Last night Citi FM held their annual white top and jeans Christmas party. It is undoubtedly one of the events to look forward to every yuletide. This year’s had a special highlight, and it all thanks to Wisa’s penis…or not.
With creativity–related activities, talent is key, but hardwork is “keyer”. Courage is necessary, passion too…and passion maketh all things possible. When your affection for something is abnormal, your actions are, too. And in many ways, passion begets hardwork and courage. It also informs the direction of creativity. It has also been responsible for anything outrageous in this world, so in my opinion, passion is “keyest”.
What is my opinion on Wisa’s stunt at D2R last night? Do I approve of grown men flashing their goods on a stage in the name of performance? I don’t know what you say yet. Perhaps it’s stupid, for now.
Citi FM has skirted the incident, and focused on the performance and other successes of the night in their reportage , but this is the age of the Internet, and we know where to find the story: twitter.com et al.
We recognise Citi FM to be an outfit of excellence and order, and their platform is a high reference point. So if you get invited to perform on D2R for instance, it means you are doing something right. It also suggests competition and a professionalism which is higher than you are normally used to.
I mean, he has a single song an a remix ( he has other songs which are still anonymous for now). Technically, he has one and half hits. It’s really all he’s here with. The artists on the bill, except for say Atom and himself , are all headline acts…at least this year. It’s unrealistic to even imagine, with virtually just one song, that you’ll be able to do something superior to a Stonebwoy performance, for instance. Other artist include EL, Okyeame Kwame, Gasmilla, Pappy Kojo, Eazzy and VVIP, clearly a tall order for Wisa Greid, who has come into accidental prominence this year with Ekiiki Mi. How else was he going to capture the headlines? Performance is very important, but the headlines and hash tags can’t be overlooked. He certainly had to find a way to cement his memory in our minds for a while longer. He could keep up with the hard work and bide his time, but sometimes, the shortcut works best I’m just saying.
His Ekiiki Mi certainly makes the list of top songs released here this year, I wrote a thousand words about it, but it’s perishable, and what is going to happen when next year happens and all this blows over? Wisa knows this, so in that way he’s not stupid. EL’s Koko, is exciting all, and Stonebwoy’s Mightylele is mighty good. The La City Soldier had to come up with something…and desperate times call for desperate measures.
I suspect that this might be it for Wisa and Citi FM in the meantime, but you can’t really call it stupid till this whole thing runs it’s course. At least, he was the highlight of last night’s show, whether for good or bad. Wisa’s penis itself did not possess a big personality, if you know what I mean, but the gesture certainly is breaking news material.
I think it was premeditated, so I’m sure he anticipated the twitter uproar, and has built mechanism to absorb it. Again, he’s not entirely stupid yet.
We all called Shatta Wale’s tantrums stupid –at least we thought it at a point. But today, he’s back here, and you can’t ignore him. Fundamentally, would you approve of someone disrespecting another, man or woman, with words so vulgar that you only heard it on the beaches where I grew up, just because you were embittered about an award you may not have deserved anyway? When we work hard at something, and have endured so much for it, we feel like we deserve all likely praise. But still, there’s a good chance someone worked harder and endured more with the two talents the master gave them.
The above sentence certainly did not resonate with Shatta at the time and so he flipped, then apologised, then flipped again, then appologised…and now we’ve just lost count. But now…perhaps because of his peculiar brand of ‘gentility’, we note his opinion, and he’s a bigger star than Samini currently, no matter how reluctant you are to accept this. And this is coming from someone on the Dansoman side of the dancehall king divide, if you must know. What if Charles Nii Armah had not exploded? Indeed, perhaps, it is thanks his explosion after he lost to Kaaki in the Ghana Music Awards in 2005, that he has found opinion again… Of course there’s the back and forth with Samini too, but, the Kaaki/ Charterhouse episode was especially remarkable.
This approach worked for him, so he’s milked it meticulously; he’s gone at everyone except GTV newscasters and cartoons on NET2, and it’s still working.
MzBel, Janet Jackson, Fela, Donald Trump …everybody achieved superior notice by doing something we describe as stupid at first glance. Of course, mostly it’s with words, but it’s also by uniquely accentuating a body part to suggest sex, or showing us a pound of flesh altogether. I mean, I have seen pictures of Nicki Minaj before fame (and don’t get me wrong, she’s just as good as her male counterparts), but there certainly wasn’t this much architecture around her waist and rear. It could be exciting or, Wisa-esque…but either way, it inscribes something to be remembered.
For Wisa, this was a means… and by speaking about the means alone, we are speaking too fast. it just might be justified by the end. It is these decade we are talking about. And anything, sorry, everything has happened in these two decades and been accepted.
Say something blasphemous, insult a bigger artist, sing about jealousy. The remix doesn’t have as much potential anymore, so talk about raw sex…and if all else fails, expose a body part –that rarely fails. The rules of the music industry are really that simple. Wisa is a student of the game, and so he’s followed many of the rules aforementioned. He’s also stupid, for now …
The writer can be reached @myershansen on twitter and at gmyershansen@gmail.com. Also onwww.myershansen.wordpress.com.
Wisa Greid Is an Idiot, for Now
