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Nigerian music yesterday lost a diamond in the rough....a diamond nevertheless... DaGrin aka Lyrical Were aka C.E.O the Chief Executive Omoita. The artist who changed Yoruba rap for most people... it was a love affair cut short in those first days, that stage of crazy, hot infatuation for the newly budding naija music fans and for the old die-hard fans alike. Whichever group you fall in, I'm sure you'll agree, you could not help but love him because he flowed seamlessly and made you dance sometimes, made you nod your head, made you laugh sometimes and made you marvel at the way he tied Yoruba and hip-hop so well and made it sometimes sound like it couldn't possibly be all Yoruba or most of the time, just him. Like no one we had heard before. I remember a friend of mine saying after listening to track 3. on the C.E.O album Pon Pon Pon- that he sounds somewhat like a 50 Cent fan (putting it lightly)....I did/do not know how he meant this but I took it to mean that DaGrin had successfully taken Yoruba rap and made it into world-class hip-hop... (well I always do that when people give their opinions on Nigerian songs and music in general).

I take such comments and break them down, he might have meant it sounded like a copy, but the fact that that was all he could say, he did not have any complaints on the flow, he still nodded his head in time to the song and all the others on the album (which I had constantly on repeat last year). That in itself made me happy, and proud of DaGrin, he actually was quite amazing.

But now he's gone, no lamentations, no questions, he's gone. And that is all we will hear from him...all the music DaGrin was destined to make has been made and that is all....that is actually what gets me the most. The fact that he was a young man, a talented one at that, with family and friends and fans and people who he did not know and who did not know him personally are all just extra facts which break my heart more and more when I think about it. But that is all, that's it. God called on him and he's left.

What we (non-family, non-friends) have left of him is his music, his albums his videos and just generally all he put out and was involved in. Now, on twitter last night, it was disturbing to me that about 3 out of 5 comments concerning Dagrin read "I loved kondo", "kondo was my song last holiday" like dudes, how can I take you seriously if you so readily and openly grieve an artist whose album had back to back works of art and the most noisy but (very danceable) track is the one mentioned again and again. I know I am extreme and maybe coarse, but I do not believe you should dramatise a death so much because to me it just makes it common and quickly forgotten. That is why when people die, they don't say a minute of screaming and convulsing but a minute of *silence*. It is respect.

I hope we all can seek solace in the fact that he is in a better place now, he is not suffering, he is with the God he often praised and thanked and gave glory to in his songs. It is well.

Also I also *reeeeealllyyy* hope what we take away from this loss is the fact that our music is ours, if we do not love it, no one will come and love it for us. We should not need the BBC to show us the quality of artistry we have in our country for us to be prompted to openly declare we love it enough to BUY it or listen to it.

Support others like DaGrin, the people who put our country and our culture into musical notes and onto our screens, they make it what we shake our booties to, what we lie back and breathe to, sometimes what we drive and sing along to and if you are like me, WHAT YOU DANCE TILL YOU CAN DANCE NO MORE TO (all in the confines of you sitting room, kitchen, bathroom and in front of any and every mirror). Maybe even what we make love to and what we sing in the shower, we should love it regardless, because it is good. Art is not limited but who knows what might happen today or tomorrow, lets appreciate what we have RIGHT NOW because we are not sure of any other time but now.

RIP DaGrin.

Where do we draw the line? Shabby but happy.

Where do we draw the line between the outside world and our internal being? I often wonder why I let things get to me the way they do and to the extent to which they do. Ever since I can remember, I have been a people's person and more or less very easy to get along with. On the flip side, I am extremely easy to sadden, annoy or generally just get cross and I am very perceptive to the feelings of others... this means that if a person just happens to let one snide remark or a sarcastic or cruel statement get past their lips, heck even an evil thought (to me) sometimes and I find myself closing them off, I can get angry or sad (mostly angry), not because of what someone has said but what I know they are feeling and why ( I may be wrong, but I like to think I'm right all the time :~) they are feeling sarcastic, mean, hurtful or just plain annoying at that point in time.

Being able to maintain that line between my own feelings and those of the outside factors is something I want desperately to be able to do. Being a warm person, someone people immediately feel they can relate to no matter how different you may be from them is something which is priceless, not having to consciously feel the need to hammer down any barriers to become friendly with people is invaluable because sometimes that awkward "please can we be friends" stage is just cringeworthy. Being "nice" is all well and good but what good does it do when all you project to others is: "I am trying my best to be nice so that hopefully, we can be friends and tell each other our secrets and have slumber parties and dress the same and grow up and be each others bridesmaids and god-parents to each others babies....eventually, hopefully"

That's right.... its really really cringeworthy and pretty damn scary too. No one wants to be trapped into friendship or love because they have no choice! I know I certainly don't and whenever I do get the feeling that I am being slowly hooked and reeled in to such situations, I cannot help it but my natural response is to run for the hills. Because anything remotely phony scares me witless. I cannot be at ease with a person, when I cannot read past a fixed plastic smile and eyes that are eerily watching every move I make undoubtedly for future stories to be told or maybe to be recorded somewhere in our "friendship file" in the person's "friendship cabinet" in their brain.

My views I know may come across as extreme but I am convinced some of us feel the need to act this way in order to be liked, or in order to put forward the "best version of themselves" that they can muster up. I guess some of us are just more ambitious than others. I say that because, I for one know I am not, can not and certainly will not EVER be anything even close to perfect. I have known that forever and I am very okay with the thought of just being shabby old me. In fact I love my shabby self, and I like other people who are shabby like me, people who are at ease with their own unique version of shabbiness- and these people's happiness with their shabbiness shines through and acts like a magnet to me. I cannot help but be attracted to these shabby souls like myself because I feel that we are different but on the inside, we are more similar than we are different. I am comfortable with being friendly and open with such people because inside me, I know that they probably do not hate me for being at ease with myself.

The other kind who do all the right things, say the right things, act like they are your guardian angels (even though you probably just met them less than two weeks ago) and constantly reassure you of their undying friendship and the quality of friendship you and them share are the ones who unfortunately just make me sometimes wish I could stop that dreaded *line* which eventually morphs into a 60 ft wall made of cast iron and which sometimes I would love to but cannot even attempt to break down and start again. Because these "perfect" friends are the ones who you find out tell your secrets for fun, they are the ones who let the hurtful comments slip out before they can help themselves, they are the ones who make it clear to you their insecurities and the things they would love you to be sensitive about but they steam roll through your feelings about the most sore topics they know you feel the most sensitive about, just so they can see your reaction, they love to see you at your weakest so they can for once feel bigger and better than you...

Do not despise the shabby ones for being at ease with their shabby selves, work on you first, and in return maybe others will truly love you... better still you just might love you too.