Cho Cho is a showcase for Zlatan’s noisy relentlessness

30 May 2021 - 17:28

Sometime around 2016, Nigerian pop music achieved a less frantic state. Its chief architects were the Ghanaian producer named Juls and the Nigerian singer popularly known as Mr Eazi. An obliquely connected strain of mellow productions was also popularised by Tekno around the same time. In time, it won over many converts: Davido, Runtown, Falz, Olamide.

Zlatan.

That cool state of affairs, as imported from Ghana, wasn’t destined to last – even its eventual name “pon pon” had a certain ruggedness that the sound, in its initial stage, lacked. So pervasive was this sound and the hits it produced that it felt like it would never really end. But it has had to. If everything that rises in pop music takes the shape of its most important city, then, by default, Nigerian pop must be of a high tempo. And so it was that less than a half-decade after pon pon’s peak, zanku killed it off. From pon pon’s easy swaying of bodies in clubs, Nigerians were thrown into a frenzied hopping on-one-leg-and then-the-other dance.

The sound/dance’s chief proponent, Zlatan, appeared on songs with Nigeria’s biggest artists: with Burna Boy, he made ‘Killin Dem’, with Davido he made ‘Bum Bum’. None of those songs can be said to be mellow. But as the sound’s popularity began to dwindle, it appeared its main act was about to disappear. The unexpected rise of Naira Marley, with whom Zlatan shares an artful recklessness, delayed that decline further, as they starred in videos that kept both in circulation. And then earlier this year, Zlatan released ‘Lagos Anthem’, a minor hit track that showed that he was far from a spent force in Nigerian pop music.

He has now teamed up with Davido again on ‘Cho Cho’, which takes his rhythmic noise to a relentlessly intense level. The song proceeds at breakneck speed and has a video that captures the song’s energy with jerky cuts featuring people dancing. What is the song about? Who cares! Its major purpose is to convey Zlatan’s artful noise and make its listeners move and there is hardly a link between the song’s three verses by Zlatan, Davido, and Mayorkun. But yeah, who cares?

By leaning heavily on one end of the tempo spectrum, it seems unlikely that ‘Cho Cho’ would become one of Zlatan’s bigger hits. In fact, its major utility, besides keeping up with the prolificity the streaming era demands of some artists, is its tribute to Zlatan’s affinity for frantic sounds. To his credit, he has made his career work way past some expectations, proving that reports of his musical demise were quite exaggerated. It turns out that Zlatan is as relentless as his music.