Essentials: Blaqbonez Says Everything We Think on New Album Young Preacher
Throughout the project’s 39 minutes, Blaq relays the reality of a young man transitioning through several phases of his life.
Blaqbonez is known for saying what everyone thinks. Between his antics and his out-of-context gestures, he has mastered the art of saying what he deems necessary and making it easy to digest. Deciding to like his message is another conversation entirely. Whatever your opinion on his music is, its reliability has aided Blaqbonez to position himself as the Nigerian music industry’s next-door neighbor, relaying everyday stories as a matter of fact in a package of humor.
His new project, Young Preacher turned out to be the archetypal Blaqbonez project. Throughout the project’s 39 minutes, Blaq relays the reality of a young man transitioning through several phases of his life. Intersexual dynamics and his rise to stardom serve as the main backdrop on which the project sits, but as you listen, you’re exposed to more information about his roots and relationship wthat exists in his life. Young Preacher highlights the intricacies of his complicated existence, and by extension, that of the ordinary person.
In the interview with Joey Akan during the lockdown, Blaq highlighted that his search for greatness is the motivation for all his actions. As the epitome of a grass-to-grace story, one can figure out that the start of his life was in no way rosy, as he raps on “Young Preacher” — ”rose flat bro, one-room apartment in the ghetto/drove by last year, made a video, that’s life goals”. This, coupled with allusions to a polarizing relationship with his father, has turned him into a ”man on the moon”, who used adversity as fuel for his newfound success.
On another plane, this success comes with new dynamics. Distractions and shallow interactions plague his new life, a different kind of reality from the one he grew up understanding. The life of a star is a tricky one because in one clean swoop all your hard work can be undone. Regardless of his detached exterior, exposure to shallowness has an effect on Blaq. On “Star Life”, he opens up by saying, ”I got girls in my corner, got goons in my corner/dem dey with me, but sometimes I get lonely”.
For someone who openly rates sex above love, it wouldn’t be far-fetched to call that a response to the loneliness he feels inside. Finding love post-success isn’t the easiest thing, and in that little window, Blaqbonez described the ordinariness of stars and celebrities. Stan culture is at its peak in the world, so celebrities are often put on pedestals. Instead, Blaqbonez humanizes himself, further reinforcing how detached he is from the star life. He cannot run from his emotions, and he doesn’t try to.
The reality of his star life has an effect on how he handles romantic relationships. The “sex over love” trope is popular as most people are unlucky in establishing sustainable relationships with others. He trades one woman for several and constantly raps about his plethora in his songs. He reinforces this on “Loyalty” as he sings, ”and you want some loyalty/and I can’t give you loyalty”.
Young Preacher highlights Blaqbonez’s stardom, growth, and inward maturity. He expresses the duality between what things seem like and what is as we watch his life unfold in real time. Between dealing with emotions, vanity, and relationships, Blaqbonez crafts a well-curated album that holds pieces of himself behind the mask of stardom. His artistry earns every plaudit it gets.
