A Cavort Into Rema’s Hit Single “Bounce”
The first time I heard this song, I was lying languidly on the twin bed of an Airbnb in Ibadan. It was a hot afternoon (aren’t they all?) and Twitter served as the only thing to fill my time as I waited to meet up with friends later that evening.
I open a video and I’m immediately confronted by Benin singer and songwriter Rema drifting on-screen in a bowrider boat, a thick curved wake behind the watercraft and two thick curvy women beside him. The women, veritably callipygian, obeyed the lyrics of the song and put their all into making their supple booties bounce, while Rema juggled between gesticulating and steering the boat. The caption of the tweet promised one of the two women to Rema’s mentor and record label head, Don Jazzy.
As a fellow disciple of the temple of yansh, I’m immediately hooked on the song. I screech into my YouTube Music app to find the track and connect my phone to my Bluetooth speaker. A fan of the 20-year old Benin singer, my personal playlist is replete with some of my favourite work from him; the half-political, half-sensual Rewind, the 2020 ode to the more beautiful half of the human race, Woman, followed by a lamentation, the soothing and psyche-calming Peace of Mind. I’m eager to add another masterpiece to my personal altar of his discography.
The track starts simply enough, immediately informing listeners that Don Jazzy was responsible for this unpretentious but catchy beat. It’s the kind you find yourself bopping to even before the lyrics come on. The beat rolls on until Rema proclaims, as he always does, that this is “Another. Banger.” He’s rarely ever wrong, much less so this time.
The synth, drums and violin strings join the medley and it’s almost swooning in its complacency. Rema jumps in with the sentence that’s repeated perhaps a hundred times through the song.
“Girl I’m in love with your booty bounce.”
After the first salvo of this ubiquitous line, the artiste informs us that he had previously assessed the backside in question, and it had weighed an astounding 1000 pounds. That’s 453.592 kilograms if you’re more in tune with the metric system. I’m not exactly interested in the physics and biology of this claim. If Rema says so, then it is so.
After informing baby girl that she is hypnotizing and the object of his desire, the Bad Commando also tells the woman with the jaw-dropping posterior that he would put in a total of seven rounds of coitus. Nigerian men are often found making boasts like this and end up putting in seven pumps and calling it a day, so I’d advice baby girl not to put too much faith in this claim.
The singer and songwriter of Iron Man, which was selected by former President Obama in his 2019 Summer Playlist, adulates her posterior, praising it for being “original, no be that kind black China,” a double entendre playing on China’s reputation for substandard exports and at the same time, making reference to American model and socialite Black Chyna and her surgically-enhanced body. Yikes.
The artist who has featured on many Nigerian hit single does away with the usual knee-on-the-ground, diamond-ring-in-hand proposal, instead directly imploring the object of his lust to “be my wife, make I be your nnanyi.” “Nnanyi” in the Igbo dialect of Nigeria is a casual diminutive for one’s husband. Given Rema’s reputation among the Gen Z demographic, I doubt this offer will meet with a refusal.
He then lets loose a string of cuisine-inspired lines.
“Chop you like kilishi
Pеpper me, girly, odeshi”
Odeshi which translates to “there’s no pain” is a commonly-used black magic ritual used to repel bullets, hailed by hunters, security forces, and gunmen.
Rema isn’t done feeding us:
“Shey you wan chop Italian
Shey you wan chop Chinese,”
The verse winds down to my favourite lines of the track:
“And if you open your Pandora
I go give you everything wey you need.”
Listeners familiar with Hesiod’s Works and Days will be quick to latch on to this reference. Pandora’s Box refers to the mythological artefact in possession of Pandora, the woman given to Prometheus’ brother by Zeus in order to punish Prometheus for stealing his fire (yeah nobody really understands this family.)
Rema’s knowledgeable line appears to promise this lucky woman everything she needs if she opens her (Pandora’s) box, a reference to the version of the myth which claimed the box contained blessings. Looks like someone’s been studying their Greek mythology.
Right after, Rema lets loose a staccato fire of lines, mixing in some of his signature gibberish lyrics, to great melodic effect. Don Jazzy’s synth remains audible in the background, distinct without taking prominence over Rema’s recital. Another favourite is the line where Rema quips: “Baby girl, no go play me like Woody,” a plaintive request not to be played like Andy’s pull-string cowboy ragdoll from Disney’s high-grossing Toy Story movies.
After, this synth beat drops off suddenly, leaving Rema’s rapid-fire verse chopping, like Wile E. Coyote running out of cliff in a Roadrunner cartoon, while the previously steady beat starts to undulate as it progresses. The verse ends with a plea to Blessing not to killi person, abeg o.
While it is truly “another banger,” this bop also serves to show that Don Jazzy’s production hasn’t been impeded by his new skit-making hobby or philanthropy. I strongly believe that the duo of Rema and the former Mo Hits producer might bless us with songs reminiscent of the Don Jazzy and Wande Coal hitmaking era. We can only watch and wait.
