We have to admit that as millennials, we all want shorter, snappier and good content. Actually, we’ve long admitted that already, but well, it’ll be good to always act like we know it. Despite needing to watch music videos as part of my job, I’m guilty of scrolling through many, yet, they’ll continue to exist. But just like it’s the strongest ones among them that eventually survive, same would be for the artist who can make us return to watch their video releases more than just once. A music video is an art form.

The reason we go back to watch a music video is to see the artist’s general creative expression and vision. We are drawn in when there’s something actually interesting to watch. Just enough to make 5 minutes of an afternoon worthwhile –an affirmation of art-making as not a means to an end, but a reason for being. To mention a few in this sense (perhaps out of this sense),

In July, Odunsi released his music video for “Vanilla”, a very straightforward song with accompanying, equally easy to understand visuals. The team effort put into creating near paradisiacal experience as we watch TheEngine dance his way around the vegetation and beach houses, struggling to keep viewers through a 4 minutes show, (approx.) hoping that he’d just…stop it.

Not that Odunsi couldn’t have hit the grade being a lone man in the video—it’s abundantly clear that Odunsi seeks to explore small budgeted videos, judging from his first; “Desire”. The entire premise of the video revolves around beach-side greenery and how the video team digitally manipulates the vegetation to produce vibrant purple lawns in which Odunsi struggles to comfortably enjoy alone. The problem however, isn’t that Odunsi’s videos have thus far been small budget, it’s that they are clearly lacking creative/artistic initiative. We are forced to take it just as he presents it: playfully and un-seriously. When you see videos like Bjork’s who often shoots one-(wo)man videos as well (think “Venus As A Boy”), “Vanilla Freestyle”  just pales in comparison.

A month later, Lady Donli releases her music video for “Kashe Ni”, a colourful themed video with lush colours and millennial fixations with, self-expression style and relaxation. We see Donli and her camaraderie ‘act cool’ for the complete duration of a music video with ultimately no actual content to hold on to.  The problem we’ve had with seeing these category of new guys perform, as you may have witnessed both in reality (at the Lemon Curd or NATIVELAND), and in music videos is the the decision to bask in a particular aura of laid-backness that it appears they define as cool. It’s however not all we want to see.

The most important tool for navigating the world of ‘being cool’ is the ability to own it with meaningfulness. In an era where we have a swamp of artists who aim to be specially different through the rejection of convention, the least to expect is something substantial enough for a crossover triumph. What we’ve gotten however sometimes feels like a toe-dip into something run-of-the-mill, elevated by loosely narrated videos that one can manage to watch just once.

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