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Olamide New Album Review: Unruly

Olamide has just released a new album, Unruly marking a milestone in the music industry. On this journey, he brings new cats on board as he often does; Bnxn, Asake, Fireboy DML and Rema. The album is proof that Afrobeats has a brighter future. Unruly solidifies his prominence in the game as a rapper and a singer still sticks strong.

Unlike what the name of the album denotes, the arrangement of this project is anything but unruly. The project has a cohesiveness that one can attribute only to the consistency of Olamide’s presence on the tracks. The album begins with the song ‘Celebration’ which is a song that opens with the most wonderful string intro. In Asake-like fashion, the song has wonderful accompanying chorus vocals throughout the song. The first track blends into the next song ‘Jinja’ as smoothly as milk blends into tea. Olamide’s sequencing game is very strong on this album and a listener will find that they’ve gotten to the end of the whole album before they realize it.

Tracks such as New Religion and Trumpets that preceded the album had given a glimpse of what Unruly would bring. The visuals of Jinja unveil the new persona Olamide enboldens and it is far from the album art. A caricature of Olamide in a mafia suit and jewellery iced-up to the teeth and fingers, giving gang sign.

His Unruly lyricism is profound in Hardcore. He still has the urge to strictly go hard and drop bars. Come Alive with Bnxn who brings slickness with his musical dexterity, got Olamide playing with classic rap flows and rhythm. The soft side of Olamide Badoo bares itself on Mukulu alongside Rema’s Afrorave vibes, meshing with Arabia and India flows. The 15 tracks body of work is without a doubt, worthy of listening. He stuck to his words, the album is for baddies and men that love baddies.

Olamide has also shown a great ability to vary his sound. For someone who has been in the industry as long as he has, it would be easy to write his songs off as being only one thing or one sound. However, Olamide is taking his sound to interesting places and collaborating with excellent artists that allow his style to shine. From adopting the Ashake-esque chorus chant during his songs to even taking his traditional Yoruba rap style to a drill beat. All the songs are not perfect, some shine better than others but each song has something interesting for listeners to enjoy. Olamide garnishes each song with a harmonious blend of instruments from all over the sound spectrum to deliver a project full of interesting beats, lovely strings and exquisite production.
Olamide positions for global dominance with this 10th album “UNRULY “ and rhythmically there is no amendable discipline to vibing to every string and lyrics entailing the album.