Gospel Porn Christian Rap Duo, Fokn Bois have retired their seemingly ecumenical calling for the earthier, contemporary and gentile-loving genre of music, Afrobeats.
That curious name, Afrobeats, has failed to die several deaths, perhaps for obvious reasons.
Coined by Abrantee, a Ghanaian himself, to describe the new wave of digital music of energetic sounds and a propensity for dance derived from both Nigerian and Ghana (read West Africa), the term Afrobeats has spread like wildfire (read adopted by the White Establishment).
For this reason, Fokn Bois call their latest EP project Afrobeats LOL. Pairing an initialism popular with internet-speak and the biggest cultural export out of West Africa is, of course, provocative.
But what should be expected from the two most irreverent, humorous and controversial duo from Ghana? The album title is in sync with their MO and the music, to couch in cliché, is right up their alley.
The Afrobeats genre is their subject of ridicule but, as with Fokn Bois, their methods are both unconventional and reflective. Add ingenious to that. Most appraisals of Afrobeats music within the cultural space has dealt with the music’s facility for the facile, its emphasis on big percussive beats poised for dance and a preference for lyrical embellishment aimed at auditing success solely for bragging rights.
Add love, lust and other affectations and the full circle of Afrobeats is done. LOL.
And as with Afrobeats, collaboration is the rule, not the exception.
Medikal is hot on the showy ‘Wo Nim Mi’.
Mr Eazi is unmistakably magical on ‘True Friends’, that ditty about the reality or fiction of true friendship in the face of social media trends.
Sister Deborah and Dex Kwasi feature on ‘African Holiday’, an attempt to relocate vacation within African climes for the sole reason of highlighting humorously the difficulties of travel within Africa.
Gyedu-Blay Ambrolley, an elder statesman of musical notes, is recruited on ‘Abena Repatriation’, with a masterly guitar riff that threatens to stretch ad infinitum.
Fokn Bois are by themselves on ‘Brukutu’, a percussion-driven tune styled as a persuasive love song.
But ‘Account Balance’ takes the lead as the album’s most relatable song. It makes a mockery of materialism within a fledging heterosexual affection, where the display of a healthy account balance is instrumental to its requital. The idea of singing about trifling, money-motivated lovers is only too familiar, one that is couched in a lot of traditions from the itinerant minstrel all the way to Newschool Afrobeats (read Hello Baby, have you sent it?)
Afrobeats LOL, eventually, is a loose succession of songs lampooning the popular Afrobeats and its predictable theme, showiness and shtick.
But Fokn Bois do not drop the ball at painting a satirical soundscape without showing off some of their genius and infusing some of their botheration.
Always with humour and an aesthetic consistent with hip-hop traditions, Afrobeats LOL starts with ‘Abena’, a stuttering song about disillusionment leading to emigration out of Africa then ends with a nostalgic song about repatriation to Africa—but it still manages in between to find a place for an African Holiday!
