Mavin’s resident emcee Ladipoe has been quiet for a while since he released his critically acclaimed ‘Providence’ EP in 2021. The rapper followed up the project with videos and signed treatment for the Fireboy assisted ‘Running’ and Rema assisted ‘Afro Jigga’ respectively. Then he dropped ‘Big Energy’ right after his scene stealing verse on the Mavins All-stars posse cut ‘Overdose,’ in 2022. The former didn’t quite leave the same print on playlists as the latter.
Although besides his verses on songs like ‘Won Le Le’ and ‘Overdose’ on the Mavins All-stars Compilation album, Poe hasn’t dropped new music— the Ikeja-born emcee found a way to keep the ears of his “Lifelines” as he calls his fans, busy.
Poe did that with the help of his weekly ‘On The Rooftop’ series where he performed classic Poe verses or new verses on different instrumentals or Acapella from a rooftop somewhere in Lagos.
Check out an episode of the series below:
‘Guy Man’ is Poe’s first song since June 2022 and the Lifelines couldn’t be more excited, as the Mavins Records Hip Hop Prince Ladipoe teams up with Dagbana Republic Prince, Bella Shmurda.
On ‘Guy Man,’ Ladi is revisiting his formula for making Afro-rap hits; a rap cadence laden, laid back hook and a vocalized chorus by an Afrobeats singer, merging into a cocktail of earworm street-hop.
This formula gave us ‘Afro Jigga‘ with Rema in 2022, ‘Yoruba Samurai’ with Joeboy and ‘Know You’ with Simi in 2020.
The earliest fossils of this formula can be heard on Poe’s 2018 ‘Talk About Poe’ project, on the song ‘Falling’ that introduced a lot of fans to a certain young and budding alté gem called Tems.
He also used the formula on his 2019 underground hit ‘Lemme Know’ but without a Vocalist on the chorus.
When Poe realized that adding a Tenor vocalist on the chorus was the icing on the cake, he finally cracked the code and that was the birth of most of his biggest hits, an anthem for the ladies and party goers but still not losing the Hip Hop heads in the process.
Although, this formula has delivered Poe into the hands of Hip Hop purist critics who keep quoting the Drake line ” they run to the hottest n***s just to stay hot’ in their critique of the formula, but like Kanye said on Graduation, “50 told me go ahead and switch your style up, if they gon’ hate let them hate, just watch the money pile up.”
Even Ladi said it best on the song, ”‘Cause Afrobeat hit no mean say Hip Hop’s dead.”
The single was released on Tuesday, June 13, 2022 and fans are already going crazy from both the rap and Afrobeats spectrum of Nigerian music lovers.
Does Ladipoe have another Number One Anthem coming with ‘Guy Man?’
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