WurlD’s new project is contagious

Born Sadiq Onifade, the blue-haired singer, on his 9-track EP Love is Contagious, fuses these influences to dazzling results.

The EP kicks off with ‘Show You Off’, a 2016 song featuring production credits from Walshy Fire of super-producer group Major Lazer and Shizzi, the man responsible for curating a considerable number of Davido’s hits and who has his fingerprints on six songs from the EP.

On ‘Show You Off’, WurlD earnestly tells a love interest his plans to show her off to the world. There’s a renewed freshness to it that it is bound to capture first-time listeners.

Coming after ‘Show You Off’ is ‘Contagious’, an Afro-juju bop that, as its title suggests, infects with its unbridled joyousness. WurlD reminds listeners that happiness is the best remedy for an ailing world. ‘Gbemisoke’, a house-influenced banger picks the baton from ‘Contagious’. When this song comes on in clubs and parties, it will cause bodies to sweat and gyrate.

‘Paranoid’, the fourth track, is a melodious mixture of drums and flute-like chords. It has a mid-tempo rhythm that, like its predecessors, suggests head-bobbing, but listening closely to its lyrics, the listener is quick to realise this is no sweet song. WurlD sings of a love interest he has to constantly reassure of his love and commitment.

“I give my heart to you/and give all I got to keep you safe,” he promises, but in the chorus, he reminds the love interest and himself that “I know you've heard these lies before but my love is true.” This song is a winner.

Embedded in the middle of the EP is ‘Wishes and Butterflies’, a ditty with a sucker punch. “I need love,” he howls, “that bittersweet killer, romantic, though I hate to love you, but I'd never find a greater kind of love, baby.” It’s fair to assume ‘Wishes and Butterflies’ is an accompaniment to ‘Paranoid’: Though he knows that kind of toxic love that takes so much from him yet gives back so little is harmful, he still can’t deal with not having it because the thought of being left empty-handed is unbearable. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

From here on, the mood shifts: the rhythm turns featherweight, gentle, and WurlD’s voice is charged with most of the heavy lifting.

The EP’s last two tracks, ‘Drown’ and ‘So Good’, produced respectively by Leriq and Mike Best, are soulful renditions of a kind of love that many relentlessly seek, the kind that, in WurlD’s case, feels so good and harbours the potential to drown him in overflowing goodness. While ‘So Good’ is a Caribbean-sweetened tune, ‘Drown’ rides on the back of Afropop, with a sparse sprinkling of electronic music.

In time, WurlD's artistry, like a Harmattan cold, will definitely catch on. Who says his music, like his love, can’t be contagious?

Artist: WurlD
Album: Love is Contagious EP
Label, Year: Universal Music Group, 2019