Review: Presido La Pluto, Shallipopi & Audacity

Shallipopi braids audacity over a list of 13 tracks; it's his debut album and a handful of things are worth noting.

The first is the artiste's branding introduced on the breakout, Elon Musk. Since then Shallipopi fervently kept a reminder in the subconscious mind of the listeners that his own world of music is defined as Pluto, even if till now, we are yet to see the correlation in his music.

Successfully turning around his conviction earlier this year, Shallipopi played by the already written books of the likes of the following predecessors in the person of Naira Marley and Portable. Maybe not so strong a controversy, but it's a pattern awaiting more exploration in the street.

Chuk Chambers wrote on Twitter: "The emergence of Naira Marley and Shallipopi into the industry is similar. From their tango with the EFCC to street cred and music pattern. In fact the demography of negative reviews is similar. Although from different tribe, they are doing same things from a different body."

Perhaps Shallipopi's management affiliation with Dapper Music proves two points: that a deal with a music organization opens doors to connection home and abroad; Focalistic's appearance on both Shallipopi's and Seyi Vibez' albums is proof.

Secondly, Dapper Music seems to apply the strategy of "plenty releases" to get their artistes the attention they need to sell their careers. This explains Seyi Vibez releasing 5 different projects in the space of 6 months and Shallipopi now releasing 2 in 3 months. Asake might have introduced the constant releases of hits back in 2022, but Seyi Vibez took it steps higher with album releases.

Shallipopi's music is no different from chitchat from the perspective of soliloquy, he acknowledged it himself, and although similar to Naira Marley's, the latter is still more melodic. Each time Shallipopi attempts to sing, it just doesn't work, the opening track Never Ever is the second time he's doing this. Regardless of that, Shallipopi's sound is on demand and he has successfully colonized that aspect of Amapiano.

Shallipopi has some feats to his name, like putting Zerrydl, his brother on immediately after his own fame; and establishing his own label Plutomania; contributing to the vast pop culture of Nigeria with expressions like "Evian dey", "Elon Musk boys" etc.

Shallipopi's Presido La Pluto installs him as the pioneer of this strange "talkie" Pluto sound; you can't take that away from him. With Busypluto ever ready know-how of the Amapiano, Things on Things expresses gangsterism, Pepperlin attracts "nursery rhymes" bants, Cast glorifies drug abuse, Never Ever recounts his struggles before fame; the rest blab about women, sex and the fast-moving celeb lifestyle.

Ratings: 6/10