What should a music artist in Nigeria sound like in 2024? A singer who can ‘actually’ sing? A rapper with melodies? Or a hybrid who treads the soft spot of singing and rapping?
We all know the artists who can do what and what. But how about emerging artists — the ones tasked with breathing life into a genre that seems to have hit a creative rut? The young tastemakers, genre-benders, and innovators.
What about Lil5ive?
Born Anthony Osekaje, he’s been active in the music space since 2019 with a slew of singles and an EP called Dreams & Imaginations. For his second trick this time around, Lil5ive decided to keep it short and sweet with his sophomore EP, Pain Diary, clocking in at four songs and 10 minutes.
Let us take a critical look at this project one song at a time. Come along.
On Pain Diary, the eponymous first song on the tape, Lil5ive, starts off reciting a time stamp (November 30, 2020) reminiscent of a typical Drake song on a piano loop. But he quickly switches to a sort of internal monologue which doubles down as a call to an unseen party, “Welcome to my Pain Diary, yeah, I hope you feel my pain dialing.” It’s such a brilliant opener.
He then gets some weighty thoughts off his chest: women, lost friends, restitution, hustle, unrequited love, and God. The typical troubles plaguing any young man today. As the song progresses, horns increase the tempo, giving it an opera feel. Lil5ive has been through a lot. R.I.P. to the lost ones.
The music segues to a bouncy beat that makes the EP come alive. No More is a song where a man wants to make peace with his partner after multiple fights. Both parties are throwing subliminal shades and are keeping malice. She thinks he prioritizes other seemingly unimportant things over her. But nobody wins when the family feuds. So Lil5ive doesn’t want to ‘fight no more.’
As a Nigerian, are you working hard enough if no one complains that you…work too hard? Well, maybe cos you’re not, or they just don’t know what hard work looks like. Either way, hustle oh. Abeg!
In the third song, Wonder, we find Lil5ive floating on a bouncy beat with a sung-rap flow, waving a middle finger to his haters and thanking his Chi for blessings. The hook ‘I ain’t tryna say I’m perfect, I ain’t tryna sleep on my talent’ melds perfectly with some nice bars interpolated with lamba. Homie rhymed ‘condom’ and ‘bum bum’ in the same bar. Naija men sha and ashewo. But no be our fault, yeah? Ask DML.
On the project’s closer, the music takes a genre exploration into a mash-up of folk interspersed with drops of water. Is he crying? Is he sweating? He is talking to a Lonely Child and letting them know help is coming. Pain? Fear? Anxiety? All of these are normal to Lil5ive, so he encourages the lonely child, yet tells them to pray to escape death.
But is he talking to himself?
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