Album Review: Wizkid flaunts superstardom and sensuality on ‘More Love, Less Ego’
Here is an appraisal of Wizkid's fifth studio album and a commentary on Burna Boy's latest Grammy shortlist.
Sometime in 2021, Nigerian music superstar, Burna Boy, said about Wizkid:
“Wiz is all about the bitches…”
Unsurprisingly, many fans of the Ojuelegba legend felt it was an insult to narrow down the Grammy-winning singer’s style to just that - big bad B!s. But on More Love, Less Ego, it’s exactly what Sir Wizkid did - dedicate a 13-track album to lust, certainly not love.
I watched his interview with Apple Music and was pleased with Ashley Charles’ line of questioning. She asks, “How did you land on this album title, More Love, Less Ego?”
Ayodeji Balogun answers: “It’s a part of my life, man. It’s like a progression. The last one was Made in Lagos, that’s where I’m from. You already know where I’m from now. Now, it’s just to show you what the world needs actually at this time, right now, at this moment, and that’s a whole lot of love.”
Charles cuts in and further asks, I feel like that means you need more love, huh?
Balogun responds: I have a lot of love. I got four kids, man. When my son kisses me good night, when he goes to school, that fills my heart. You can’t buy that kind of love. And that’s pretty much what I’m trying to say… There’s a war going on in Ukraine, in 2022, right before our eyes, they are bombing people right now in Africa.
And finally, Charles, nicknamed Amplify Dot, asks, “Is this the album that heals things?”
The Lagos-born act says with confidence, “It’s the album that helps to.”
If you watched the interview before listening to the album, you’re definitely going to feel dissatisfied. But if you watched the interview after listening to the album, like me, you’re going to feel, “but where is everything you said on your album?”
For the album’s opener, a line like ‘make bad Wiz shave your panties… I got the holy water make you kon swim’ would provide an insight into the kind of ‘love’ Wizkid set to proclaim on the album and it becomes a motif throughout the project.
Ayra Starr-featured 2 Sugar, however, is a departure from the first three tracks. They focus on keeping bad energy far away as they have their own demons they are battling.
Noteworthily, Wiz wasted no time in dropping a video for the track in what seems like a long shot at having another Tems/Essence effect. It remains to be seen if that would happen but it’ll definitely be a tall order.
On tracks 5 and 10, the artiste mentions briefly how he lives his life on the road mostly before he returned to his sensual evangelism. Such experience and that of fatherhood are some of the thematic issues that would have elevated the album’s listening experience, given that fatherhood particularly is his source of love but they are significantly missing.
Other tracks on the album reiterate virtually the same sensual issues: ikebe causing commotion, I’ll let your body know.
In sum, More Love, Less Ego is a flaunt of superstardom, with Big Wiz showing that he can afford to release an album that dwells solely on sensuality. It is devoid of the more robust experience you would find on Vector’s TESLIM or Asake’s Mr Money with the Vibe.
The album also speaks to his state of mind. He’s at the apex and he is perhaps Africa’s biggest act. He’s won a Grammy, has four kids and sells out the largest venues in the world. So, why not flex some muscles?
Sonically, the album is solid. One wouldn’t even expect less from an artiste with about a dozen years of killing beats. But it’s too narrow thematically for an album, perhaps more fitting for an EP.
It’s official! Burna is now a Grammy favourite
For the fourth year running, Burna Boy is on the Grammy Awards shortlist. Quite unprecedented! Three albums in a row have been deemed worthy of a Grammy, even if Love, Damini is easily the weakest of the three. It’ll be a shocker if he doesn’t win at least one of the two categories he’s been shortlisted for.
He has been on a Last last rampage since releasing the song, pushing it onto Billboard charts and it’s no surprise that the Recording Academy is impressed as well.
At a time that international awards now see Afrobeats as a must-have category, Burna, along with Wizkid who won the inaugural Afrobeats category at the American Music Awards, continues to see his stock rise.
He has learnt the methods and endeared himself, he can only expect more gramophones with less stress.