The title of Magixx’s debut album—I Dream in Color—evokes cinematic visions; the vague feeling of being caught in a dream overlaid with vivid bursts of color. The spectral undertones inherent in the album’s title pervades the 13 tracks that make up the album. I Dream In Color, exists in a mellow dreamscape conjured from the thoughts, memories, and fantasies that have weighed on Magixx’s mind since his debut in 2021.
Titles of Nigerian Pop albums tend to be disconnected from their content. There are exceptions, as is the case with almost everything else in life, but broadly speaking, album titles in these parts tend to serve as bold statements embodying the artist’s mental state, as opposed to being representative of the album’s themes. Take Wizkid’s ecclesiastical More Love, Less Ego, which is a little more than a compilation of sensual, slow-burn music. Or Odunsi’s Leather Park, which is as inscrutable as Wizkid’s MLLE is misleading. Magixx however departs from this tradition, curating an album that reflects its title.
In September of 2021, after a succession of well-received underground efforts—Magixx made his official debut on the Nigerian music scene through an eponymous EP released under the auspices of Mavin Records. The project introduced us to his inimitable honeyed vocals and his distinct writing style marked by a flair for the dramatic. The EP was well received by fans and critics and produced Love Don’t Cost a Dime, a culture-rallying hit song that riffs on the fraught relationship between love and money. The song later received an Ayra Starr remix which vaulted it to even greater acclaim. But even with the song’s commercial success and near ubiquity, it was clear that his public profile, or perhaps more accurately, his level of commercial acclaim, lagged behind his talent. To put it differently, he belonged to the category of artists who fans morosely describe as underrated.
The following year he released his Atom EP, to consolidate his position in the industry. While the project enjoyed success among its core audience, it fell short of the level of commercial success expected of it. Understanding the chasm between his talent and commercial performance and how this situation has weighed on him is central to grasping the scope of his intentions with this album—his debut.
He’s also signed to the biggest label in Nigeria, which has in its history books a slew of mythic figures—Rema and Ayra Starr, his label mates, as well as alumni like Tiwa Savage and Wande Coal. He seems to fully understand the stakes and showed signs of worry over the performance of the album in the months leading up to its release. He openly fretted over the marketing strategy for the album on his Instagram Stories and put out a series of tweets calling for ideas from fans on how to navigate promoting the album. His posture in the past few months has revealed his dissatisfaction with being stuck in the subterranean world where underrated artists inhabit, forced to make do with whiskers of support from a handful of loyal fans as opposed to reveling in the ubiquity mainstream acts enjoy.
I Dream In Color opens with the gently frothy atmosphere of Consistency. Soft keys ricochet around the track’s somber production. Sparse drums populate the song, evoking the feeling of a church worship session. The song’s wistful ambiance finds Magixx in a state of extraordinary anguish as he bounces between indignance from being underrated and anguish from past trauma. “Tryna hold my tears while I write this song/ Cus plenty things don sup wey I no fit talk/ Cos Na me dey for me.” He sings. Even though this portion of the song suggests an unwillingness to divulge details of his life story, he soon capitulates, singing pensively about his mother suffering a stroke.
Shards of his personal experiences, often painful ones, populate the album. On Voices, the album’s closer and one of the most heartfelt tracks on the project, he sings about living with paranoia—voices in his head—having been let down on several occasions by people he trusted. Konibaje finds him similarly pensive, singing about working hard so his mum can walk again.
Much of the album inhabits the fuzzy milieu of a dream, but the dreams he conjures are mostly vivid recollections of harrowing portions of his life. Take Alchl which opens with the lines “Feel like I’m drowning, like I’m losing myself.” In the song, as he laments a toxic situation with a lover, one can hear muffled tears progressively accrete in his throat. The chorus finds him singing about wanting to drown his sorrows in alcohol. We’ve all been there, caught in a thorny situation, where the only glimmer of hope appears to be the momentary reprieve of escapism.
There are moments, however, when the calm atmosphere starts to morph into monotony. Sempe is illustrative of this. Stationed towards the end of the project, the song’s reprisal of themes that have been explored several times already makes it a boring if painful listen. But overall, I Dream In Color, is a satisfying debut from an artist bristling with ambition. The album is not exactly filled with high points, but in the places where it hits, it hits hard.
