some pointing to his own words in songs that have not exactly glorified good behaviour. It comes down to the fact that, for you to sell in Nigeria and in most other branches of the music industry around the world, you don’t necessarily have to pass great sense in your words. Damn, it is even affecting non-secular music. Some songs have used words that make you double-check your food items shopping list, others make you question the content of what you previously assumed was an innocent pack of fruit-juice.

The matter of whether these messages are positive or not are subjective.

Listeners want to be left alone to determine what they find useful or not.

The noncritical reception that follows every hit song that comes with a good danceable beat has made sure artists really don’t have to care what the words they say mean; just make it something we can all dance to and you will have hammered.

It did not begin with “Living Things”; we, the living things that have enjoyed these things, have enabled it.

Editor