Rema's Album Review - 'HEIS THE ONE'
Rema injects new energy into Afrobeats which is in need of something fresh.
On his sophomore album, ‘HEIS,’ Rema bolts out of his cave like a bat from the crypts of the underworld in a black Lamborghini Urus - the young Benin warlord’s Batmobile.
Divine Ikubor pictures himself as Bruce Wayne and on his new LP, he rides out as the Dark Knight in response to the bat signal in the sky.
The mob of Afrobeats demand a reset. The genre has had an identity crisis within the last year or so.
Afrobeats’ over-reliance on Amapiano to score mostly quickly forgotten hit singles and a lack of imagination have led fans to ask for a change in direction, energy and rhythm.
Rema has answered this call. With an all-black aura and a lit cigarette on his lips, the pop star scrawls out his brightly-coloured pop candy image with a noir sharpie.
Gone are the days of ‘Calm Down.’ Enter the hero/anti-hero/villain.
All that is left is a skeletal, macabre bat that spells the Greek word for ‘One’ - HEIS. The creature of the night synonymous with his ancestral abode - Benin - represents shock and terror.
If stale music formulas and regurgitated log drum patterns have induced you into lethargy, the album’s opener will shock you into full consciousness.
Rema flicks his cigarette into a gasoline pool on the P-Priime produced ‘MARCH AM.’
When he repetitively declares “I dey march am,” he is not only revving his Batmobile. He is also stomping on the game with his braggadocious lamba lines he spits with an urgency that it feels like he is about to convulse.
Such is the tempo - breakneck. The mood - claustrophobic. State of mind - narcissistic.
Rema is not here to charm you. He is here to drag you by your coattails and pound your skull with his new sonic direction.
‘HEHEHE’ starts with a mini-score that evokes a broody mood before Rema punctures this frame of mind by blurting, “Monday morning, talking about me while I’m making money.”
He cracks a sardonic laugh, before bludgeoning his haters with his robust bank account and vehemently inserting himself in the Afrobeats triumvirate of Burna Boy, Davido and Wizkid - “H-I-M position can't be vacant/No more big three, there's now a big four/People go para but what for?/They go say I don't deserve it but that is an insult.”
And here is where Rema shows one of the innovations he has anchored this album on. He isn’t singing. He isn’t rapping conventionally. The pop star’s spoken words of ambition and success lilt and swagger with a rhythm restrained by confidence.
He duplicates this template on the mosh-pit inducer ‘OZEMBA.’ Boasting a production that channels DJ YK’s beats - skeletal and functional, Rema leads his legion of ravers to mosh, stomp, break and jump over the barriers of gatekeeping.
He is determined to break into the ultra-elite league of Afrobeats stars not with finesse but with controlled chaos and unbridled energy.
‘HEIS’ should come with a warning - “this album can cause whiplash and increase your blood pressure. It can also induce anxiety.”
On the album’s centrepiece that shares the same title as the LP - Rema celebrates making it to the apex. Filled with the standard fare of machismo and financial security, the jewel in the song is the Swahili hook wrapped around P.Priime and Rema’s warping log drum production.
The Swahili chorus translates to “Who is the illest, who is the baddest? It is you/Who is uplifting, who is hot? It is you/Whose globe-trotting, who’s the shit? It is you/Who is the champion? It is you, it is you.”
No one can deny that since his emergence, Rema has been at the frontier of Afrobeats’ global success. His recent performance at the high-profile wedding of Anant Ambani, son of Asia’s richest man Mukesh Ambani, and Radhika Merchant, daughter of pharma tycoons Viren and Shaila Merchant, reportedly earned him $3M.
His international hit ‘Calm Down’ has broken and set so many records that music certification organizations must be shitting themselves whenever Rema hits a new benchmark, “Shit! We are running out of plaques for this guy.”
With so much fame and fortune mined from an earworm and blessed by a Latina pop superstar, why is Rema doing a 180 and embracing a dark sound tethered to the crypts of Nigeria’s urban movement?
The answer has to do with his ambition to break into the Americanized concept of ‘The Big 3’ which Afrobeats has co-opted. Burna Boy, Davido and Wizkid have so much cultural cache that it beggars belief.
For a young buck to break into this space, he would need to be ambitious, and bold and pause international ambitions to attain local god-like status.
This means not only crafting pop bangers that suit the palette of the local audience but also achieving street cred by the truckload.
Hence Rema features two street-wise rappers who in 2023 turned the heads and ears of Nigerians to their new styles.
‘BENIN BOYS’ sees Rema enlist the cryptocurrency hustler and Benin brother, Shallipopi to celebrate the heritage and notoriety of the grand old empire. ‘Popi with his Benin drawl spits, “small circle, big money/dirty money- chubby body wanna gum me (ah)/New Benz o incoming, sexy body.”
