The African Dancehall King – Shatta Wale dropped his first song and music video to commence the year 2020. Following the announcement of his ‘Gift of God Album‘, Shatta Wale released yet another creative masterpiece tagged, ‘1 Don‘.
In the intro of the music video, Deportee prompted Shatta Wale and I quote “Yo badman.. party time…party shut to a level”.
It’s usual for everyone to expect a party scene afterwards but to my disappointment, all I saw was him and his friends in a scorching sun with one chick while holding drinks and disposable cups pretending to having a quality time amidst palm trees, decorated canoe with inscriptions etc., and virtually no sign of partying. (Still can be argued as their way of partying though)
VIDEO REVIEW
Theme:
In the song ‘1 Don’, Shatta Wale only embiggens himself, talking about self-importance. So throughout the video it’s all about him, his musical prowess, social status and achievements.
Concept/Location
As said in the preface, the environment isn’t bad but to some extent it doesn’t relate to the content of the song. I want to believe Shatta Wale don’t script his music video; he just have a concise creative vision of how it should look like and then say, you know what, I’ve seen this place and we going to shoot this video there. He doesn’t seem to consider whether the location compliment with the song or not.
Props
It’s not bad to work with one director who you can jell with, however, it’s better if you work with others who are well anchored in directing. It’s very obvious PKMI is a novice director or probably an in-house director of Shatta Wale, hence, owns every equipment.
Considering props, the items and equipment were conspicuously inefficient to bring out the vision in a more satisfactory way. Going forward he must employ the service of other directors or hire better equipments like we saw with Gringo because his caliber; considering how far he has come, it is expected of him to do it masterly.
Lighting and Editing
Light was on point unlike his Sleepless Night video. You could distinguish the color gradients and temperature in a more appealing way. Editing was okay because only two scenes were intermittently switched. The Intro scene portrayed him indoors with two girls and the other with friends in a beach resort.
Costume and Make-ups
Custom was average. Apparently, Shatta Wale styles himself so it wasn’t surprising always seeing him adorned with hot colours like yellow, red and then green hoodies/sweaters, and white underwear in his videos. He needs a proper stylist who can offer him clothes that best suit his video concepts or better still get a bespoke costume specially made to tailor his video concept.
Budget
I doubt there was any budget quoted for the video because obviously he didn’t script this video so one can’t even speculate.
Overall the video was cool and I’ll give it 6/10.
NB: This review consist of solely my opinion and should be taken with a grain of salt.
Guest Author: Amadu Mohammed Kamil
