For the last several years, Davido has been reshaping the sound of Nigerian pop. As a prolific hitmaker and one of Africa’s biggest stars, he has pivoted away from global ambitions toward revamping the traditional sounds of his homeland. He released his debut album, Omo Baba Olowo, seven years ago and hasn’t released another until now. It feels like the stars aligned for it: Drake is still courting the sound, Burna Boy has a Grammy nom, UMG is moving into the region, and the music is crashing into our shores.
A Good Time is a nearly gapless immersion into his potent, wavy signature sound. Nigerian pop music—with its endorsement-based revenue structure and rejection of collaborative songwriting—isn’t really conducive to ideas like cohesion. Davido has championed the use of songwriters, and has as much of a unified vision for his music as any of his peers, but this is the first time he’s been able to translate that into anything resembling a complete album. “Everything I do is a lifestyle,” he sings on the intro. Over the next hour, that lifestyle can only be defined as lush and splendid.
Nigerian pop is a singles-focused genre with a hits-first infrastructure. From the Mo’ Hits era (2004-2012) led by D’banj and Don Jazzy to the Mavin Records stronghold established by Jazzy in its wake, labels have prioritized A-sides and roster-boosting compilations like 2007’s genre-defining Curriculum Vitae. Most of the digital revenue from Nigeria’s growing music industry comes from caller ringback tones (RBTs); streaming is on the rise but very slowly. (Most profits still go toward the country’s booming piracy market.) Making albums under these conditions is largely a secondary concern, if not a luxury. Davido, coming off a career-redefining singles run in 2017, knows a thing or two about luxury, and he has taken on the challenge. While his album isn’t thematic or self-contained, it feels comprehensive. Knowing the stakes, Davido curates a buoyant, unsinkable record, one of the genre’s finest ever.
His debut, Omo Baba Olowo—meaning “rich man’s son”—was a failure of imagination and ambition. Not only was it steeped in an already established Mo’ Hits sound but it was unsure about who it wanted Davido to be: the flexer boy-king or the down-on-his-luck hustler who worked his way into the music industry on his own terms. He was standing on his daddy’s money one minute then citing how no one loved him when he was broke the next, like Lagos’ own Mike Jones. He’s grown as an artist since and has had a lot of time to think about those mistakes, including the misadventure of his last EP, which he recently called “shit.” On A Good Time, he provides not just an integrated sound all his own but a clear vision for its future.
Davido’s overall theme here is a rich playboy who is embracing commitment. The songs are feel-good serenades, many with groovy dembow rhythms slowed to a gentle sashaying pace, and at least one dedicated directly to his fiancé Chioma Rowland (“Assurance”). “Fall” showers a lover with adoration and gifts as an apology. The writing is largely that of a smitten mogul, but occasionally he lets his guard down. “I just want to make history without my people back home missing me,” he sings on the Summer Walker duet “D & G,” exposing some anxiety beneath his often impenetrable pop star veneer.
Unlike some of his contemporaries, Davido has embraced the “Afrobeats” label in part because he and his team of producers have played such a big role in defining it. While artists like D’Banj and duo P-Square were pioneers of the streaking, synthy music that the genre was built upon, Davido (alongside rival WizKid) spearheaded what it has become: melodically subtler, gentler in tone, programmed drums evoking conventional and proven African rhythms. A Good Time sounds like an artist removing the bugs that prevent his songs from running at maximum efficiency. The R&B textures smooth down the sounds of Igbo highlife; the muted yet technicolor synth and guitar tones of songs like “1 Milli” and “Check AM” are perfectly devised for Davido’s sumptuous harmonies. As if seeking justice for the lost Popcaan version of Drake’s “Controlla,” Davido’s “Risky” uses similar skittering drums to a colorful dancehall hybrid with the Jamaican deejay in tow. At nearly every turn, Davido is upgrading.
Davido is one of the most charismatic performers in Afropop, but A Good Time’s polished and exquisite simplicity is owed to a crack team of Nigerian producers: Shizzi, Kiddominant, Speroach Beatz, and Tekno, in particular. Davido’s vocals drift sweetly just above the drums on “Green Light Riddim.” “If,” one of his vibrant 2017 hits, finds a home here among similarly sunlit productions. Over the layered rhythms of “Disturbance,” he’s beaming. Instead of trying to push the sound to its edge, it’s like he’s seeking a unified theory of the nebulous “Afrobeats” term.
As the already synthesized sound of Nigerian pop begins to transform into scenes and subgenres like alté and Fuji pop, and the future stars are mixing SoundCloud rap in with their more orthodox Naija pop, or bringing throwback Ja Rule duets into the sun, Davido is content to fine-tune his pristine songcraft. His songs aren’t experimenting with the form the way Rema’s, Odunsi’s, or wurLD’s are; he’s more concerned with making the most optimized Afropop possible. This extends to his streamlined album on the whole, which is a new benchmark for Afropop LPs. If Burna Boy is bringing the sounds of the diaspora back to the motherland, Davido is erecting a monument to his own status as a hometown hero.
