The One Mic Naija ‘Independence Edition’, an initiative of WEPLUGGOODMUSIC took place on the 28th of October, 2012 in a small convivial room at Browns’ Cafe, Ikeja. Although the event was slated for 4pm, things were not underway when I arrived at 4:45pm. But I was vaguely grateful for the live band that played continuously, their mellow rhythmsprovided the right stimulus for the evening.
The MCs, Kel and KB, previously introduced by Tosyn Bucknor of Top radio, tried to add some colour to the event with fun pokings at each other. The audience, however, were a little too indifferent to them, perhaps because they were yet to see any of the seven headliners for the event. Big Mo, one of the headliners, gave a rather insipid performance which made me wonder if it was due to the live band, as a number of artistes don’t really give a good show without their songs droning in the background. Later, when Oyinkansola came up, I was particularly interested because I wanted to hear what Fuji pop sounded like.
The Salawa Abeni inspired artiste thrilled the audience with her second rendition, which sounded dreamy at first because it was accompanied with a guitar, then it became a subtle brashness as she increased the tempo. Loose Kaynon was quite interesting to watch. The Loopy music rap artiste threw down some cool lines with ease, but not really the hard core stuff that I was expecting. EME’s latest signee and first lady, Niyola, performed fairly, considering her long hiatus from the music radar.
Her delightful mix of Yoruba and R n B got everybody moving at the end of her show, or at least interested. Dammy Krane, the Hypertek wonder boy ushered himself into the event as he did a popular song by Fuji maestro Sir Shina Peters.
Dammy Krane threw the audience into a frenzy as he performed a medley of his songs with his usual effervescent mischief, and his club banger ‘My Dear‘, had me dancing on a spot. General Pype and Solid star also performed.
A handful of upcoming acts also performed as well. All in all, it was a good show from the artistes and I look forward to the next one.
Photo Credit to L’aden Photography
Pype and Solidstar did perform. Pls note