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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.