Nigeria

The song “Smooth Operator” is a song that’s performed by a resilient songwriter that hails from the descendant of the West African country, somewhere in the far Nigeria. Marenikae whose song choice is majorly influenced by the poetry prowess of the likes of Alysia Harris and Jasmine Mans brought her A-game to put out this fierce enthralling sound that somewhat looks like the infusion of new wave Pop and afro sound; or maybe we should just call it ‘Afromerge’ to settle the score with no bias.

At First, this song got me hooked like “Oh what a fierce voice she’s got here, nice accent, but what’s that other language she mixes with her English?” It actually took me a while to figure out that the second language/slang she so proudly speaks is called Pidgin language. Pidgin is a language that’s predominantly spoken in Nigeria and in other neighbouring West African country like Ghana. In this song, you will hear words like “Ajebutter” and some other pidgin language lines which I quite struggled to understand.

Aside from the fact that this song comes off like a really strong and fierce unapologetic diva kind of song, its smooth delivery and apt ability to intermix those pidgin slangs in that whole song makes me love it.

The sound quality of Marenikae’s “Smooth Operator” further sealed the deal for me. We all have heard the Jamaican sound and also have seen how that Caribbean sound was able to penetrate into the global music industry, the same way, I feel like this kind of new sound should also be able to attain such feat too.

Overall, I like to think that this song is quite an interesting song although the sound is still new to me but I still definitely love every bit of it. It’s the type of song that makes you stand up and shake off some stress even when you clearly don’t fully understand what half of the lyrics is taking about.

-Lilian-Debrah.