10 years later: Modenine’s ‘Cry’ remains relevant

A song of two verses, 'Cry' was released as a single off Modenine's E Pluribus Unum album. With verses in English, the song’s whimpering Igbo chorus was provided by the singer Nnenna. Each verse tells a sober tale. The first follows a woman from her early, glorious days as a university belle to the child-bearing moment and the death of her alcoholic husband who dies on his way to meet his wife in labour.

"Baby kicking, got her crying on the phone/ Honey come home/ So he broke the speed limit/ After he’s drove like he is in a race/ Tryna win it/ Lost control over taking on a bend/ And he was death an untimely end/ Wife gave birth, her joy was that he is a boy/ But cry when she found out she’s a widow.”

Where in an optimist’s telling, the second tale would redeem the first, Modenine doubles the tragedy. First he sketches the friendly pair: “Two young men/ Always topping their peers/ Their parents never thought they would bring home tears.” The boys become cult members at the university. "One night, both gangs had beef/hanging in the atmosphere, they let it out in grief/A face off right in the school premises/That night, they met their nemesis/ They shot each other pointblank eye to eye.”

News of cult killings once was the fodder of the Nigerian media. And where the decline in reports of these events might mean there is a decline in the events themselves, these killings happen still. I have known friends become enemies out of loyalty to their respective gangs, and though they didn’t kill each other, both were maimed when their cults clashed.

Recently it was reported that some cult members stalked a member of a rival cult from Ilorin, and caught up with him on the Eko Bridge in Lagos. They tied his hands behind his back and threw him in the lagoon.

For such a tragic song with social import, it is important that lyrically, only few rap Nigerian songs with conscious themes are comparable. Modenine did win the supreme award for rap heads in Nigeria, Lyricist on the Roll at the Headies, back-to-back for several years. And in its sedateness, the song's production emphasizes the tragedy of its lyrics.

Modenine's rapper colleagues have their own sober songs: MI Abaga has ‘Ash’, a song dedicated to the violently murdered Aluu 4. Reminisce tried his hands on sober, reflective material on 'Where I Come From' and ‘Larger Than Life’. And Olamide has 'Anifowose' and 'I Remember 99'. These are good songs, some currently more popular that ‘Cry’, but they do not quite measure up to 'Cry'.

As for the artist, Modenine is neither mainstream nor underground. Though he calls himself ‘Underground King’, he’s somewhere in the middle. On’ Cry’ he is a griot of sorts chronicling life. Although many see his rap style as highfalutin, and far from street life because of his wit, use of the English language and deployment of punch lines requiring extra attention.

He has been criticized for not rapping in street lingo for people to grab his messages. He is lambasted and called a sell-out whose intention is to please western audience by not rapping in the language his people would feel or understand or relate with. Despite the negative criticism, Modenine has refused to water down his lyrics. As he says in an interview, it is harder for him to write a pidgin song and he cannot rap in Yoruba, that he'd rather quit the rap game. Many years later, the man who made ‘Cry’ is unwilling to dumb down his rap to double his naira.