On About 30, loser-in-chief Adekunle Gold comes of age

A girl rejected his proposal on ‘Sade’, he was broke on ‘Pick Up’, the video for ‘Ready’ shows him gawking longingly at happy lovers. He couldn’t even get a kiss in the video for the well-titled ‘Friend Zone’.

That is an almost unbroken series of rejection, an unusual phenomenon in Nigerian music, that la-la land of eternal prurience where every male artist is quite the Casanova with a big cassava. But no sooner had we gotten our loser-in-chief than we lost him to success. On his new album About 30, Adekunle Gold is keen to inform us that that phase of his life is over, so perhaps the most telling line on the album comes early on the song ‘Somebody’: “I’ve travelled around the world. I’ve seen a lot of girls/they try to show me love.” Makes you want to say: Oh, Adekunle Gold, who knew fame was the aphrodisiac you were looking for!

For much of the album, you're never far from recognising that change from loser to winner, powered by the twin power of semi-hit music and celebrity. Even when he isn’t talking about romance, it is there in how much he can ignore the question of romantic success. He has said the title nods to his experiences since he turned 30. But really he could have named the album 'From Zero to Hero'.

Bear in mind that he isn’t really gloating about the shift in his circumstance: production on the album is not exactly joyous all through even if there is a noticeable increase in tempo from his cooler debut Gold. You could say About 30 is the work of a man whose living has improved but doesn’t want to alert the neighbours.

On the opener ‘Ire’, we are taken to church in Yorubaland. It is one of those songs that assumes its religious overtones, and decent intentions lend it adequacy. But there is little that the now popular line “If I had known the life I was searching for was looking me right in the eye” delivers to anyone truly seeking novel inspiration. Without the spiritual aura evoked on the haunting gospel chorus, the song is rather like a bland PR jingle for contentment.

Except for portions of the song ‘Fame’, this gesturing towards substance rather than offering it is the bane of much of Adekunle Gold’s songwriting on About 30. At some point he says: “I am looking down at the world from 24 000 feet / and the beauty makes me wonder why anyone would ever doubt / that somebody made the world and everything beautiful.” The line is delivered solemnly like it's all-important, but neither its phrasing nor the sentiment expressed is new.

Fortunately, this weakness doesn’t bury the album and that is mostly because on About 30, Adekunle Gold’s sound is refined, top-notch and varied. The decision to deploy a live band has given heft to Adekunle Gold’s juju music authenticity.

His sonic palette has also expanded. Besides juju music, there is Afrobeat on the song ‘Mr Foolish’, which features Seun Kuti. If it has always seemed like an artist with Adekunle Gold’s image is missing a political edge, it is almost painfully obvious on this song. Kuti takes the opportunity of the title to lambast the African in thrall of the West, a bit rich coming from an artist working in a genre heavily appreciated by white people, but you get his point. For Adekunle Gold though, the song only compels him to utter lines that are neither political nor very funny or foolish.

There is also some Igbo highlife courtesy of the always delightful Flavour on ‘Yoyo’. Along with ‘Somebody’ and ‘Fame’, it is a highlight of About 30. Later there is the drum-driven, rock-inflected ‘There Is a God’. The song ends on the wings of chants by a choir, which going by its inclusion on a handful of songs, seems to be Adekunle Gold’s new discovery.

The song most likely to satisfy those keen of words and music is ‘Pablo’, a song which was inspired by a controversially naughty character on Twitter. The song sees Adekunle Gold go from the personal, his upbringing, to the preachy, in his insistence on the value of hard work. Anyone who thinks of the man as virtuous will not find much to change their mind, but even this group will have to concede the tune’s catchiness.

On About 30, there are songwriting issues that weren’t too obvious on Gold, and his music has gotten better and wider. But the one unequivocally good thing is that we no longer have to hear Adekunle Gold whine about losing all the time.

Buy About 30 on iTunes

Artist: Adekunle Gold
Album: About 30
Label, Year: Afro Urban Records / EMPIRE, 2018