After demanding that the Oba of Benin award him and Shallipopi medals for being the pride of Benin, Rema flashes his street cred when he warns, “Na my Benin brothers I go call before I call olopaa o if anything kpa o.”
Rema’s frequent collaborator, London, starts ‘WAR MACHINE’ with a soulful sample of Ace Spectrum’s ‘I Don’t Want to Play Around,’ before punching in evil barks from Cerberus - the three-headed dog that lives in Hades.
The song breaks into menacing keys, and Rema shouts his signature phrase, “Another banger!” then the drums of war kick in. Odumodublvck, a rapper who channels the ultra-violent mood in Nigerian campuses in the 90s, uses his trademark blunt force flow.
He name-checks the infamous Nigerian thief, Lawrence Anini, who terrorized Benin in the 80s, “Look at my eliminations/Anenih, focus on their blood, I am not done/Them no get NEPA, na my light them-a feed on.”
Not to be left out on the Amaco Ventures musical thriller, Rema gives off a daring line, “Who I go pin for corner, put am for chokehold?/Try me, make I for give you spanking like okpo.”
With stabs at street cred and enlisting producers to give him a dark and edgy sound, Rema achieves his aim of novelty, albeit imperfectly.
When he drops pop dance tracks, this is where he falters. ‘AZAMAN’ rehashes the lazy style concept of calling influential and rich people in Nigerian society, which bogged Afrobeats from the early to mid-2010s.
The P.Priime and Rema production might be updated, but the subject matter and lyrical approach offer nothing new or refreshing.
‘EGUNGUN’ could pass as the 2024 version of a loose B-rated cut from another diminutive Nigerian pop star (redacted). The same goes with the P.Priime produced ‘Villain.’
For an album with a unique selling point of breaking a new sonic wall and mood in Afrobeats, these three songs take away some of the legitimacy of that claim.
Luckily, Altims and P.Priime, craft a quality contemporary production on ‘YAYO’ for Rema to skate on. On the log drum production, Rema displays excessive consumerism that is melodic enough to get you off your ass and dance.
It is the most conventional production on the LP. On ‘HEIS’, the production unit of Alex Lustig, Altims, CuBeatz, Deats, Elyas, FWDSLXSH, Jojo Kelete, Klimperboy, LNKmusic, London, P.Priime, Producer X and Take a Daytrip mostly deliver on Rema’s mission - a new sonic style for Afrobeats.
While elitist music listeners might scoff at the extensive use of street lingo on this album branding it ‘gutter pop’, Rema delivers a lyrical album.
It might not be as philosophical as Shallipopi’s with his wise barbs or Asake with his usage of street proverbs but Rema accurately depicts a sub-culture that shares the same tectonic plate as Nigeria’s impoverished.
This sub-culture has shifted the taste of contemporary music, especially in the last two years - whether via the humorously dubbed ‘Afro-adura,’ or new-age rap styles of Odumodublvck and Shallipopi.
Rema’s album is a co-sign of the unheard, undercovered and underappreciated. His use of their language aims to prove he is from this culture that is poetic and layered, which only those who have access to it can fully understand and appreciate.
For his top 3 ambitions, many will support his claim of being ‘H-I-M,’ and others will form a conclave and release black smoke on his claim of being Nigeria’s new Pope of Pop.
‘HEIS’ is perhaps the most polarizing album in the history of Afrobeats. It has led to passionate arguments discussions and debates.
It is brilliant, exhilarating and genius to the multitude who call him the messiah, the Lisan al Gaib.
To the unbelievers, the naysayers, this is a confusing, loud album.
And in the middle is where we find equilibrium - Rema has done enough. He has punched the fabric of Afrobeats to allow innovation.
The problem is that he has just done enough. The avatar of new-gen Afrobeats who heralded his entry with this prophetic phrase, ‘Another banger!” has to do more than enough.
Greatness is expected from him not because we demand it, but because he called for it.
Moments of doubt do creep up on this project. However, his loud regime does enough to black out the faults.
The album’s closing song, the stirring ‘NOW I KNOW,’ feels like a prophecy of doubt that his project would elicit.
Maybe he is Lisan al Gaib after all and saw both his adherents and antagonists clashing and almost causing an Afrobeats Civil War.
After the huffing, puffing, bruised knuckles, blunt trauma and jaw-shattering moments on this LP, ‘NOW I KNOW’ is Rema’s chance to rest and ponder what is next.
Will others follow him to a new sonic paradise or hide in the four walls of boredom, complacency, unimagination and safety?
Only time will tell…
Rating - 3.5/5
Profound review👏🏾