EP Review: Lojay and Sarz rightfully demand your attention

That’s the moment newcomer Lojay learns he has a song featuring Wizkid, one of Africa’s pop music superstars. It is not the kind of feature a newcomer gets. It is not easily obtained by old-timers either. But when your co-star is Sarz, one of the architects of the contemporary Naija sound, there is hardly anyone you can’t reach in Nigeria’s music industry.

In any case, you can now listen to the song that got Lojay surprised. It’s titled ‘LV N ATTN’, a tribute, perhaps, to social media spellings. It is the title track of Lojay’s brand-new EP and is the first time Sarz is a co-star since co-helming the I Love Girls with Trobul EP with Wurld in 2019.

The sound on the new EP is more mainstream – that is, it is similar to the sort of sounds with which Sarz made his name years ago.

One reason for this, I guess, is a lot of what Sarz puts out these days are a showcase for the producer’s versatility. At the start of his career, you could trust Sarz to douse songs with rampant drums and his co-conspirators were artists looking for exactly that, if only to get a horde of their countrymen dancing. At the time, the idea he would work with an act with the avant-garde stylings of Wurld seemed impossible. But that was then. Right now, whatever the assignment, Sarz will serve. After all, the man who produced Wizkid’s ‘Sound It’ back in 2014 is the same man behind Wurld/Sarz’s ‘Sade’.

Another reason for the new EP’s texture goes all the way back to 2017, the year Lojay put out ‘Midnight Vibes’, a body of work clearly inspired by the mainstream sounds of the time. The record holds up nicely, even as it was hardly distinctive from other Nigerian pop songs of the time. It didn’t quite make it out of the piles and piles of songs put out in any one year – but his sound must have been enough to catch Sarz’s attention when the two met. From Lojay’s initial one-song plan around the start of the pandemic last year, Sarz jacked up that plan to the 5-tracker released this morning.

The new EP adds Sarz’s sophistication to Lojay’s obvious vocal talent. This is perceptible on the project’s first single ‘Tonongo’, which might have the first Star Wars-inspired metaphor in Nigerian music – “if you be my Leia, will I be your Han Solo?” A slow burn track, ‘Tonongo’ introduces the love theme of the project as well as the smooth chemistry between Lojay and Sarz.

A mid-tempo vibe pervades the project, giving Lojay quite the opportunity to display his vocals, which are super-suited for a particular kind of Nigerian R&B-pop. That subgenre and the ultra-audible youth in his larynx puts him in the same group as other Sarz collaborators like Flash and young Wizkid.

For his part, Sarz brings in a little of his work from other acts to the project. There are the drums from his early career; there is some South African house, which is linked to his work with Niniola (on ‘Monalisa’); and there is a general sense of subtle experimentation that can be traced to his work with Wurld (chiefly on EP highlight ‘Panty!’).

Besides the musical merits of an equal (or semi-equal) collaboration, it is clear Sarz has put his name on LV N ATTN for business reasons: it ensures more attention is paid to the record than was paid to Lojay’s ‘Midnight Vibes’. The trouble with this is the risk of the more popular artist getting all the attention. I hope that doesn’t happen here, if only because Lojay’s musical talent suggests the singer deserves his own – you guessed it – love and attention.

Stream LV N ATTN here

EP: LV N ATTN
Artist: Lojay and Sarz
Label: Metallic Music/ 1789