Album title: 16 Wives
Artist: Jovi
Genre: Mboko
Nationality: Cameroonian
Release date: February 16
Position in Discography: Third
Fear Factor: High
Familiar with this artist? No
Familiar with the genre or subgenre? Again, I didn't even know it existed before now
Average RYM Score: N/A
Now I'm not one to prejudge an album STOP LAUGHING ALL OF YOU! As I was saying, I don't like to form an opinion before (I can
still hear that snig
gering you know) I've had a chance to listen to an album, but this one has me worried before I hear a note. Firstly – and this may just be me – the cover reminds me uncomfortably of those girls kidnapped last year by Boko Haram, and secondly, someone in a review says that “looking for tenderness in Jovi's music is like looking for a needle in a haystack.” Coupled with the title, this sounds like it could be a terribly misogynistic record, and given that the language is not strictly English, I guess I won't know, but it sort of worries me that I might be giving airtime to someone who is of the idea that women are just objects. Not that a lot of the rappers in the hip-hop albums I've listened to so far may not also have that idea, but I think in general they're a little less open about it. Of course, I could be totally wrong about our man Jovi, but again, given that I won't be able to understand, likely, a word he sings or says, I'm never really going to know, and it's probably going to hang over this review like a dark cloud.
Hmm. That's certainly English on the opener. There may be a problem here though: first, it's not on Spotify and second, though it's on YouTube the only two links I find is one that isn't it but leads to a Bandcamp page where, it seems only about five of the songs are available, and another one, which says it's the full album but only gives me seven tracks instead of sixteen. Hmm again: sixteen wives/ sixteen tracks? Well it's not bad, got some good atmosphere to it. I like the African tribal rhythm that characterises "Ou Même" but the next one's a little boring and not a little wearing. Yeah, I'm getting bored now. Okay I see now this isn't even just seven tracks, it's seven tracks taken at random off the album so, you know, **** this. I wasn't enjoying it anyway. I'll give him that, insofar as I could understand the English (which mostly I could) there didn't seem to be any particularly overt misogynistic lyrical material here, so maybe I was doing him a disservice. Still, as one reviewer is quoted as saying on the Wiki page
the experimental sound "poses the danger of narrowing his audience to only a small group of connoisseurs and people who have a rich musical culture like himself."[17] I'm obviously not one of those people.
Check out more from this artist? No
Check out more from this genre or subgenre? No, unless I have to
Expectation Index: 0