Despite the criticism and heat thrown at Davido because he was born with a silver spoon, the young man’s talent, worth ethic, perseverance and God’s favour has turned him into a mega hit making machine, spawning hits (Gobe, Dami Duro, One of a Kind, Back When, All of You, Skelewu, Gbon Gbon etc.) more than most of his contemporaries with one studio album to his credit not-forgetting the lucrative endorsement deals and high grossing world-wide tours. Davido is not the first artiste with money as one of his strengths to hit the music scene, many have come and failed while some managed to bag one hit and go into oblivion, so please let us not say that money is his saving grace because his music possesses that magic and he has the star quality.
Back to matter that inspired me to put pen to paper – the Skelewu debacle fuelled by its music video. Just like last year Davido arguably has the biggest song of the calendar to his credit, talking about his Shizzi produced ‘Skelewu’ which broke records and topped charts across the globe without an official music video. If you have deep ears in the music scene you will know that Davido hired D’banj’s go-to guy ‘Sesan’ to shoot and direct an accompanying music video for the song days after its official release before the song turned out to be what it is; obviously amazed by the success of the song he felt that the video that he had created before was not worthy of a song of that caliber, so he decided to re-shoot with Mr. Moe Musa without making any fuss or noise about it.
After a concert in Sierra Leone, he excitedly tweeted that he was off to London to shoot ‘Skelewu (The Movie)’ treated by Mr. Musa only to arrive in London to find out that the degrading visual which he did not approve to be released had been leaked to the internet. Like every emotional person he took to Twitter to air out his frustrations; and everyone labels him the ‘immature bad guy’. Did he leak his video himself? Did he mention any names? Did he use any insulting word? Just because he has money which he worked for by the way, everyone is against the winner. If I am correct this is not the first time a music video is shot again, for instance the visuals for Iyanya’s smash hit ‘Kukere’ was treated twice because he was not impressed by the first video.
As he promised his fans he released his official video on the promised date and as usual everyone was there to scrutinize, criticize and bash the video, Davido and Mr. Moe Musa without knowledge or insight labeling it a theft of LMFAO’s ‘Party Rock Anthem’ while some said it was inspired by AMC hit series ‘The Walking Dead’. There is no way a sober individual will say that Sesan’s treatment was better than Musa’s concept, quality, execution and so on. I agree that the controversy increased expectations and the video did not highlight the dance and choreography as much I would have loved, nonetheless Davido and Mr. Moe Musa delivered a solid video clip worthy of the song.
An article on TheNetNg which carried the headline; “Davido – The new ‘Skelewu’ video sucks + director Moe Musa is a creative thief“, emphasized that Mr. Moe Musa should be visited by LMFAO’S label Interscope with a lawsuit for unacceptable creative plagiarism of ‘Party Rock Anthem’ which was conceptualized as a parody of the 2002 horror film ‘28 Days Later’; a movie which Mr. Moe Musa credited as the inspiration for his treatment of ‘Skelewu (The Movie). Let us not forget the fact that music video directors both Nigerian and international have been jacking concept and remaking videos since the before I was born; even Beyonce and Rihanna have been accused of it.
The very music video which we are bashing left, right and centre was said to exclusively premiered yesterday by MTV U.K, so who is winning in this so-called war? If a disc jockey plays the said song in a club or party; you will jump and spill your drink, so who is winning? The said song has topped charts in Africa and is already climbing up charts in Europe, so who is winning? Why the hate and spite at Davido? Please let us love and celebrate our own and go look for something to eat today