Johnny

"Johnny" is the record that made Yemi Alade, and its charm is entirely narrative. Over a bright, mid-tempo highlife-tinged Afropop beat — chiming guitars, a skipping snare, an unfussy bass — she plays a woman hunting for a man who has vanished, going door to door, discovering as she goes that Johnny is a serial disappearer with a woman in every neighborhood. It's a detective story told as a dance song. Alade sings in pidgin and English with theatrical exaggeration, her voice pitched somewhere between exasperation and comedy, punching consonants for effect and drawing out "Johnnyyy" like a mother calling a child in from the street. The genius is tonal: the betrayal is real but the delivery is funny, and that mix is deeply West African in sensibility — grief performed with enough wit to survive it. The video, shot on a modest budget, became one of the most-viewed African music videos ever and vaulted her out of contest-winner obscurity into continental stardom. Nearly everyone in Nigeria and Francophone West Africa can sing the hook. Put it on for a kitchen party where somebody's ex is about to get discussed at length.