Zlatan’s ZANKU and the Ineptitude of Nigerian Music: A Quick Review

On November 1, Zlatan’s ZANKU album finally dropped. The album is a collection of all the singles he released in the course of the year, as well as some extra tracks.

On first listen, this ultimate Nigerian party album will definitely make you “gbe body e”. However, if you listen to the whole album, you notice something. It sounds nothing like an album. Rather, it is like those party hit collection CDs that were mixed by DJ Something Something, marketed and distributed at Alaba.

It is as though Zlatan does not have an inkling of what the word “album” means; because never has a more disjointed body of work ever surfaced in the Nigerian music scene. Albums generally follow a theme or at least a specific sound depending on where the artist is in their life or career.

However, with the shortening of our attention spans comes the inability to hold a line of thought for the duration of a song, talk more of an album. In fact, the only songs from which we can draw a bit of coherence are “Bolanle” and “Yeye Boyfriend”.

But you cannot really blame Zlatan though. It is the Nigerian way to produce scatterbrain content and it does not matter as long as it gets you paid. If a proper A&R team were in place, Zlatan’s ZANKU would have been triple filtered. In fact, he would have had to rewrite the album.

Summary

Maybe to the die-hard fans of Zlatan, this might be acceptable. But to a critical music listener, this album was inconsistent, incoherent, and left a lot to be desired.

At a point, funny catchphrases and a lively beat won’t be enough to cover up a clear lack of strategy. Maybe we will need to plead with him, “Zlatan Abeg No Kill Us” with mediocrity.

Score: 3/10