6 Artistes You Should Listen to This Week: Christmas Edition

6 Artistes You Should Listen to This Week: Christmas Edition

With all the Christmas shopping and heavy spending that is going on this season, we need to be reminded of just what exactly we are celebrating. Jesus is the reason for the season. I have said it.  Now, let these six artistes sing it to you in their own words.  Music conveys the message effectively, don't you agree?

Oh, and before I forget, Merry Christmas! Have an awesome, fun-filled, joyous, fantabulous (okay, enough adjectives.  Let me save some for 2014) Christmas!

1. PCE Crew - Silent Night / O Holy Night (Acapella Medley)

PCE Crew is a Nigerian gospel / Christian group consisting of five men based in the DC-Maryland-Virginia (DMV) area in the US.  Earlier this year they released their sophomore album titled Rewired.  After 'dashing' their fans two songs from that album ('Nobody' and 'Winna Remix'), they are rounding off the year with two Christmas singles, sang acapella (no music).  I think they should perform more acapella songs.  Enjoy 'Silent Night' and 'Holy Night' below:

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THIS Friday's Free Downloads | Featuring: Lily Perez (My Life), Dach-Mo (Babu Kamarka), Gold Help Owen (Wait)

THIS Friday's Free Downloads | Featuring: Lily Perez (My Life), Dach-Mo (Babu Kamarka), Gold Help Owen (Wait)

I hope you've been enjoying the assortment of free downloads offered here every Friday.  If you have, please take a few seconds to leave a comment.  The artistes will surely appreciate it.  Furthermore, if you have any artistes you would like to recommend for this series, please send me an e-mail with the link to the MP3 file download at relentless@therelentlesbuilder.com

Having said that, here are This Friday's free downloads, courtesy of three different Nigerian gospel artistes.  Click the Download button at on each widget, and enjoy!

1.  Lily Perez

Lily Perez / Facebook

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The "O le ku" Pattern | Featured Artiste: Mista Seth

The "O le ku" Pattern | Featured Artiste: Mista Seth

No, not the 'Oleku' song.  I am referring to the classic Yoruba movie starring Yemi Sodimu.  If you haven't watched it, you really need to ASAP (both parts).  I watched it for the very first time during acculturation in Ipetumodu (and by saying this I have hopelessly revealed my secondary school *sigh*), Osun State with other class girls from secondary school.  I remember all of us complaining bitterly because of the way the movie ended.  *Enter a movie spoiler*  Sorry guys, but to get the point across, I need to expose the end *dodges tomatoes and agbo jedi-jedi ingredients thrown at her* All in good fun, ba?

[O le ku movie poster]

Anyway, here is the outcome: the main character did not pick any of the ladies vying for his affections.  He picked and married some other lady we were not expecting him to hook up with.  In other words, he did not marry any of the two ladies we were expecting him to choose from.  Rather, he married the 3rd lady, a totally different person.

This same thing happens in real life too.  I have seen this pattern repeated over and over again:

Boy meets girl, boy likes girl, girl likes boy back, boy and girl fall in  lust love, boy proposes to girl, girl's status on Facebook changes from "in a relationship" to "engaged." Innocent Relentless, in keeping with her New Year's resolution, is minding her own business jejely and not planning to do any "gbeborun" or "aproko."  But Facebook has better plans for her.  Relentless logs into Facebook and sees that fictitious girl, Joy is now "engaged" to Richard.  Relentless then jumps on the "her own don beta" bandwagon and goes on to congratulate Joy, who is now a fiancee, with the obligatory Facebook wall message that reads something like this: "Congratulations on your engagement, Joy!" (What? Were you expecting something else? I don't know what you were expecting o ... this was what I had in mind *displays a set of "not-so-pearly" white teeth*)

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L2: A Second Language [Featured Artiste: Dach-Mo]

L2: A Second Language [Featured Artiste: Dach-Mo]

My native language is NOT English.  It is Yoruba.  Are you shocked? I doubt it, but I will explain myself nonetheless.  I define “native language” for myself alone, as the language spoken by members of my ethnic group.  Being that I am from Lagos (Yes, I really am from Lagos), it is obvious why I would assert that Yoruba is my native language.  But, the problem with this my definition is that it does not apply to everyone else.  It is essentially “discriminatory,” the reason being that so many other people cannot define their native language the way I defined mine.  In fact, some people would even argue with me that English is their native language.  But, I disagree.  While English is the OFFICIAL language of Nigeria because we were colonized by “Mama Sha-ly” and her people (okay, I ought to just say “The British,” but Mama Sha-ly sounded well….cooler! *grinning*), it is not our native language because we are not originally from England.  


It is amazing how a person’s perspective can change just by living in another man’s land, and that is what happened to me. When I lived in Nigeria, I never really thought about language as per whether English was the official language, bla, bla, bla.  In fact, I never had any desire to speak anything else other than English and maybe other European languages like French (call it “colo-mentality” as in “colonialism mentality” and you’d be quite correct).  Fast-forward to a few years in the US, and my perspective has changed. Not only am I more interested in learning Yoruba, but my interest in learning Hausa has been re-kindled as well.  Okay, let me explain.

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I see GAPS! (Featured Artiste: Dach-Mo)

I see GAPS! (Featured Artiste: Dach-Mo)

Picture from HERE

I feel privileged to have had the level and quality of education that has brought  me to this point. Having gone to school in both Nigeria and America, I have seen the way things work educationally in both countries. Of course, that does not mean I know it all (Does anyone know EVERYTHING except God?), but from my own limited experience, I see HUGE gaps (which are essentially problems) with the way the educational system operates in Nigeria. Now, at this point, I guess I need to insert a disclaimer, i.e. that I do not advocate identifying problems and doing nothing about it (that seems to be what a lot of people do). In fact, this reminds me of a song I heard once (please bear with me…I randomly “burst into song”…I think it’s a part of my thought process…*laughs*):

Everybody said that anybody could do 

The important things somebody should do 

Everybody knows that anybody could do 

All the good things that nobody did

Just in case you need this, the song is called “Everybody said (but nobody did)” by Acapella. As I was saying, I do not advocate pointing accusing fingers at people and just pin-pointing problems, without proposing solutions or better still, implementing sustainable solutions. But I have come to understand that the best place to start when you are trying to figure out solutions to any problem, is to first IDENTIFY the problem. I personally think that the problem with education in Nigeria is not just a simple or straightforward one. It is multi-faceted and can be summarized in this way:

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