EP Review: Love Is Not a Rosy Affair on Obongjayar & Sarz’s Sweetness
Singer and producer unite to create genre-bending music about the complexities of romance.
Nigerian super producer Sarz, in recent times, has developed a penchant for collaborative projects and experimentation. It started with the excellent I Love Girls With Trobul, his 2019 project with Nigerian singer WurlD; about two months ago, he and the budding Nigerian singer Lojay joined forces on LV N ATTN. What those projects share in common, which is also what elevates them, is their eclectic production: Afrobeats and dancehall mixed with R&B and electronic music.
On Sweetness, his newest project with Obongjayar, Sarz reaches into his bag of production tricks and retrieves a carefully constructed sound world of ’80s music, synthwave, afrobeats, and pop. It is this sparkling world that Obongjayar inhabits and owns.
Raised in Calabar, Nigeria and based in London, UK, Obongjayar has a voice that is both hard as a punch and soothing as a wet evening. Last year, he released the EP Which Way is Forward?, a socially conscious yet deeply personal work. Obongjayar’s music is a fusion of afrobeat, R&B, soul, spoken word and electronic.
At four tracks, Sweetness is a compact snapshot of a relationship with incredible highs and lows. On the title track, Obongjayar professes undying love to a woman, telling her, “I wanna be your friend/I wanna be your lover.” But it is soon revealed that this affection isn’t mutual when he sings, “I know I’m not the only one/She make me feel like number one.” Obongjayar chases this unbothered woman relentlessly with his words, “I’m lacking what I found in you/You make me feel right.”
On “Gone Girl,” Obongjayar finally has the woman in his life but doesn’t have her love. “Is there something I’m not doing?/Are we good, have I misread the room?” he queries, finding it hard to believe that time has passed and she doesn’t share his affection. “Baby, lately when I hold you/You’re missing/I wish you were here,” he sings. With a stain of mockery in his voice, he calls the woman a zombie - alive but dead to his emotional needs.
Obongjayar sounds like a man who has seen the light on “If You Say.” “If you say/You love me/Show me/Leave story,” he sings in the chorus. He is resolute about what he wants: if she wants to be with him, she has to be with him - in body and mind.
That resoluteness, though, doesn’t last. On “Nobody,” which is percussion-heavy and will feel at home on dance floors, Obongjayar goes back to professing love, singing, “Baby you’re undisputed/Can’t nobody do what you did/Girl you’ve turned my world around/Baby it’s you it’s you I’m choosing.” Something, indeed, must kill a man.
An interesting fact about Sarz’s collaborations with WurlD, Lojay and Obongjayar is that, before the release of the projects, these artistes were new faces to a larger part of the Nigerian audience. WurlD, even though he had collaborated with Nigerian producer Shizzi on his EP Love Is Contagious, was better known in the American music scene; Lojay had modest success with his 2017 EP Midnight Vibes; Obongjayar is a notable face in the London music scene.
What can be inferred from these collaborations, though, is that Sarz continually wants to blur the lines and challenge himself and these artistes to make the best music possible. Obongjayar, like Sarz’s other collaborators, has risen to the challenge, adding a strong project to his discography.
Go HERE to stream Sweetness.