Everybody Loves Ice Prince [Album Review]

       So the mantra around town is Everybody Loves Ice Prince. The third rapper in the Choc Boy collective has finally dropped his much anticipated debut album popularly abbreviated as ELI. In exactly a year Ice Prince Zamani has gone from obscurity to national fame after he dropped his colossal single ‘Oleku’ followed by a less successful but equally commercial follow up single ‘Super Star’
So what does this pop star’s debut album sound like? Well for one thing, Ice Prince is ambitious. Being one of today’s pop acts, Ice constructs records that lean towards the popular demographic than the rap crowd where he sprouted from. When his stars align the songs hit their mark. ‘Juju’ orchestrated by label mate and singer/producer Jesse Jagz has a tinge of Afrobeat in it and sees Ice rhyming about fake friends. ‘Wassup Wassup’ feat 2face is another of these songs as Ice Prince borrows Wizkid’s flow on the track. ‘By This Time’ featuring highlife favourite Wizboyy is a track concocted with Eastern Nigerian in mind with its heavy highlife influence.

It’s not all of Ice Prince’s experiments that work. ‘Baby’ is a deliberate attempt to cash in on the new highlife fever in the country and not a very good one at that. ‘Olofofo’ featuring pop sensation Wizkid is paper weight at best and ‘End of Story’ featuring Samklef gives off the ‘been there-heard that’ feel that now lurks in his rehashed beats.Another ‘Achilles heel’ of Ice Prince is his might I say ‘cheesy lines’. In a bid to impress with his wordplay he goofs by kicking some head-scratching lines. While this can be noticed in the album, the major culprit of this is Magician featuring Yung L & J Milla.

Despite these flaws, ELI is an LP with some solid tracks to its name. ‘Find You’ is a sober track dedicated to his dead parents. Ice’s youngest sister talks at the end of the song which makes it very gripping and emotional. ‘Somebody Lied’  speaks on his determination to make it in Lagos and the broken promises of the democratic government.
Overall Ice Prince has ended up delivering a debut that shoots for the stars. While not reaching its target he has however placed himself in the galaxy Nigeria’s rising pop stars.