COAST

There has undeniably been a boom across the music industry in Nigeria which has sparked increased blogging activities, endorsement deals, album sales and …record deals?? , well the issue of record deals is another day’s talk, but underneath that is a topic that is a lot easier to dwell on and that is  the number of secular international collaborations we’ve witnessed in the past year between local acts and the likes of Akon, Olivia, Gyptian etc. Sadly this hasn’t been the case with the gospel music genre; such big name cross over collaborations hardly ever been witnessed. The closest that had been attempted was the 2012 remix of the Mighty God by Joe Praize featuring the internationally recognized Soweto Gospel Choir of South Africa, but yet that was just south Africa. The gospel music scene up until this year was certainly not showing any obvious signs of  international collaboration and this made it a lot more unpredictable when renowned gospel act B.O.U.Q.U.I finally broke the dead lock by collaborating with the phenomenal 4 time STELLAR award winning gospel rapper DA T.R.U.T.H on her new single ‘’celebration’’ .Not settling for just that, she stretched the new dike further by hosting in Nigeria the American gospel rapper’s ‘’Love, Hope & War’’ tour in promotion of his latest album which recently was launched in U.S. Amidst the ‘celebration’ ,the big question in the minds of ardent gospel music lovers is if this was going to be the first of many more to come or simply a once in a life time affair. 
This whole web of information could be linked back to my question regarding the boom with record deals. Like we’ve seen in the cases of secular acts D’banj and most recently as speculated wizkid, accompanying these big crossover collaborations is often a contention within the record labels because of the ambition to go international. This could well be the fear within the gospel circle, the fear of selfish ambition, well that would require the artistes to provide honest answers for themselves. However, a more logical approach could be considered to this, if we as Christians are convinced that the content of our music is relevant to today’s world at large and not just our local sphere then I’d say it is about time the others take a cue from B.O.U.Q.U.I.
In doing this, daring to take the game further then maybe gospel acts might just see a reason to take song writing, production and marketing to the next level, just may be. In conclusion,just when I thought I was done with this and planned to drop my pen, B.O.U.Q.U.I wasn’t thinking in my direction we realized the video had dropped even quicker,what can we say, it’s an amazing video that just passes the message of the track just as it is “celebration”. Check it out,you don’t want to miss DA T.R.U.T.H attempting an azonto move.
Emmanuel Nk
Regular Contributor and Writer for XclusiveGospel.
Catch him on twitter @TheNameIsNk
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