Nigeria’s Super Eagles get Olamide and Phyno World Cup song

Titled ‘Dem Go Hear Am’, the song was produced by Pheelz and sponsored by the energy company Aiteo in conjunction with the Nigerian Football Federation.

The track, which was officially presented to the public on 9 June at an event in Lagos, is the umpteenth collaboration between the rappers, who first worked together on ‘Ghost Mode’ in 2012. Since then the pair have recorded several singles including ‘Connect’, 'Fada Fada', ‘Onyeoma’ and ‘Augment’. In 2015, they recorded the album 2 Kings.

“This night is special because of our partnership with Aiteo,” NFF president Amaju Pinnick said at the presentation event. “When a company like Aiteo donates 1.2 billion naira [$3.3m] every year to the Nigerian national teams they should be proudly celebrated. Now we are not owing any player a dime because of Aiteo.”

Phyno and Olamide have worked on songs featuring other artists: ‘Local Rappers’ featured Reminisce, ‘Who U Epp’ featured Wande Coal and in 2017 the duo collaborated on Timaya's ‘Telli Person’.

The song ‘Dem Go Hear Am’ is framed as a warning in Nigerian pidgin to prospective opponents of Nigeria’s football team, the Super Eagles. It mentions a number of retired footballers from the Super Eagles team, including midfielder Sunday Oliseh and the late striker Rasheed Yekini.

Besides the chemistry shared by the artists and their descent from two of Nigeria’s major ethnic groups, Igbo and Yoruba, Phyno and Olamide have also been associated with the sponsoring company in the past.

Asked why the pair of Olamide and Phyno for the campaign, critic Toni Kan says: “Aiteo used them for the CAF [Confederation of African Football] Awards ceremony in Ghana and they were the best of the many musicians that evening, The company was probably impressed and decided to use them again when the theme-song opportunity came up.”

While a video for ‘Dem Go Hear Am’ is said to be in the works, the official 2018 World Cup theme song, ‘Live It Up’, by Nicky Jam, Will Smith and Era Istrefi was posted online on 8 June. Watch it below: