EVIL MEN (Part 1) | Featured Artiste: Oyez!

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Classic Nollywood movies have a knack for exposing deep social issues.  And I have a tendency to get very emotionally invested in these movies, for whatever reason :-(  Sometime in November last year, I re-watched 'Evil Men' starring Pete Edochie, Zach Orji, Liz Benson and Ramsey Noah.  The movie just rubbed me (and my 'co-watcher') the wrong way in the sense that while we were watching it, we just kept saying: "This is so true.  This is real life."  Without going into details of the movie, one of the issues the movie dealt with is the wickedness of men.  One of the characters went to the village and got poisoned, and if you think hard and long, you might know or at least have heard of REAL people this happened to.  I know I do.
While not every old mama in the village is a witch, you would really be naive to think that they're all harmless and innocent.  There are evil people in this world, but some of them are NOT what I like to term "overtly" evil.  They are "boju-boju" (undercover) evil people, meaning that they are those friends and relatives who are enemies in deed.  Before I spiral out of control and start calling random people's grandmothers (or mothers) witches, I have a final point to make.  In the same movie,  two people came before the Igwe-in-Council at different times.  One of them was banished over an accusation of murder, which later turned out to be false.  The other person was banished because he really did have a hand in multiple murders.

Now, let's analyze these two cases.  In Case A, one person was innocent and got an unfair sentence.  In Case B, the accused was as guilty as sin (Cheesy, I know, but hey....)  and eventually got punished with what I won't exactly call a 'fair' sentence.  Anyway, it made me question the process of arriving at a just sentence or executing justice, so to speak.  It can be difficult to know upfront when someone is innocent especially in the face of overwhelming circumstantial evidence (Oh boy, I didn't mean to get into all these legalese today) because things are not always what they seem.  Even in the face of clear and convincing evidence that casts a negative light on the accused, there is still a chance that he/she might be innocent.  And still go to jail.  Or face a death sentence.  Some may even die before their innocence is established.  Some may die without ever being acquitted of false charges.  Which kind of soap will you use to wash a person's good name/reputation once it has been soiled? Beats me. But there's Part 2 of this in the next post. I'll keep you posted (Pun intended).

Featured Artiste:  Oyez!

On one of my many visits to ReverbNation, I came across Oyez's profile and he actually requested that I review one of his songs.  That was last year.  So the time of fulfillment has come (LOL!) and I decided to feature his song, "High" here today.

Oyez! | ReverbNation
Special Thanks to Kayode Martins-Olowu of PraizHouse for also recommending this review and providing much needed information on this artiste.  It turns out that Oyez is actually a Computer Scientist who does web design and also blogs.  Without wasting any more time, here is "High":



THE REVIEW   

Likes:  One thing that artistes take for granted is the length of a song. Spanning just 3:19, Oyez seems to understand the importance of keeping the track short and sweet.  Another sweet part of the song for me was the chorus sang by the female background vocals where they kept repeating "Oh, Lord lift me high, I wanna go high!"  That echo effect / reverb effect actually worked well because of the style of music, i.e. pop.  The brief modulation or key change was unexpected and I liked the fact that afterwards the song reverted back to the original key.   The outro was cool with the "Ah, Ah, Ah" part and the applause (which was also included in the intro).  So, it brings a sense of completeness to the song.  The structure of the chorus is actually the BEST part of this song as it sets a good foundation especially when paired with the pop beats.  

Dislikes:  The first thing that hit me about this song was the beats.  The introductory beats were quite confusing for me and generally there were a lot of things going on at the same time.  Another aspect of the song that could have been omitted was the unnecessary and excessive use of auto-tune by Oyez while singing the verses.  I have mentioned before that I think auto-tune makes artistes come across as vocally lazy.  In this case, the auto-tune pretty much hid Oyez's vocals so that I could not assess his vocal ability as well as I could have without the auto-tune.  The reverb effect started out as a good thing, but quickly descended into the realm of "very distracting."  The song-writing came across as being very amateur and definitely needs more work.  In fact, it sounded like he was just reading the words to the tempo of the beats.  Furthermore, the delivery of the verses could also be improved as it sounded rushed.  The voice that keeps repeating "Shake your body for the Lord" is quite annoying and should have been used sparingly.

OVERALL:  This song is okay for a pop song, but it needs some MAJOR tweaking.  It is better to err on the side of simplicity and taking out some of the elements I mentioned above will make this song more "listener-friendly."

Of course, there's more information on Oyez as you can see:

Artiste's Stage Name:  Oyez!

Artiste's Real Name: Oyezechukwu Emmanuel


Connect with Oyez:  FaceBook, Twitter, YouTube 

Please see the download link at the bottom.  That's it from me, y'all.  Have a glorious week ahead! *waving goodbye*

***DOWNLOAD "High" HERE 

That case A scares me like crazy. It's just so unfair that a person suffers cos of some implicating circumstantial  evidence.

We live in a wicked world. We need to keep ourselves under the refuge of God. I have experienced it first hand

"Classic Nollywood movies have a knack for exposing deep social issues" you lost me here!

Ofili

Toin:  That makes two of us, as per Case A, especially when that person's innocence is never established.  Then he/she is just part of the guilty statistics.  May we never fall into such a predicament in Jesus name. Amen.

Atilola:  You're very right.  I myself have experienced wickedness first hand.   God's protection is very necessary o. 

Am I to assume that you didn't read beyond that sentence? LOL! I get your point.  You probably don't watch many (or any) Nollywood movies.  It's not too late to change, you know :-)

LOL! Diverting a bit...His time of fulfillment has come...LOL!...Okay back to eee-vil men. As a kid, I used to think all elderly people in the village were wicked. Really, just like you pointed out, anything outside spiritual discernment or maybe...note...maybe a well-trained lawyer can sniff out the theatrics of evil people. God keep us from them. AMen.

Frowning at Auto-tune by Oyez. Good song overall.

Michael:  Yes o, his time of fulfillment arrived!  LOL at how you pronounced "EVIL" in Evil Men.  It sounds just like the announcer's voice during the preview for that particular movie. Some things you just don't forget *sigh*

Now, that I have grown up (a bit more), I still think people are wicked, except that this time the circle has widened to include people of all age groups.  You are right on target with the discernment factor.  That's key here.  Even a well-trained lawyer can be fooled.  Human beings can be so so deceptive, I tell you.  Amen to your prayer o.  A big AMEN!

Michael: Yelz, the auto-tune was a no-no here.  It did harm and no good.  

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