Every fucking single was a hit… It was true at the time, but now??
Vanilla Bottega was a good song that could have done better than it did, and several fans of the Yagi Level label owner, if it’s still standing hardly knew that Lil Kesh dropped a single, talk and do, his recent features from Fireboy DML and Zinoleesky, who certainly were looking up to him when he was the people’s choice for the next rated award over Reekado Banks back in 2016 are his two most streamed songs on Spotify, and his last single after almost 2 months hardly has a hundred thousand streams. This begs the question from both the fans of Olamide, who brought him to the limelight after his success with lyrically, and his hardcore fans, WHERE IS LIL KESH??
What are the main issues, one wonders, most people claim that he wasn’t ready when he left YBNL, and others claim he just wasn’t serious, but are these the main reasons why Lil Kesh has been underwhelming and underperforming?
The talent is apparently there, the wordplay, the rapping ability, and the ability to create catchy choruses, but it seems as if Lil Kesh has been robbed by the game.
He came to the limelight just a year or two before the massive revolution of the music scene in Nigeria. Coming into the scene in 2015, the great revolution started around 2018, with Burna boy, Davido, and Wizkid beginning to take afro music global, meaning that the local rappers, Olamide and his crew were going to be left behind.
Olamide though, at that point already had a cult of fans that were always going to stand by him as he had been in the game for a long time and had cemented himself as an all-time great, but with Lil Kesh, that was not the case. Olamide also sensing the change in the game underwent a lot of style changes and more recently has become a label owner, bringing up two of the best newcomers in the game Asake and Fireboy.
We believe that Lil Kesh has the style and appeal to have been up there with them if he had come at the same time with them but is just indeed a victim of circumstances other obvious victims being Naira Marley, Zlatan, and Mayorkun. I really do hope he is able to come up with a plan on how to get up there again as he has shown that he still has the appeal on ‘Don’t Call Me Back’.
Curated by Olakanmi Matthew
