Wo!! is Olamide’s call to the streets

On ‘Summer Body’ the artist known for his manic release of hit singles and yearly albums seemed to be settling, finally, into the mediocrity that has plagued mid-career artists like Dbanj. It appeared he was trading his street savvy for international exposure. He was finally following a trend as opposed to defining it.

But in ‘Wo!!’, Olamide arrests what would have been a sorry development. Here, as in many of his hit songs, Young John (the wicked producer) is doing some heavy lifting. Olamide’s work in making the local rapper an accepted, even celebrated part of pop culture is recognised, but rarely, if ever, is Young John’s work as a local producer emphasised. On ‘Wo!!’, his beat is similar to that made by proto-fuji ajiwere groups that used to roam the streets and beat pots and pans on the streets of South west Nigeria. It is sparse, simple and extremely danceable.

Olamide opens the song with a hook that follows the pulsing sound of a countdown beep. “Wo” is Yoruba for see, but in Olamide’s mouth, as on the streets he swears allegiance to, it is an arrogant, aggressive calling of attention. He punctuates every line with the word. The hook is directed at the listener, demanding that she dances properly—like daddy, like mummy, like a rich man, not like a poor man.

“Won ni wo n wa wa n’gboro,” he says. “They say they’re looking for us in the streets”—a self-referential line that suggests he’s aware of the implication of the bourgeois and sterile ‘Summer Body’. ‘Bobo’ and ‘Who you Epp’ were the last quintessential Olamide songs—one creating the shakiti dance, the other popularising a slang—so he knows there should be a search party out for his reputation, even if no one is ready to doubt his abilities or discount his influence. Yet.

On Olamide’s debut single, ‘Eni duro’, he screamed “mo ti da gobe sile.” On ‘Wo’ he says, “A de si ma fa gobe.” He is back with a promise that there’s room for the commotion he caused upon his entry to the music scene.

When he mentions Sanyeri in the last line of the first verse, he’s telling the listener he’s not a comedian, for that is the name of Nigerian actor Olaniyi Afonja, who became popular starring in Yoruba comedy films alongside perpetual meme-generating actor Odunlade Adekola. Olamide’s lyrics are filled with obscure references like this, both a way of coding his music for his audience on the streets and also making a snapshot of the times he grew up in.

On the last verse, he doubles down, repeating sounds of consonant and vowel pairs—shakiti, faka fiki, a bi di, shaba gidi, waka-wiki, kaakakiki—creating what is close to ena, a form of alteration to defined patterns, which Yoruba speakers use when communicating with the intent of eliminating the uninitiated. It is a strange aspect of the Yoruba language, so why is Olamide doing this?

The final verse of ‘Wo!!’ gives a clue. He mentions Aunty Shakira, a line that can be taken, wrongly, as referencing Colombian singer Shakira, who is famous for her dancing. But Olamide’s Shakira is an elebolo, a more obscure word for prostitute than olosho.

“Aunty Shakira dance shakiti,” he says. She says she likes to “faka fiki”, a sound used by children in describing trains and an adult euphemism for sex. He claims she wants to blow his “kakaki,” a long metal trumpet in North Nigeria.

Olamide has been in PR trouble before for the sexual content of ‘Story for the gods’. So his deployment of coded language limits his audience’s understanding. He sings of a grateful fan who wants to show appreciation.

‘Wo!!’ became instantly popular partly because Olamide asked that dance videos be made and posted online for a prize. The dance videos went viral, and one of them was inserted into the song’s official video. But with popularity comes scrutiny, so perhaps the additional coding in that last verse is deserved.

“What makes the song is the beat,” wrote Adrian Chen in the New Yorker. On first listen, Chen’s aphorism seems true of Olamide’s ‘Wo!!’. But beneath beat and dance, Olamide’s words do more than he’s given credit for.

He is not rapping—at least not in the hardcore sense of the word—but by choosing Young John’s proto-fuji sound, and chanting on it in coded Yoruba, Olamide has sent a dog-whistle to his fans on the streets. He is back to being the local rapper they know.

Artist: Olamide

Song: Wo!!

Label, Year: YBNL, 2017