Watched a viral video over the weekend on how President Obama prepped himself up for his classic Hillary endorsement speech of the other day. The cameras backstage videoed him bobbing his head to Eminem's "Lose yourself" whilst 'warming up' to come out and speak.
Goes to show why the song was highly rated and received rave reviews back when it was released. Lose yourself is the star track from the 8-miles sound track. It's about a star musician who's backstage preparing for a show but has suddenly developed the nerves- though his countenance doesn't betray it and also talks about how the crowd reacts immediately the star musician got on stage.
We can conclude based on Obama's wonderful delivery that "Lose yourself" is a very good prep-up song. Little wonder it won him an Oscar and a Grammy back in 2002. They're a handful of well written R&B/ pop and hiphop songs that could be used to give oneself instant inspiration, R-Kelly's "world greatest" also easily comes to mind.
Same can't be said of Nigerian songs which are usually very shabbily written. Our musicians can be excused because most Nigerian music lovers don't bother about the poor lyrical content of these 'hits', their focus is on the beat and(or) rhythm and sometimes the few catchphrases and latest slangs the songs have to offer- slangs like "Kokolette', "Shoki" and catchphrases like, "It took your mama nine months to make it", "Reggae Blues" etc.
In fact, the ONLY A-list Nigerian artiste who has been consistent through the years when it comes to employing professional songwriters to pen songs for him is 2Face. I repeat, 2Face is the only A-lister who has been CONSISTENT in releasing songs that are well written, often by professionals.
By Simon Utsu
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