As he’s the figurehead of Nigerian
Afrobeats, it feels appropriate that D’Banj’s debut UK headline show
takes place on the final day of the Notting Hill carnival.
Alongside the usual dancehall and soca, a good proportion of the
anthems that fuelled this year’s sound systems and floats are the hits
that have propelled the rise of Afrobeats in the UK: Atumpan‘s The Thing, Ice Prince‘s Oleku and, of course, D’Banj‘s own Oliver Twist, a song of such popular reach that it even made it on to EastEnders.
Keeping that carnival spirit going is
D’Banj’s MO tonight, as is that of a significant proportion of the
audience, who have hotfooted it down the road from the carnival. As an
entertainer, D’Banj treads the line between suave and rambunctious with
ease: his dapper yellow-lapelled blazer is swiftly shed as he starts to
rival his own dancers in snake-hipped, low-grinding ability, and the
gold chain follows as he plunges off stage for a spot of crowd-surfing.
By the show’s climax, D’Banj is half-naked and essaying moves that seem
to refer mostly to the title of his forthcoming album, Mr Endowed.
After a late entrance compounded by
technical difficulties leaves the crowd slightly restless, D’Banj may
feel putting that level of work in is necessary – but it transpires that
the music does the trick just as well. ‘This is not a fluke,’
he announces midway through the show, perhaps mindful that not everyone
present is aware of his seven-year career before Oliver Twist. Tonight,
though, his older material goes down almost as well, from the
call-and-response of Why Me to the lovelorn Scapegoat,
and D’Banj bridges the gap between his more lilting, organic songs and
his recent tougher, trancier dance-floor anthems with ease. His
between-song patter has a tendency to ramble, but the show’s culmination
in Oliver Twist is stellar proof that an international hit can
be engineered with ease if based around a resonant, inarguable
statement such as ‘I like Beyoncé‘.
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