FRENCH VERSION FOR WHAT?

When I first heard Yemi Alade French version of Johnny I was like wow this is brilliant and till now I really do love the song, to be honesty she really killed it and I must applaud her for that. Just of recent I heard Skales shake body and Orezi shoki French version and I was like WTF, who are these guys. Honestly to me they shouldn’t have done the French version of these songs and it was then I thought of it, why French version to start with?

Nigeria is an English speaking country and the original version of these songs were in English, Pigin and some other local dialect, so the question is which audience did they do the French version for? I could recall Yemi Alade saying she did hers from her French speaking fans who were clamouring for it and am sure if we were to ask Skales and Orezi they would say the same thing. Looking at it from the angle that they are trying to increase their fan base you might yes it is a good idea but this is Nigeria the most successful African country when it comes music (no disrespect to other African countries) why would our artiste do a song in another person’s language just to gain their audience in this century where Nigerian music is been sought after.

Am not saying you can’t do a song and infuse a foreign language but am very much against doing your hit song in another language just to gain more fans. My reason for saying this is simple, how many other African artistes have done the Yoruba or Hausa or even the Igbo version of their own songs? We have artistes like Sarkodie, Shatta Wale , Fally Pupua, Cabo Snoop just to mention a few who are big artiste in their country and in African as a whole but never as these artiste for once decided to do a song in our own language just to gain our audience. The very least they would do is to feature our artiste so they could use that to win our heart which is even working well for the likes of Diamond, R2bees, DJ Arafat just to mention a few.

To be honest I might not have written about this if Skales and Orezi didn’t do that rubbish French version of Shake body and Shoki respectively because I so much loved Yemi Alade French version of Johnny that I didn’t see anything wrong with it until this two people opened my eyes. So before it becomes a common trend for the rising artistes or the declining ones, I say no more French version of any song, if your song can get massive audience in Nigeria trust me with the kind of influence we have on African soil musically other African countries and even the world would accept you the way you are.