The audio
Some particular artistry strikes different that it sits deep within the confines of your soul that you do not need to attend a day of music school to know that it is excellent music. Such artistry is a song by A Pass, Nkwagala.
When A Pass said that he was taking Bebe Cool’s warning serious, he meant it with ALL CAPS on. He went down to Herbert Skillz and unearthed the previously buried basics of his craft.
The song by nature and vibe is soulful, mellow and calming. The instrumental is characterized by consistent, raw piano keys whose intervals are complimented by a subtle soft bass that doesn’t lure the listener’s attention away from the essential calm of the song.
A Pass effortlessly blends in with the soulful nature of the keys when he belts out an internal monologue seeking reason as to why he loves this particular person. He seems to fail to find reason but he catches himself and he realizes the obvious, that he will love her forever.
A Pass exhibits an exceptional blend of both his vocal prowess and songwriting genius. He goes beyond his usual musical confines and withholds nothing while hitting top vocal ranges unlike before. The tone of his pitch can be likened to that the late Mowzey Radio uses in one of his last ballads, Enyimba z’omukwano.
He goes on to craft a beautiful love story with an architect’s minimalism; it comes with utmost simplicity but takes the craftsman of a genius to pull off. In one of the verses, he describes his lover’s love as that which is beautiful to converse about but then he feels like each and every time, it is never enough just like a single drop of rain in comparison to the entire fall.
He concludes the song with an artistic form of suspense as he calls his lover to come pick her portion of the love and the listener is left in the balance of things, exceptional.
The video
The video is directed by the self-proclaimed ‘Goat’ A Pass himself in collaboration with the exceptionally talented Loukman Ali from iViZUALZ. With the artistic resume of both these talents, one would expect the magnum opus of a work but the efforts did not even come close.
Loukman has been behind monstrous projects such as Ebirowozo by Shifa Musisi and we expected him to bring the Midas touch to this particular project.
We do not know if it was the artistic direction the directors chose the visual to take but incase it was, it was a tear evoking fail.
The visual is dull with the effort to dramatize A Pass shedding a tear seeming like it could use more effort. The lighting on A Pass came off as harsh on the artiste’s face. That among a plethora made the video very disappointing.
Similar videos have taken on a similar concept such as Abaasa’s Wantengula and they came off visually more appealing.
An excellent effort for the project on a whole as even with a disappointing video, the music is still beautiful.