Hip hop star D’Banj had enjoyed stardom in the best parts of the last decade, but his latest move has particularly been very rewarding and instructive. This is his decision to feature Snoop Dogg in the remix of his song, Endowed. Since it got on air about a month ago, it has been topping most of the charts.
Of course, the appearance of Dogg in Endowed has injected a surprise and something different into the videos that have been produced in recent years. There is no doubt that music video production has generally witnessed a lot of improvement in Nigeria.
Artistes, producers and directors had upped the scales. But monotony appears to have also been struggling to creep in, as many musicians would either go on liquor spree, casually dance round a pile of dollars or just continue the tradition of a male dancing round a female in a good number of videos produced in the past three years or so.
For D’Banj as an artiste, collaborating with a musician of Dogg’s status not only re-invents his status, it also instantly boosts his profile. Many will not find it difficult to believe that if Dogg did not recognise him to be a worthy performer, he would not have acceded to featuring in Endowed
The leverage the collab brings is, however, mutually rewarding as it appears to have rekindled the interest of many Nigerian lovers of music in the dangling Dogg too.The success also sheds light on the potential of remixing or repackaging a song in whatever form. Especially if it has the right substance, a song will always come out new and win new friends when the artiste takes it to the market in another robe
It is the same tradition that shot the likes of Paul Dairo and Musiliu Haruna Isola into limelight, when they respectively reproduced Mo S’oriire and Soyoyo, originally produced by their late fathers, I. K. Dairo and Haruna Isola
Trust Nigerians, though, it will not be surprising if some other artistes begin to scout for big foreign artistes to feature