Is D’Banj’s music career over?

He smiled at my reticence. "What you wrote did not happen," he said, referring to my review of the 2016 D'Banj single 'Emergency'. 

I had no comebacks. To my mind, 'Emergency' announced that D'Banj still had decent pop music chops. But several singles later, 'Emergency' has proven to be the exception. D'Banj has defied the great expectations stirred by that song's excellence. When you think his music can't be that bad, D'Banj has provided worse. Many years ago, he called himself an entertainer. These days the primary entertainment D'Banj provides is a negative suspense: Just how bad can his next song be?

The answer is: quite bad. Instantly forgettable songs crowd the D'Banj discography. Wande Coal, who was considered the main vocal talent back at Mo' Hits, was unable to save the awful 'It's not a Lie'. The better but a tad bland new single 'El Chapo' sees Wande Coal return in company of the resurgent rapper Gucci Mane. The American does little but his presence serves two purposes.

First, it shows D'Banj retains his showbiz connections. The deal with Kanye West may have failed to produce music worthy of the hype, but it is perhaps useful for extracurricular purposes. Second, Gucci Mane's appearance keeps D'Banj in the conversation as contemporary Nigerian music pushes its way to the west, a movement you could say the failed Kanye West deal started and stalled. In a relatively short period Wizkid got Drake, Davido got Young Thug and Black Magic got Fetty Wap. But so far only Davido has gotten his man in a music video. D'Banj has joined him.

But those are non-musical statements. In choosing to record an afrotrap song, D'banj has followed the trend but has failed to do anything innovative with it. 'El Chapo' is a model of unclever derivativeness. The unoriginality is such that, for anyone familiar, the new song might recall the line "I move underground like El Chapo, underground like El Chapo" from 'Underground', a trap song off Olamide's 2016 album The Glory. But where Olamide delivers his lines partly tongue in cheek, D'Banj uses a cliched beat as basis for boasts. There's a bit of irony therein.

The most popular explanation for the D'Banj decline is the departure of Don Jazzy. But even back at Mo Hits, a fairly common question was whether D'Banj had true music talent. If Don Jazzy's production and D'Banj's own charisma masked a weak music talent, the producer's departure seems to have revealed his former associate's true face. It's not very pretty.

Perhaps there's hope. A new D'Banj album, King Don Come, was released today. Fans and reviewers will hope it's a decent album, regardless of the rather unfortunate inclusion of the ancient track 'Oliver Twist'. If the album doesn't work, we might have to conclude that D'Banj's music career is at its end, and I might have to avoid conversations with a certain music journalist based in Accra.