‘Eclipse’ EP: Oxlade’s need for an album?

By Omoniyi Faith

In a world where the general measure of artistry is fast shifting away from long bodies of works to Extended Playlists, Oxlade is playing the game just right, maybe.

Nigerian artistes are showing the world that you might not need as many albums to hit the success benchmark. However, with a few hit singles here and there, you might just crack it. Oxlade again understands this perfectly.

Thriving off of hit singles like ‘Away’, ‘Sing’, ‘O2’ and even ‘DKT’ plus strategic collaborations ‘Kolo’ with Ice Prince, ‘Unconditionally’ with Ajebutter22, and ‘Non-Living thing’ with Sarkodie.

Oxlade, once again, drops a new EP title ‘Eclipse‘ with a potential hit ‘Ojuju’.

Oxlade is no newcomer in releasing EPs as this is his third since his debut in the Nigerian music space ‘Stepback’ in 2019, ‘Oxygene’ in 2020, and now ‘Ecplise’ in 2021.

The artiste describes the project as an expression of all shades of him; pain, passion, happiness, purity, and ingenuity.

The project is love-themed. It sees the artiste portray himself avoiding love, trying to fall in love, and finding love.

The album opens up with the artiste begging for ‘more’ love from his lover. He is determined to stay even if his lover treats him harshly. He sings, “even if you show me shege, I no go vex for you”.

The baseline on 1:28 is fire though.

‘Ojuju’ sees the artiste express a different shade of emotion: fear. ‘Ojuju’ is the singer’s metaphorical expression of his kind of fear for love. Ojuju in Yoruba parlance means a monster.

He opens up the track with the line: ” I dey fear ojuju, I dey fear of falling…”. He recounts his past experiences and goes ahead to add: “I am fed up of falling.” Sorry Oxlade.

‘Ojuju’ is my favorite track off of the four-track EP and no, not because it was first released as a single.

The EP progresses with ‘Pay me’. The artiste expresses fear again, this time he doesn’t want to lose his lover.

‘Incomplete’ a thorough afrobeat song brings the EP to a close. In this writer’s opinion, the track seemed incomplete, much more like a filler.

Oxlade lyricism wasn’t on display in this one. In this song, the artiste seemed to feel remorseful about his previous escapades with women.

The album, spaning about 11 minutes, is predominantly Afrobeats and was produced solely by DJ Coublon. ‘Eclipse’ was released under the Troniq music record. The album art sees Oxlade in the middle of an eclipse

Oxlade, who is well known for his hooks, maintained his vocal dexterity once again on this project.

He might well be hitting it with the singles and features, but he is long overdue for an album. Even at four tracks, ‘Eclipse’ looked too short for an EP. Let’s hope the light at the end of the eclipse brings with it an album.