MUSIC REVIEW: Sauti Sol’s ‘Friendzone’ creative and amusing

Sauti Sol is, as always, on a roll, and remains one of the most hardworking bands in East Africa. PHOTO | COURTESY

What you need to know:

  • But let’s look at this from a different point of view. You like the girl and therefore you want to not be her friend.
  • But is it that you like her and therefore can’t be anything other than romantically inclined, or you wanted to sleep with her so being a friend is unappealing?
  • Because of course men have female friends, and there is a common myth that they only have those because the girls refused to sleep with them.

Sauti Sol is, as always, on a roll, and remains one of the most hardworking bands in East Africa, constantly producing danceable, deep music for the fans. They alternate between the fun music and the reflective music, in a cocktail that anyone who is contemplative of all facets of life easily appreciates. It is in this vein, I believe, that they produced their latest lyric video, which you can watch here.

RELEASED A WEEK AGO

The lyric video was released a week ago, and has accumulated about 120,000 views. The song is about trying to jump out of the friendzone, which I guess is a thing men try to do often, but we will address that later. I do quite like the lyric video. It is creative, and done completely in emojis. When the song switches to the bridge, to plead with Team Mafisi to help him out in this situation (because, I guess, he is trying to leave Team Mafisi?), it is amusing to see the names listed on the phone on the screen. It was done very well – I mean, depicting a whole song in emojis is no easy task. I love the benga-like beat. The opening beat actually sounds like another song that I can’t quite place, but also sounds a lot like the famed Magic System song Gauo. I can’t wait to see what they do with the actual video, and I just love the plain old Africanness and Kenyanness of Sauti Sol – from the beat, to the lyrics and phrases that every Kenyan is familiar with.

NOW, ON FRIENDZONING…

On to this concept of friendzoning, completely unrelated to the Sauti Sol video – or rather, prompted by it. It is fascinating to me that men are so entranced with this whole trying to get out of the friendzone. I suppose when you are hitting on a girl, you are not interested in being her friend, and I suppose you don’t really need more friends. It must be so irritating to approach someone with romantic intentions and then be told, no, I’m not attracted to you, but we can be friends – which isn’t what you wanted in the first place.

But let’s look at this from a different point of view. You like the girl and therefore you want to not be her friend. But is it that you like her and therefore can’t be anything other than romantically inclined, or you wanted to sleep with her so being a friend is unappealing? Because of course men have female friends, and there is a common myth that they only have those because the girls refused to sleep with them. That’s a bit strange to me, to be honest, but I guess that’s how guys think – if I wanted you, in whatever way, we can’t be friends after that. Maybe it’s too painful, or I can’t fathom a different relationship with you past your breasts. Either way, no new friends.

I can’t think of anyone I have told let’s just be friends, but of course I am not attracted to all my male friends, and not just because they are my friends – but because I am not attracted to them and have no interest in dating them. Maybe I should start doing a survey about how we started speaking to each other in the first place…