#Throwback! #MusicReview: ‘Open Doors’ by Nosa

Borrowing Glowreeyah Braimah’s words, this album is a kaleidoscope of colours. Nosa’s soul is clearly heavy, featuring varied sub genres of soul, rnb, highlife, reggae, rock, digital afrobeat, and hip hop laced in pidgin, acceptable English grammar and sometimes, stellar anglais. Its themes: the magnificence of God as a father, non-random prayer, spiritual inheritance, no worries, new creation realities and vanity show off Nosa’s understanding of spiritual things. He’s pretty comfy singing in tongues, and I guess that’s cool too.

Nosa’s delivering is own back up vocals adds a gigantic oomph to his already virtuoso songwriting, music arranging. producing and vocal gymnastic performing self! His harmony arrangements remind me a bit of Mela’s with slurs on words that rhyme with ‘ay’, but mostly reminds me of Nosa all by himself.

The soundtrack to ‘Just One Encounter’ has a playful Tye Tribett instrumental flavour, and its fast paced-ness reminds me of the soundtrack to Disney’s ‘The Suite Life of Zack and Cody’, with its delightful electric guitar. ‘Open Doors’, upbeat and brighly melodic, sounds a lot like Paris Hilton’s mid tempo reggae ‘The Stars Are Blind’ record. Nosa’s singular patriotic song with a truly beautiful transposition and a beat similar to Ty Bello’s in ‘Yahweh’ reminds me that we have gospel artistes speaking God’s words into my beloved country, Nigeria. ( Case in point: ‘Land of Promise’ by Ty Bello).

I love the pop/highlife feel of ‘Why You Love Me’. I also fancy how Nosa’s varied pidgin tones change to match the feel and persona of each song, he goes all ‘pidginy’ one minute, and then sings in crisp English the next. His pidgin has an ‘ibotic’ feel on ‘Why You Love Me’, which becomes ‘street smart’ on ‘A Star’ , and he churns out a slight Yoruba pidgin on ‘I Go Stay’ as he chimes ‘tiri’…lol. . I reckon he could do a Congolese tone if the need ever arose.

I also love the percussive feel of this album, though I’m not exactly sure the modulation on ‘No Worry’ was absolutely flawless. Also, I’m not sure I fancy Nosa as a rockstar, but I appreciate when he adds rock elements to his highlife and soul.

Even though ‘Always Pray For You’ was my ‘home song’ for such a long time, my star track on this album is incredibly musically mature ‘Vanity’, with its heavy doses of soul, deliciously repetitive notes and its super alive baseline! I mean it talks about the subject like the book of Ecclesiastes, and somewhere in my my mind, I feel like this track is laced with slight funk, which I absolutely love.

Y’all listen to this album one more time.

#Checckit here!