More wahala for Fireboy DML in Eli

3 Aug 2020 - 18:15

On songs about girls, such as Fireboy DML’s heart-wrenching ‘Eli’, the blooming Nigerian singer is at his level best. It is why since his first outing in 2018 with ‘Jealous’ under the guidance of mentor and label boss Olamide, the 24-year-old has secured himself a spot among the new generation of Nigerian creatives owning the upper reaches.

Fireboy DML.

Fireboy’s debut LP Laughter, Tears and Goosebumps (2019) spills with the melodious softness that defines his voice and underlines all great love songs. With ‘Eli’, which precedes his sophomore collection Apollo, the man consolidates his forte.

The song’s title derives from the infamous biblical temptress Delilah, and follows a wahala–bringing belly dancer whom Fireboy is entangled by. Initially, she strikes him as merely a seductive waist-twirling expert. Elsewhere in verse 2, beset by compassion, he reads her as a woman trapped by loneliness and in need of love – not regular love, but affection of a “dutty” kind.

The line that separates love from madness is thin. In one moment, Fireboy, stupefied by Delilah’s moves, proclaims, “I like her / I like her”. In another, during the song’s hook, he’s soliciting for help: “Someone come save me, save me from Delilah.”

A Capital Dreams video interprets Fireboy's mental chaos with buoyant colour and polish. Like the song it accompanies, the video also references Chinese themes, this time in costume and calligraphy.

‘Eli' arrives a month after ‘New York City Girl’, a record that relates of Fireboy’s request for a chance at love from a woman who must leave by summer. In the notions they confront, the two songs share similarities: both women are strangers whose presence induces head scratching. In both instances, their suitor, though rightfully recognising a question mark about his interest, still wants in. All love is a risk, but whereas an older man dips one careful foot after the other, a 24-year-old, burning with youthful passion, plunges in head-first. And more so for Fireboy who attests to the elders' sentiments about what a person’s name says about him.

Pheelz, who helms the song’s production, deserves double points for marrying Asian bamboo flute music with essences of Afrobeats, smooth R&B, emphatic dancehall kicks and earnest guitar riffs. Over the years, mainly as a sidekick to Olamide, Pheelz has reigned as dance commander. For a producer to deserve legendary status, he must thrive in calmer registers too. Teaming up with an artist of Fireboy’s vocal subtleties proves what a consummate architect he is. To borrow a phrase from the famous Ghanaian pallbearers, "solemn or with a bit of display", Pheelz 'Mr Producer' has shown up and shown out, and brilliantly so.

‘Eli’ is not merely a musically rich submission but also indicates the expansive plethora of that sounds that the Afrobeats label can accommodate. "The genre does not have an identity crisis," it’s practitioners will be quick to point out. It’s just got a malleable personality, for which reason it’s well never runs dry. Its foundations must definitely be African, but there's also space for experimentation, leveraging the artist's many other musical persuasions. One hears this on 'Eli' with stimulating freshness.