Rising Afropop singer-songwriter Victony made a huge splash with his Mayorkun-assisted tune “Holy Father”, but before that he almost lost his life in a ghastly motor accident that had him in a wheelchair for a while. Having fully recovered, he went on a path to rediscovery with the aforementioned single and collaborations, which made him one of the new faces to watch in the Afropop scene. His latest effort Outlaw is a 7-track body of work that serves as his sophomore project. It was written and composed by Victony himself, and with the help of producers like Ktizo (Tion Wayne, Arrdee) and P.Priime (Wizkid, Fireboy DML) to help craft a unique fusion of R&B, trap, and Afropop.
The title track starts off with a dancehall chant and switches into a somber piano texture that slowly builds into a cinematic crescendo. It sees Victony reclaiming his freedom from societal expectations in a defiant mode as he chants “Champion boy, I no dey fear fire“. The single “Apollo” is a mid-tempo jam that is built on a hypnotic groove with South African percussion, and is bolstered by his catchy melodic performance and adulation-filled lyrics about being madly in love. With tracks featuring hypnotic guitar riffs on “Soweto”, vibrant tongue-in-cheek dance floor filler on “All Power”, and the weird dynamics of transactional relationships tackled on “‘Chop & Slide”, Victony gives listeners a variety of sounds and topics in this short body of work, and it’s quite effective with his expressive songwriting style that blends English and Nigerian pidgin English.
Stream OUTLAW here.
