A small look into my own musical background and some of the tunes I listen to!
Regardless of what your cultural background is or what language you speak, music is the great unifier that transcends all barriers and boundaries. The incomprehensibly diverse sounds that our ears can process can evoke a wide spectrum of feelings ranging from, joy, sadness, love, excitement, even rage in certain genres. It is its own unique language in itself that countless artists have used as a vehicle to get their boundless imagination, passion, and beliefs across in a way that mere words alone wouldn't suffice. For many of us, what we listen to can essentially seen as a miniature window into ourselves, and I am no different in that regard!
In my own personal experience, I grew up in a Nigerian household with two older sisters. When you're the baby of the family you tend to have very little say into what gets played in the car or on the radio. It was either traditional Nigerian afrobeat that inspired a large swath of the sound we hear in modern music today, or late Biggie, Jay-Z pre Beyonce, and typical early 2000s boy band garbage like Backstreet Boys and N'Sync (kidding!). Of course with age, my increasing independence, and a basic knowledge of how to abuse Napster and Limewire, I could chart my own path in terms of developing my own musical tastes. Here's a small handful of some of my favorite picks!
Fela Kuti-Zombie
There is not a single song that I heard more growing up than this one. Almost every single time we'd drive in my dad's car for an extended period of time it would be playing. Not sure if I genuinely enjoy or it's some form of musical Stockholm Syndrome, but either way it's managed to ear-worm its way onto this initial list. A little background information about Fela, he was an EXTREMELY famous musician in Nigerian circles as well as a human rights activist (he also had at one point 27 wives! 27!!!). He's a pioneer of the afro-beat genre that to this day is replicated and sampled within modern music. To use a direct sample, J.Cole's "Let Nas Down" directly samples his song "Gentileman". As I'm sure you noticed if you clicked the above link, the average length of his songs are LONG, some even stretching as long as 15 minutes! This is yet another one of his trademarks
Garbage-Special
You know that feeling when you hear a song for the first time and you really like how it sounds but you can't for the life of you figure out the name of it. THIS was that song for me and it took me over a DECADE to find it again. I remember hearing it on one of my sister's "Now that's what I call Music" CDs (Yes they actually bought those, blame them for being in the triple digits nowadays). Lyrics are admittedly super basic but I really like the guitar work and lead singer Shirley Manson's voice.
Chance the Rapper-No Problem ft. 2Chainz & Lil Wayne
The background church choir sampling in this song is just extremely cool to me and gives a really fun, energetic vibe to the song that puts me in a good mood just about every time I listen to it. Featuring two GOATs like Weezy and 2 Chainz is just the icing on the cake.
Santana-Song of the Wind
Now fun fact, I have actually met Santana in person! My brother in law's father Tom took me out to eat in San Fransisco area when he walked in the door, extravagant outfit and all. Turns out he's even tailored some outfits for him before! Most people know him for "Smooth" and "Maria Maria" but my personal favorite of his is this little acoustic gem.
Zedd-Papercut ft. Troye Sivan
Straight up, Zedd is my probably single favorite artist and I'll be shocked if I don't put at least one of his songs on every single one of these entries. I actually broke my several year drought of not going to concerts just to see this dude work his magic in person. This is one of the first songs I had ever heard from his work (knowingly at least, since his body of work is so vast in pop today).
Disturbed-Sound of Silence
I am THAT heretical music fan who finds the covers of certain songs better than the originals. I like the Spiderbait version of "Black Betty" more than the original Ram Jam version. I like the Florence and the Machine cover of "Stand by Me" done for Final Fantasy 15 more than John Lennon's AND Ben E. King's original version. This sacrilegious personal trend continues with Disturbed's rendition of "Sound of Silence". Because I can never get enough of David Draiman's voice, even when he's not doing his trademark screams.
MAN WITH A MISSION- Raise Your Flag
One of my favorite guilty pleasures is songs that have solid near-equal split of both English and another language, usually the speaker's native language. Mostly gained from all the Nigerian music spoken with a mix of broken English and traditional Ibo. This trend continues with the opening song to one of the latest entries to one of my favorite anime series ever in Gundam, which I will almost CERTAINLY write a post about in the future.
Meek Mill-Dreams and Nightmares
This song almost needs no introduction. It is legitimately one of the greatest intro songs to any rap album ever, but my views on this song changed dramatically after living in Pennsylvania for an extended period of time. If you could distill the essence of Philadelphia into 3:50 of pure lyrical hellfire and brimstone it would be this song.
Dropkick Murphys-Shipping up to Boston
The Departed is one of my favorite movies of all time, and hearing this song in it is probably one of the larger reasons why. Was really cool finally visiting the city for the first time this past new year's and blasting it walking down the same areas shown in the music video! I love Boston accents
Rick Ross-Super High ft. Curren$y and Wiz Khalifa
This is my single favorite song to drive to (at least not counting the ones that'll make me want to speed). Just an extremely chill song and there's no such thing as too much Rick Ross. Even if he betrayed all us fatties and dropping so much weight.
That's all for this rendition of Ogre's Playlist, hope I introduced you to some stuff you might wanna listen to in the future yourself. Let me know what you think in the comments or shoot me an Email!.