Stars of the entertainment scene of 2012

Most Patriotic Song of the Year
Timi Dakolo’s Great Nation, written and arranged by him and produced by Cobhams Asuquo comes across easily as the perfect song for 2012. Critics say that it should be adopted as the national anthem.



Best Male Singer
Tuface Idibia and Kenny K’ore lead the pack of outstanding male singers in the outgoing year. Others include Capital FEMI, May D, Timi Dakolo, Wande Coal, Flavour, and Chuddy K. But the real contenders for this title are TuFace and Kenny.

Best Music Album of the Year
Tuface Idibia’s Far and Away and Kenny K’ore’s Eledumare Classic are good enough to be named best music album of the year. Each track in the latter’s 18-track stellar disc stands as a potential chartbuster.



Best Female Singer
Tiwa Savage would easily have clinched the best female singer title, but for the fact that her real voice has been frequently altered with auto tune. Chidinma would have been a suitable alternative, but Omawumi’s shadow lurks quite close. Of course, Omawumi gets the nod. She is, no doubt, the authentic best female singer in Nigeria at present.



Worst Album of the Year
The much-vaunted double album titled Bashorun Gaa and 9ice Versus by the talented 9ice fell short of expectations in 2012. Apart from that, the artiste himself was inactive for the most part of the year. While his colleagues were busy performing at major shows and concerts across Nigeria the country, he was virtually ‘missing’ in action.

 LIFE&BEAT learnt that the artiste was snubbed by corporate brand show promoters and organisers. Not even one song from the so-called double album was adjudged strong enough to win an award in the year



Outstanding Director of Music Videos
Many music videos were produced in the year. But Clarence Peters of Capitol Dream Films was generally acclaimed the best and most imaginative among the producers for his daring and impressive shoots. Nevertheless, there was a marked improvement in the content of music videos, in terms of sheer volume of work, creativity and quality of photography.

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Best Music Producer of the Year
Wole Oni and  Cobhams  Asuquo are the favourites for this title. Their consistent effort to bring sound recording to its ideal format is commendable. They have been able to draw attention to the fact that lyrical content must be meaningful and the instrumentals interesting enough to be performed live on stage by the singer’s backup band.

But Asuquo obviously stands in a better position to clinch the title for crafting songs and beats that a good backup band can reproduce on stage without the singer sounding like a poor imitation of the recorded version of the song.

Cuddled from punchng