‘Street ti take over’- Olamide, 2016.
The (in)famous words were proved to be in fact, nothing but the truth on Saturday, February 25, at Reminisce’s Street Concert.
Sure, Baba Hafusa has crowned himself Alaga Ibile for years now but with his first headliner show, he has just consolidated and solidified his place in stone in the hip hop hall of fame.
The free show held in a cordoned off corner of the Ikeja City Mall car park. Though it was supposed to start at 4pm, Reminisce himself didn’t get on stage till about 8.30pm and the show didn’t wind to an end till after midnight. Hours before his arrival, the DJs did a good job of keeping the crowd thrilled.
While the audience was pumped in anticipation before, the energy level of the crowd spiked as Reminisce made an appearance and they sang along to his hit song, ‘Asalam alaykum.’ The crowd went wild as he went on to perform other hits like ‘2Mussh’ and ‘Fantasi’.
However this energy level in the audience that had peaked was not sustained as the next performance was by Hakeem Adisa, a Reminisce protégé who though may be a good artiste, is still largely unknown, thus the crowd could not sing along as they had before.
This fluctuating energy and adrenaline surge is something that the audience experienced for the entire night. The major reason for this could be that the artistes billed to perform took their sweet time to arrive at the event. And not only A-listers arrived late, even C-listers showed up late and everyone could not but wonder why.
Terry Apala gave the audience a much needed energy boost as they howled along with him as he performed. Around 10pm, Reminisce got on stage for his second set that night, and some minutes in, was joined by Olamide for ‘Local Rappers’.
Both Olamide and Reminisce onstage was almost too much for the crowd to handle as the audience went wild with excitement so palpable, I imagine the whole of Ikeja must have felt it.
Sadly, Reminisce left the stage after that song and Olamide thrilled the fans with his songs which are, in all honesty, hits back-to-back.
Reminisce and Olamide could have set the stage on fire by performing their hit songs like ‘Owo Blow’, ‘Government’, ‘Who You Epp’, ‘Telephone’ etc. but for some reason, they didn’t perform together.
Olamide and Reminisce are more alike than they are different and no, I don’t mean their hair colour. Both artistes have from day one, appealed to the streets unapologetically. Apart from the fact they both rap in Yoruba, neither of them bothers to be seen as posh. On the contrary, they both want to be recognized as street kings.
READ: At his first headline concert, Reminisce showed why his music rules the streets
As a result, their fan base encompasses area boys and motor park touts, to white color professionals and politicians. Thus the audience saw dainty, soft-spoken girls with bared midriffs snapchatting the event live and ‘street guys’ high on alcohol and mary j yelling and singing along as one. I can assure you that you won’t see this kind of thing anywhere else.
After Olamide’s performance, other artistes like Niniola, Seriki, Small Doctor, Wale Turner, as well as Sexy Steel, Oladipps, Falz, Harrysong, Mayorkun and Koker performed and elicited varying degrees of energy from the audience.
Reekado Banks performed one song and didn’t perform his other hits as the crowd sang along to the opening lines because ‘e don blow, we no dey perform am’. It was pretty much the same with CDQ.
Ice Prince closed the show around midnight; a while after Reminisce himself had left the venue.
The show was a success by all standards although it definitely could have been better. Despite the fact that it was a free show and it held in an open space, there was enough security that the audience felt safe.
For the first show he’d headline, Reminisce did pretty well and if this is an indicator of things to come, Baba Hafusa would have a sold out show sometime later in 2017.