Album Review: REVIVAL by LADIPOE
The Nigerian rapper bends Afropop’s melody-first formula around testimony, prayer, and score-settling in three languages. REVIVAL runs on the conviction that he was chosen for this.
Melody is the thing that made Rema and Ayra Starr export-scale stars for Mavin Records. In 2017, the Lagos label only signed one rapper to a label next to a roster of A-listers. LADIPOE leans into that disparity on REVIVAL, loading the guest list with singers and rapping from the middle of those hooks. He contorts Afropop’s hook-first template to score-settling, and speaking in tongues over different languages.
Doubters have their say on “Chosen,” in their own Pidgin: “Six years running on vibes album no drop again/You dey fall hand I’ve been telling guys you’re one of them.” He acknowledges the sting, kai, that one stung, then he spells out the reasons for the silence in plain English, unlearning perfection, screening out the voices he’s been hearing too much lately. His backup singers stay churchy, layers of backup vocals and a choir lift. On “Amazing (Freestyle)” he goes back to his sister, who put up the funds for the session, as if his future had already been set years ago, and to the verses that got written in Lagos traffic, in fury. He delivers his best joke thanks to his patience (“Chasing royalties got T’Challa becoming Joffrey/So I sip my champagne like coffee”).
Teni takes “Clutch” pretty much solo, rechristening herself Kobe, pledging she never misses, and lining up Taribo West and Yekini in the context of basketball talk until the boasting encompasses two continents worth of sport. LADIPOE plays straight man on his own single, interjecting: “I think about where I come from, that’s why I’m restless/Success in my family home is not a Lexus.” Ema Onigah sings the fantasy song on “Many People” as LADIPOE positions himself as “the G.O.A.T and the black sheep,” writing off the fake brothers in the business as such. Taves keeps the flirtation going on “Compose,” and LADIPOE just manages to keep his cool, letting slip that the object of desire is “turning me into a bomb threat.” His loosest lyrics in Yoruba belong to “Jó,” a dance track in which he compliments her in pieces: the whip, the skirt, the nails, the AP bracelet on her wrist.
Maglera Doe Boy is the guest on “Motho Waka,” and he makes his point in two lines: “Mashallah, we survived these hardships/But Inshallah, they gon’ say we popping.” LADIPOE meets him in a good party mood, cake and candles and Messi number 10, then switches to teacher’s lounge boasts about his success in anatomy class. On “No Level,” Pa Salieu runs in the opposite direction, volatile syllable to syllable, describing himself as “hotter than the ghetto holy water.” LADIPOE outs-petters both guests, taking a last shot at his former friend: “If I’m the rap messiah/You must be Judas the disciple,” and then calls stream farming the latest form of fraud.
Most of “Friend Indeed” goes to chiding a friend for holding him back in his own life and questioning whether the paycheck he’s receiving is blood money, until he realizes: “I’m talking to myself again I needed that.” He imports that suspicion to “Road Rage / Old Ways,” a two-track car ride in which a police stop turns ugly, with his necklace shining in the torchlight of the officer’s flashlight, and he asks: “Tell me what’s the life expectancy/When public servants become public enemies.” After the beat switch, he begins praying, begging God to chase the demons out of his head, then tells what really happens: “So, I swallow the pain/And the rage till I change/Into the thing that I hate.”
Somebody he misses lurks over “One More Time,” all the comfort of the memory and the one night he wishes for. In between, he measures what he has become: “From all that pressure making me paranoid/To feeling like Olamide giving them Fire Boy.” With less at stake, “Pull Up” and “Deeper,” he promises to pull up “Even if the world was split in two,” memorizes a face right before boarding the plane, swears: “I’m in it for your mind/Just as much as your body,” and compliments her Issey Miyake yoga pants. It’s charming, and it is the one track another rapper could have written.
Mid-tour, his girlfriend called in about delivering their child, and on “Palm Trees (Interlude)” he replays that call, the partner who made the decision about how he wants to deliver that baby, “Fuck a c-section, I go push by force,” and the Cartier ring he bought when he realized what only a mother sacrifices. His father shows up too, quoted as if from scripture: “A man is much more than what he provides,” and that lesson placed beside his own maxim where money above all else but family and purpose. On “Jah (Outro),” he reserves the gratitude for God, tells Him he doesn’t want to do this alone, puts the price in long days, even longer flights, and messages on his phone he hasn’t answered yet, before he allows himself one credential: “From underrated to undeniable.” Morien sings his name over him until the prayer sounds answered.
Great (★★★★☆)
Favorite Track(s): “Amazing (Freestyle),” “Friend Indeed,” “Road Rage / Old Ways”