Gaga Shuffle: 2Baba returns to comedy

This reaction is the result of 2Baba’s status as one of a few conscious acts in the Nigerian pop music industry. It is also the fault of a partial reading of the 2Baba discography.

For the uninitiated, 2Baba started off as member of a trio called Plantashun Boiz. Their music was mostly love songs. And as a solo act 2face continued in that vein, scoring his most popular hit 'African Queen', a single from his debut album Face2Face. His lover-boy persona took hold. By his second album Grass to Grace, songs like ‘For Instance’ gave him a political outlook.

That album also had the best song 2Baba has written, ‘E Be Like Say’, which combined the political and the personal: the song addressed the deception of politicians and of lovers or friends. Nigerians quickly claimed him as some type of pop messiah. His much talked about humility only added more credibility to his messianism. It is why his decision to protest against the government this year was taken seriously. It is why his reversal was met with widespread condemnation. It is why the new single ‘Gaga Shuffle’ has made some listeners angry.

While this anger, always overheated on social media, might be understandable, it is also borne out of forgetfulness. Of all of the qualities 2Baba (or 2face) has shown over a long career, his humour is the one thing consistently taken for granted.

As early as Face2Face, 2Baba was a funny lyricist. If the love song ‘Right Here’ was delivered straightfaced, ‘Ole’ from the same album was at least clever. “I am calling you ole, cause you stole my heart away” is a line delivered by a young man insisting on conveying his anguish with humour. His first single ‘Nfana Ibaga’ was a lighthearted tune tracing his average day. And he managed to tell a hilarious tale about attending a party with his pals on ‘Keep on Rocking’.

By the sophomore, his humour had become deeply embedded into his music. The video for 'For Instance' was an animated video back when that form was hardly seen as conduit for contemplation. He compared his state of being in love with certain personalities—Mandela, Jay Z, Obasanjo, Bill Clinton among others—on ‘I Dey Feel Like’. Those aren’t tactics favoured by the sober singer social media critics of the new single might have you believe 2Baba is. In fact, subsequently released songs like ‘Implication’ and ‘Iheneme’ seem to have been sung for the inebriated. What made a song as serious as the autobiographical 'Raindrops' from the Unstoppable album enjoyable was the humour within its admonishing chorus: "Young man, be careful and think it twice, before you choose to use...your device."

A clearly activist band like BANTU has spoken about not wanting to be seen as purely political. "I don’t want a situation where people assume we’re just a political band," the group's leader Ade Bantu told Music in Africa recently. "We’re conscious, but at the same time consciously playful." Even the grand patron of Nigerian musical activism Fela was seen a bit of a jokester during his live shows. It is in this spirit the new 2Baba single should be received.

From the video and the song’s lyrics, ‘Gaga Shuffle’ appears to be both a comically bad dance step and a tribute to a friend named Larry Gaaga—On Twitter 2Baba retweeted a message saying, "Talk greatness! Talk about Larry Gaaga, a man of greatness! Happy birthday to an icon." The song alludes to drunken behaviour and features one comedian and several pop acts: One of the P-Square men, Azadus, Timaya, Tiwa Savage—a selection of artists from the first days of contemporary Nigerian pop to those who arrived within the last decade. And the song’s production is taken from the currently dominant mellow vibes inspired by Ghanaian music producer Juls and the singer Mr Eazi, and used on songs like Runtown's 'Mad Over You' and Flavour's 'Sake of Luv'. By pairing comical lines—“As I wan crase, I wan involve you for my f*cking crase”—with music of the moment, 2Baba shows he understands the current craze in African club hits. Unlike D'Banj boasting on the derivative production on 'El Chapo', 2Baba understands irony and plays his own use of trending beats for laughs.

'Gaga Shuffle' is not one of 2Baba's great songs—'Raindrops' may be his last truly great song—and it may be a departure from his own more political songs, but it is no failure and is firmly within the 2Baba tradition. The unrelenting messiness of Nigerian politics might make fans forget just how funny 2Baba could be. But that's hardly his fault.

Artist: 2Baba

Song: Gaga Shuffle

Label, Year: Hypertek, 2017