CELEB BUZZ: The Willy Paul slander needs to stop

Like many other fans of Kenyan music, I have a problem with Willy Paul. He always releases songs that seem torn between being Gospel and secular. Occasionally, they qualify as neither.

However, I think he’s a brilliant artiste who gets a lot of flak for no good reason.

Disparaging him has now become a pastime. Kenyans just enjoy laying into him and lately, it looks like the abhorrence has increased tenfold.

If you checked the hobbies section of some people’s CVs, you might even find ‘Reading novels, travelling and criticising Willy Paul.’

By the way, why does everyone put ‘travelling’ in their list of hobbies? It’s like if the employer sees ‘travelling’ he’ll be like “Holy heavens, you travel! Wow…just wow. You are the type of candidate we have been looking for. You, my friend, are going to the corner office.” 

Back to Wilson Radido! (That’s Willy Paul’s real name).

TROLLING

A few days ago, he released a song called “Bora Uhai” featuring Khaligraph. People immediately descended on him, saying the track was horrible. If you listened to people before listening to the song, you would have thought it was such an eye-rolling drag.

The truth is, it wasn’t that bad. It was quite riveting. The ingredients that turned his previous songs into mega-hits were still there.

It wasn’t anything extraordinary, it was just another Willy Paul song. And in our normal world, ‘just another Willy Paul’ song is usually good enough.

As usual, he made sure to remind us who he was in the song by shouting “Huyu ni Pozze, sio Rozay.” As if we would ever confuse him for Rozay. He just likes hearing himself saying his own name right?

His vocal loop, levitating over the cordial ‘n’ woozy orchestration came off as nice and easy. The only glaring shortcoming was in the title. You cannot use a trending phrase as the title of your song and get away with it. Only, Ethic, the popular group behind “Lamba Lolo” can do that and people wouldn’t mind.

However, Willy Paul’s song wasn’t the only thing getting trolled. His new hairstyle also kicked up a reactionary fuss. He had braid extensions on, extensions that you would find on many other men and women out there but because it was Willy Paul, the hairdo was labelled a disaster.

Someone on social media said he had copied Diamond and that it was a shame that he always copies everything the Wasafi boss does.

One of my buddies said Pozze’s forehead was looking so huge it was like an invincible force was pulling his hair back from behind.

Another social media user said that one of Willy Paul’s girlfriends, a modern day Delilah, should rescue us from the eyesore and shave the nonsense from his head. So cruel!

I can imagine him releasing a song about the incident. It would sound something like “Mabinti walininyoanga…chaaa! Kisogo mpaka kwa sideburns...chaaa!” Haha.

By the way Willy, you have overused the word ‘mabinti’ in your songs, just about the same way Trump has overused the word ‘tremendous’ in his speeches.

CHART-TOPPERS

Over the past few years, Willy Paul has released more hits and garnered more YouTube views than most Kenyan artistes. So it’s indeed perplexing that at this stage of his career, he is the recipient of more trolling than praising.

The unfiltered hatred and outright dismissal of Willy Paul’s talent is a systemic issue that has been brewing over the last few years. It’s shocking how huge and robust the hater echo chamber has grown.

If you sweep off all the silly reasons we use to hate on him and study him carefully, you will begin to appreciate how he is such a beast in his craft.

He has more good songs than anyone knows what to do with. Putting out chart-toppers each and every time is not easy. Ask Vicmass Luodollar, oops.

The fact that Willy makes hits so easily should be at least something to make us let his misdemeanours slide.

There are those who say that their hatred towards Willy Paul has nothing to do with his music. It has more to do with facets of his public persona that they find intolerable.

Willy is a known provocateur who sometimes makes off-the-cuff remarks and does douche baggy things. It is just who he is. We need to cut him some slack.

If you are a human who likes it when things are politically correct, Willy Paul hasn’t been making life very easy for you.

All in all, we should learn to accept that just as different people in whichever field have different personalities, different entertainers have different personalities too. So long as someone does their job well, they deserve some form of respect.

There are those who keep finding reason after reason to explain why Bahati is better than Willy Paul. Bahati is not better than Willy Paul. Not even close. End of discussion.

Some of the criticism towards Pozze might be justified to some extent but not entirely. Nevertheless, it’s about time we showed more love than disdain to one of the realest talents of our generation.

Even if it’s today, just today, find a place in your heart to appreciate Willy Paul. Just for today, blast ‘Fanya’ in your speakers. Just for today, shout “Willy Paul, Willy Pozzee.” Do this three times and you’ll finally realise how great it feels to not hate on Willy Paul.