Gabriel's Awesome 'Kokoro Ife' (Love Bug)

Chronicled by Afronuts @ Tuesday, October 30, 2012

I usually don't do this on my blog but I think I'm going to start because I can't just ignore originality, creativity and good use of talent.

I've always seen Gabriel Afolayan as a fine young actor. The first time I ever saw him was on one of the series of Wale Adenuga's Super Story where he convincingly played a passionate lover boy of an older woman. His role there was so powerfully convincing that I marked him as a talent to watch out for.

And I wasn't disappointed.

Gabriel

In fact, if there was a Nigerian movie that had Gabriel featuring in it, I'm compelled to watch it. The guy definitely has his father's blood running strongly through him (His Dad was the late ace film maker Ade Afolayan aka 'Ade Love').

Now, we've seen as Nigerian actors and actresses dabbled into music and ended up disappointing us or just ended up making an azz out of themselves; something many of them shouldn't have gone anywhere near in the first place.

But Gabriel did not disappoint at all. His single titled 'Kokoro Ife' (Love Bug), is a beautiful soulful R&B love ballad rendered in both English and Yoruba (released sometime in April or March). From the song's lyrics one can deduce that it was carefully composed; it's rich and poetic. Gabriel renders the song in this soulful haunting voice that is reminiscent of originality akin to artistes like Asa and 9ice but still with its own identity. I never knew the dude had a voice that powerful.  

I also noticed that the song was sung all through in Gabriel's voice without the intrusion of the infamous auto-tuning effect that many 'fake' artistes use to hide the fact that they actually don't have good singing voice. This allowed the song to haunt its listeners strongly. Coming up with the tune for the song was no doubt real work because its not just linear singing; it plays out stretching out the melody creatively.

Even the video managed to capture the haunting nature of the song. Gabriel practically acted out the song in it; you could see his passionate lover boy skills at work in there.

Now I know that Dimeji Ajibola made a very good choice in starring him the recently premiered Nollywood musical thriller Hoodrush (This is a movie I might write about someday on this blog due to its attempt to explore something totally different in Nollywood)

I found my self playing the music repeatedly...and it's not easy to get me playing a song repeatedly!

This post is a tribute to Gabriel's originality. I'm proud of you man!