For almost a decade now, Obongjayar’s chameleonic voice has offered words of self-love, survival, and seduction. When he steps an octave up from his resting pitch, the Nigerian-born, London-based singer embodies a vengeful ghost with unfinished business; an octave down, and he transforms into a ferocious dancehall MC. “This place is ugly,” Obongjayar sang on “God’s Own Children,” a modern spiritual from 2020’s Which Way Is Forward? EP. “Don’t let it rob you/Of your face, of your grace, and of your body.”
“Born in This Body,” from his new album, Paradise Now, calls back to that sentiment: “You’re covered in paint/Your clothes and your shoes don’t fit/Don’t make yourself small/For no one.” Except this body’s got five more years of disillusionment caked under its nails, and the mood of the moment is far closer to the one Obongjayar captures on opening track “It’s Time.” “I walk the world with my head on a swivel,” he quivers in his upper register, “It’s hard trusting anything.” Paradise Now is twitchy and anxious, stuffed with ruminations on love, belonging, and violence. Obongjayar worked on the record with proven hitmakers behind Doja Cat and Kendrick Lamar, and as it races through alt-R&B, Afro-dance rhythms, indie rock, and brooding Americana, a globalized, omnivorous popstar emerges. He’s instinctive but legible, algorithmically tuned without being dull, political right up to the line of provocation. Most importantly, he can make you move.
The first four songs on Paradise Now constitute their own mini-arc, tracing a relationship as it goes sour. Obongjayar delivers the scornful “Life Ahead” through gritted teeth, but an overwrought arrangement of martial drums, marimba, and gunshot samples can’t match the precision aim of his jabs. More successful is “Peace in Your Heart,” which situates itself in an indie-pop niche between the xx’s self-titled and Braids’ Native Speaker. Things don’t really get going, though, until the album has cleared its throat of trite breakup drama altogether. On “Jellyfish,” Obongjayar rails against “spineless” lawmakers in the UK and stateside (“Bomb bomb spawned by the stars and stripes”) alike. Though he writes in broad strokes—no “Fuck Badenoch”’s to be found here—the shuddering, corkscrewing synthesizer leaves his message unmistakable: Things are going down the drain. Fast. “Talk Olympics,” featuring Little Simz, ratchets up the tempo even further, making percussive instruments out of both artists in a slightly more hospitable take on Tanzanian singeli.
Obongjayar then breezes past some tender Afropop (“Prayer”) and glassy soul indebted to Blonde and Moses Sumney (“Moon Eyes”) before suddenly arriving at what sounds like the gates of hell itself. “Baby ride me like a cowboy/I’m your cowboy,” he croons on “Sweet Danger,” toying with the inherent machismo of the American West while the song’s blistered blues threaten to clamp their jaws around him. “There’s no saving me.” If salvation is out of reach, one may as well dance among the flames. The best song on Paradise Now is far and away “Not in Surrender,” a disco punk anthem that opens with the triumphant misdirect, “I put my hands up, not in surrender/I’m getting ready to fly.” Amidst white-hot DFA cowbells, Obongjayar grooves like Off the Wall-era MJ and seethes like TV on the Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe, another musician whose best work blurs the boundaries between fucking up the system and just plain fucking.
With a frantic, deconstructed groove and fuzzed-out bass, “Instant Animal” could pass for an outtake from Return to Cookie Mountain and would make for an appropriately grand finale, if only there weren’t four more tracks left to go. It’s as if everything before “Jellyfish” and after “Instant Animal” is a padded cell for the wilder, more bracing album housed within. The staid, TikTok-ified disco of “Just My Luck” is most egregious, reeking of some label-meddling post Obongjayar’s viral turn on Fred again..’s “adore u.” Paradise Now’s knot of anger, faith, pain, and lust can’t be tidily unwoven by committee. Obongjayar needs to stake it all on himself; “I’m no magician,” he claims on “Strong Bone,” as though he didn’t just spend half an album tangled up and the other half breaking free.
