Holy Water breaks Temmie Ovwasa’s dry spell

Now that she has decided to quench our thirst with 'Holy Water', our joy is watered by scepticism as a question hangs over her song-releasing process: Will she regress again? The artistry of the singer has been reasserted, of course. But that is all she has managed to do again and again since breaking out with 'Jabole' in 2016. With Temmie Ovwasa, every new song has become a breakout song.

Having ditched her usual facades—the lover and the priestess—she is a different artist on 'Holy Water', stripping down to her self. The result is confrontational, something brave and personal. The listener feels like an intruder, as though he has wandered into a room where the singer is staging a performance for herself behind a translucent curtain.

Holy water might be one of the most popular phrases in the Nigerian music industry but Temmie subverts its usual potency. The spiritual reagent fails for maybe the first time in Nigerian pop. "N holy water can change me / no exorcist can fix me / 40 days and 40 nights / I'll be the same when I rise."

An online commenter mistook 'Holy Water' for a gospel song and not without good reason. The production is mild, its slow-tempo masking the chaos within and Temmie has strutted on the precipice of the divine before. But soul music isn't quite gospel, is it? What we get is a militant number cloaked expertly in ID Cabasa’s avant-garde aesthetic. Here is a young lady striking a defiant pose in the face of the world, not begging for love, not posturing as the baddest bitch in the game, not offering sex to the highest bidder. Instead, she wants to quit attempts at getting her fixed. How much more feminist can a song get? 

Temmie has weaponized neo-soul music but don’t be surprised if her songs politics get ignored or if 'Holy Water' is played in the background when the persons she is asking for a break return with their subjugation agenda—for some, the neo-soul subgenre is better adapted for aesthetics; protest is a messy affair.

The lyricism of the Yoruba language is so stark that when Temmie slips into a crude Yoruba dialect—"Me ma le yi / Me le y’iwa pada o / E ma je n s’aye mi / E ma je n s’aye mi"—the song shifts too. Her voice, reined in until then, breaks forth, confident and a little reckless.

Now that the quality of 'Holy Water' has been established, shall we go on to cast aspersions on her process? The music industry is wild. Grit is the superior virtue. Stagnancy is a sin so every player on the scene is trying to evolve. The industry's big guys and underdogs are constantly collaborating or competing. The necessary question is where is Temmie in the frame?

It might not be clear yet, but Temmie Ovwasa appears to be reaching for something. We may not know what it is, but here is hoping that it is an album.

Buy Temmie Ovwasa's Holy Water here.

Artist: Temmie Ovwasa
Song: Holy Water
Label, Year: YBNL, 2018